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Dreamforce 2022: We dream of Salesforce Genie 
Neeraj Sharma
Salesforce Consulting Manager, Horizontal Digital.
Salesforce Genie is empowering almost every cloud with real-time data, intelligence, and automated processes to create a greater connected experience. Now, businesses are even more empowered to make decisions with unified profiles having real-time data updating on-the-fly
At Horizontal, we believe connected experiences drive greater possibilities between brands and their customers. And that starts by having connected data. Salesforce Genie will not only connect data across platforms but make it automated, intelligent, and real time. 

But what exactly is Salesforce Genie, and how is it different from Salesforce CDP?  
What is Salesforce Genie?  

Salesforce Genie is a real-time data platform that powers Salesforce Customer 360. It integrates data from every step of the customer experience and creates a unified customer profile record, that is automated, intelligent, and real time across every Salesforce cloud and industry solution.  

According to Salesforce, “As the heart of real-time Customer 360, Salesforce Genie ingests and stores real-time data streams at massive scale and combines it with Salesforce transactional data. Genie includes built-in connectors that bring in data from every channel (mobile, web, APIs), legacy data through MuleSoft, and historical data from proprietary data lakes.” 

How is Salesforce Genie different from Salesforce CDP?
With Salesforce CDP, unified customer profiles include AI-driven, cross-channel insights based on engagement behavior to segment smarter and anticipate each customer’s needs at every step of their journey. 
 
Salesforce Genie takes it one step further – by funneling a nearly infinite amount of dynamic data to Customer 360 in real time. This expands the use of Salesforce CDP to more than just the marketing function, but to every department of an organization – sales, service, etc.   
 
Salesforce Genie also allows data to sync (instead of duplicate) making everything about Salesforce CDP even faster (aka real time) than ever before. With the addition of Salesforce Genie, creating and activating 1-to-1 personalized customer journeys throughout the entire organization will be easier than ever before.
“Salesforce Genie is empowering almost every cloud with real-time data, intelligence, and automated processes to create a greater connected experience. Now, businesses are even more empowered to make decisions with unified profiles having real-time data updating on-the-fly.,” Neeraj Sharma, Salesforce Consulting Manager, Horizontal Digital. 
See how our Salesforce CDP expertise can help you unlock smarter connections with your customers. 
Watch our Dreamforce highlights to learn more about Salesforce Genie
Tom Flint
Executive Director Digital CX, Enterprise Strategy, Horizontal Digital
The announcement of Salesforce Genie set the tone for the event. I’m super excited to see how we will be able to help our clients raise the bar with Salesforce CDP, powered by Genie
Salesforce Genie powers real-time data across the Salesforce Customer 360 platform 
Dreamforce 2022 provided many great and memorable moments for attendees – but no moment topped the announcement of Salesforce Genie, a real-time data platform that powers the entire Salesforce Customer 360.  
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Dreamforce 2022: We dream of Salesforce Genie 

Creating a connected customer experience with APIs
We are in the age of digital transformation. For many organizations, that means not only integrating technology systems, but also reshaping a company’s technology stack and data sources to be focused on and around customer needs.  

As a customer engages with your brand, each channel and touchpoint they interact with has the potential to create a new data silo, which are disparate centers of data housed by one group in an organization that is not fully accessible by another. These disconnected data silos – coming from sources such as Call Centers, CRM systems, or in-store point-of-sales systems – are one of the most common barriers to gaining a true 360-degree view of your customers, and a continuous challenge for 90% of organizations.  

Developing connected experiences relies on an exceptionally designed, personalized, end-to-end customer experience. This type of experience can be activated via a CDP (customer data platform) that serves as the catalyst for a customer data-enabled integrated tech stack that seamlessly captures customer data (from things like digital behavioral interactions to self-selected preferences and past purchase history) as a customer engages with a brand’s website, e-commerce destination, in-store/POS, account portals, apps and more. 

Having your data effectively integrated is at the core of your customer experience. Today, companies can no longer afford to not provide a connected and seamless customer experience. According to MuleSoft’s 2022 Connectivity Benchmark Report, organizations could lose on average $7M if they fail to complete these digital transformation initiatives.  
So, how do organizations create an agile and seamless customer experience? The solution – APIs.  
An API (application programming interface) is a software intermediary that allows two applications to communicate with each other, creating a flow of data like a two-way street. According to MuleSoft’s API’s Essentials Blueprint, “APIs are the digital building blocks that compose and orchestrate customer experiences, foster new partnerships, and drive revenue with business models.” 

MuleSoft is leading the way in data integration software, and empowering organizations to integrate their data at scale to create connected customer experiences. According to their 2022 Connectivity Benchmark Report, APIs are helping organizations deliver more value by:  

    Increasing productivity  
    Unlocking major revenue growth opportunities 
    Delivering better employee and customer experiences  

In addition, with MuleSoft’s Salesforce CDP Connector, users can integrate their data with Salesforce CDP endpoints, automate data ingestion from third parties, query the CDP Data Lake, and get the full 360-view of their customers within their CDP instance.  

At Horizontal, we believe that brands and companies are only as good as their worst customer experience. We partner with the world’s Fortune 500 companies in solving complex customer data challenges to drive business outcomes. Want to learn more about how to integrate your data to begin your digital transformation? Let’s talk.
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Creating a connected customer experience with APIs

Harnessing the power of customer data for CPG brands
Additionally with major CPG companies that have multiple brands and product lines, gathering customer data across the entire product portfolio suite can further advance loyalty to the enterprise (and not just single brand purchases). For instance, if a company has oral care products and a haircare line – these customer data points showcasing product adjacencies can be leveraged to bundle and/or complement marketing programs and digital experiences. This can inform enterprise strategies for individual brands to (under the house of brands architecture) support each other in cross-sell opportunities.
Which leads us to personalization. Customers expect their experiences with brands to be tailored. To not only meet their needs, but also anticipate them. If brands aren’t doing that, consumers have a tendency to quickly switch brands. 
On the flipside, if you can activate personalization in the right ways, a study by Deloitte found that “1 in 4 consumers are willing to pay more to receive a personalized product or service” and “in some categories, more than 50 percent of consumers expressed interest in purchasing customized products or services.” 
As the market conditions continue to evolve with the potential of COVID resurfacing in the fall, inflation causing prices to increase and the looming fear of a possible recession, CPG brands need to help customers navigate these waters by guiding them with the right recommendations and pathways to purchase. Connecting moments from digital to in-store to packaging to product usage. For instance, on a tactical level, if your data on a segment is driven by value (e.g., always needs a coupon/discount to buy), a “‘savings”’ message should be front and center in the marketing. Or if a customer segment is conditionally loyal to a brand that continually provides promotional offers, deliver digital coupons to this audience as “offers for you” with a coupon and/or manufacturer’s rebate.  
Pulling the thread all the way through, the final moment of conversion at-shelf are top of mind for CPG brands to tip the scales in their favor. Understanding there are parameters and limitations retailers have for merchandising, can CPG brands influence consumer decision moments with in-store digital touchpoints – like digital end-cap signage/POS, QR code links to digital coupons and/or promotional tie-in to the retailer app?. All of these bolster customer connectivity, while capturing key data points of engagement.  
This is a very interesting position for CPG brands. On the one hand, they have legacy relationships they rely on with retailers to distribute products on store shelves. But we know retailer customer data often is not shared directly with CPG brands. That said, one of the biggest opportunities we see for CPG brands is capitalizing on capturing as much zero- and first-party customer data as possible, not only to drive more personalized experiences within a specific brand, but also to find avenues for aggregating data across product lines within a house of brands model. This could aid in cross-sell and bundling promotions with adjacent recommendations  
 
If your channel marketing and promotional plan is solidified, you can then activate it with customer data and intelligence through powerful martech solutions like a customer data platform (CDP). Where the technology enables marketers to aggregate high volume of customer data points into a single repository, unifying individual customer profiles. From which brands can then create key segments for effective omni-channel orchestration. By melding experience, design, data and technology and having the right customer marketing strategy in place, paired with data activation through the experience, all will ensure your brand thrives no matter the market conditions. 

Utilizing CDP to populate any in-store/on-premise tools continues to tie the customer to a digital engagement. This can allow CPG’s to drive sales through real-time messaging in an app, a QR code or other experience meant to connect with the customer in a key moment in their customer pathway.  
By leveraging a data-driven approach, CPG brands can reach their key audiences with the right message and engagement, along their journey – no matter the channel.  
If you’re interested in learning more about how your organization can achieve a single view of 360-degree customer data to activate automated omni-channel experiences, - we’d love to talk about ways to help you realize your brand ambitions and achieve business outcomes together. Let’s connect.
McKinsey
Data-driven marketing at scale can deliver that growth—consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies can deliver 3 to 5 percent growth in net sales and improve marketing efficiency by 10 to 20 percent. 
Like all other businesses, the CPG sector felt a major impact with the pandemic in 2020. However, in this case, the onset of the coronavirus created a surge in demand for CPG products. In fact, during 2020, the industry saw more absolute growth than the four-year period (2016-2020) leading up to the quarantine.  

Now almost three years later, what is the outlook for CPG brands as some consumer behaviors go back to pre-pandemic habits? And what is the outlook as other behaviors (e.g., BOPIS) remain intact which were demonstrated as a part of COVID-19 safety measures and preventive exposure?

A recent article published by PwC outlined six areas of focus for CPG brands in 2022. Those included the following: 

    Reclaim strategic differentiation 
    Devise a technology-enabled ESG (environmental, social and governance) strategy to help create value for all stakeholders 
    Target direct consumer relationships using the abundance of available data 
    Rethink commercial operating models to help meet omni-channel consumer needs 
    Future-proof the supply chain 
    Pursue digital transformation for the next wave of cost reduction 

From our perspective, the two areas of focus from the article that really stand out, and where CPG companies can rise above their competitors, were the third and fourth areas of focus: customer data and omni-channel customer journeys.  
With privacy and security at the forefront of consumer trust, more and more brands need to rely on zero-party and first-party data.  

    Zero-party data points are inputs that proactively come directly from the customer. These could include preference center data, purchase intentions, personal context and profile/account information, along with how the individual may want the brand to recognize them.   
    First-party data refers to behavioral data captured (with opted-in permission) of users/customers as they engage with a brand’s various digital touchpoints – website tracking, transactions, etc.  

Zero- and first-party data is particularly crucial for CPG brands as a lot of rich customer intelligence resides within retail partner databases and sources. Obtaining this data in a secure way is critical in understanding customer needs; to activate relevant marketing and brand experiences that drive loyalty. With a full holistic view (e.g., Customer 360) of your audience, including past and real-time data points, brands can drive omni-channel personalization tactics at scale. The key is to find opportunities for customers to not only engage, but also align to their buying behaviors and purchase preferences.  For CPG brands that don’t have their own DTC model, what are ways to partner with retailers on things like continuing to support an at-home buyer, buy online pick-up in-store (BOPIS), buy-now pay later, flexible payment options, or changing brand affinity because of more variety in digital interactions?
Or what are considerations for direct mail or email communications and offers to seasonal messaging – all the way down to automated marketing based on customer behavioral patterns (e.g., it’s been three months since a customer purchased a toothbrush – and dentists recommend toothbrushes being replaced every 90 days)?
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Harnessing the power of customer data for CPG brands

Horizontal Digital awarded Sitecore Partner awards for a consecutive year
Horizontal Digital earns two 2022 Sitecore Partner Awards in the Partner Excellence and Customer Value/Impact categories.


“This year the 2022 Sitecore Partner Awards have a laser focus on recognizing partner performance and outcomes aligned to [their] mission of elevating leading brands through unforgettable digital connection with their customers based on [Sitecore’s] vision to disrupt the market with innovative solutions that turn consumers into fans” (Sitecore).
 
Putting consumers (people) at the center of everything we do at Horizontal is the ethos behind our Experience Forward sensibility. This sensibility is the grounding foundation and lens we apply to the work we do for our clients on their journey of digital transformation. A progressive evolution that continually aims to raise the bar of customer experiences that lead to successful business outcomes and the reason why we were awarded the Partner Excellence and Customer Value/Impact awards by Sitecore.  
 
The Partnering Excellence award recognizes partners who demonstrate overall superior commitment to in-depth knowledge (enablement, training, certification, and specialization) and commitment to selling with Sitecore.  
 
The Customer Value/Impact award recognizes partners who exceed in consistently delivering value to Sitecore customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle; ensuring the customer continues to draw value from Sitecore and that the customer has a positive experience with our products. This award is based on nominations by their customers. For Horizontal Digital, nominations came from our clients Worldwide express and Yas Island and are a testament to their trust and support of Horizontal’s partnership and in-depth knowledge of the Sitecore platform.  
 
As the partner with three Sitecore partner awards, we are set up as the best partner to deliver on our clients’ ambitions with Sitecore in building connected experiences for their customers and driving value for their business. 
 
Horizontal is an original Sitecore Platinum Partner with 12 recognized MVP’s, over 100 Sitecore implementations and 16 years of partnership. As stated by our Co-Founder & CEO, Sabin Ephrem, “This is a partnership that remains strong and successful and will be for years to come as we usher in a new era with the Sitecore composable stack of products that will keep our customers on the forefront of technology.” You can learn more about the award by visiting Sitecore's winner's page.
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Horizontal Digital awarded Sitecore Partner awards for a consecutive year

0-100: Realizing a composable DXP with Sitecore
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to adopting composable marketing technology (MarTech). It’s about first understanding the digital problem you need to solve, then choosing the right tools and timing.
In her most recent insights piece, Horizontal Sr. Director Anne Norman referenced three categories into which most Horizontal clients fit in terms of their marketing technology strategy:  
 
1. Monolithic Invested



    Currently driving value/ROI 


    Existing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) MarTech footprint 

 
2. Composable Curious



    Interested in maturing the end-to-end customer experience (CX) 


    MarTech includes both PaaS and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions 
    

3. Composable Ready



    Truly integrated CX across end-to-end journey 


    SaaS leverages the full capabilities of the cloud, beyond storage and hosting, including elastic scaling of highly available resources.

Today we’re focused on how you plan your path to your composable future. TL; DR: You do you. There is no one road to composable – it’s about first understanding the digital problem(s) you need to solve, and then choosing the right tools and right timing for your solution(s).  
Defining the digital problem – some MarTech history 

Marketers shouldn’t have to care about technology as much as they do, but here we are. Let’s go back in time to better understand the choices digital leaders have today:   

In the late 90s, new digital technology emerged on the scene called content management system or CMS. For the first time, marketers had technology to structure their content and present it in a web context.  

Over time, CMS providers evolved to deliver something called DXP (digital experience platform). Why? Because the web was no longer just about corporate brochure sites. You needed email. And campaign landing pages. And A/B testing. And personalization. And while tools were available to create and manage all of those experiences, getting them to connect with one another was really, really hard, time consuming and expensive. DXP came along to put all of those capabilities into a single, monolithic solution so you could buy one piece of software to do everything. (In theory, at least.)  

Fast forward to today: technology is finally getting out of the way of the business. Software is lightweight and much easier to integrate than back in the day, so it’s no longer necessary to have a single monolith powering all your digital capabilities. That’s composable, and that’s where we are now. 
Defining the digital problem – the business POV
You lead or support a digital business. How are you supposed to understand and keep up with these technology changes? Start with “why.” Focus first on the digital outcome you need to deliver, which will lead you to your technology solution.  

Example 1: You work for a consumer products company that sells via retailers/etailers like Amazon and Target. But since the pandemic started, you, like other consumer goods companies, are considering options to sell directly to your target audiences. In other words, you’re looking at your first foray into direct ecommerce and need a way to manage transactions in addition to getting the right product in front of the right consumer at the right time.  

Example 2: You are a B2B services company with an extensive portfolio of businesses serving a wide variety of verticals. Your catalog of capabilities is broad and deep, and your website is a critical touchpoint for sharing those capabilities and generating leads. In other words, you’re a content-intensive business needing streamlined operations and personalized journeys.  

Two simple examples, two significantly different digital problems. This is what composable technology like Sitecore’s is about. In example 1, it’s enabling commerce capabilities with a product like Sitecore’s OrderCloud®. Onboarding ecommerce is not a small undertaking, and may require substantial focus from your team. (More on that below.) Once you’ve begun to master direct commerce, it will be time to look at personalized product discovery and recommendations, something Sitecore’s Discover solution does extremely well.  

In example 2, the near-term focus is on streamlining content operations to ensure you’re bringing relevant, compelling stories to your addressable markets. So Sitecore’s Content Hub Digital Asset Management (DAM), Content Marketing Platform (CMP) and/or Marketing Resource Management (MRM) capabilities could be silver bullets. With your content operations tightened up, you could look at Sitecore Personalize and/or Customer Data Platform (CDP) to deliver those 1:1 experiences that cement your value proposition.  

In short: the difference between then and now is that you have the flexibility to pick and choose the technologies that best solve the problem in front of you; once you’ve done that, you can move on to the next problem. And you can do that at whatever pace your organization can absorb. So here’s how to get started:  
Solving the digital problem: a process outline
1. Start with why: What is the outcome you need to deliver? Are you trying to increase digital revenue? Drive down digital cost? Accelerate path to acquisition? Introduce direct commerce capability? If you need to solve more than one of those problems, start thinking about them in priority order in terms of (a) where you’ll drive the most business value in the near term and (b) what you think the business is best prepared to take on in the near term. Can you take on more than one of these challenges at once? Maybe. But at Horizontal we’ve found that the fastest path to maturation is knocking them down one at a time (usually but not always).

2. Now think of your current technology and data capabilities in terms of solving that problem. Do you have a commerce engine that you haven’t turned on or don’t know how to use? Does your current DXP come with personalization capabilities that you’ve never implemented? Or do you need all-new tech to drive your outcome? If you have tech in-house already and just haven’t used it, you might want to first think about why that hasn’t happened yet. You might uncover other challenges: maybe you don’t have the right skill sets, or executive buy-in is lacking.  
3. Assess your organization’s readiness. Onboarding D2C ecommerce, for example, is essentially starting a new business and requires far more planning than just enabling some tech. Adding personalization to your digital user experiences is something you can walk up to in a series of stages, testing and learning along the way.  

4. Now you need to align your stakeholders across business, technology and other influential groups, which could include legal/compliance, infosec and/or sourcing/procurement. Are you aligned on the business case and associated KPIs? Have ROI metrics been established to support the investment? Is everyone in agreement on the stages involved in onboarding the new capability? Do you have a plan for organizing your team around the new capability? 

5. Now you can develop your scoring criteria, which are essentially the requirements the technology must fulfill in order to address the problem you’ve defined. We strongly encourage you to consider a partner like Horizontal to lead a thorough and unbiased scoring, evaluation and selection process that takes into account the needs of business, technology and compliance stakeholders.   

6. With technology selected and procured, we often recommend that your implementation approach account for that test-and-learn approach mentioned above: consider targeting a subset of your audiences or use cases, rather than trying to do everything at once. A classic and common example: we ask clients why they haven’t taken steps to personalize their digital experiences, and we often hear that they’re waiting for their data to be completely cleaned, or all of their touchpoints to be completely redesigned. In other words, they’re waiting for perfection, which is the enemy of good. Just. Get. Started. Somewhere. Starting with simpler, less comprehensive use cases gives you the flexibility to deliver value in increments, which supports the business case for ongoing investment in innovation.  

Finally, and most importantly: don’t lose sight of the people factor. Digital transformation without proper change management will fail. Onboarding new capabilities as you mature often necessitates training, upskilling and in some cases even reorganizing your team. Horizontal’s experience-forward approach to digital isn’t just about your audiences of end users, it’s about the people doing the work too.  

Want to learn more? Check out our whitepaper, “Orchestrating your path to composable."
 
 
Knowing your problem will accelerate your solution
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0-100: Realizing a composable DXP with Sitecore

Meet Sheetal Jain
Our VP of Technology, Sheetal Jain, leads our team of Sitecore practitioners and holistic technology practice. His passion for technology helps him continuously evolve and deliver connected experiences for our customers, while transforming their digital presence through customer experience management solutions and customer engagement solutions. 
It is this expertise that has helped our customer, Plan International Canada evolve their Martech stack with Sitecore DXP to enable a better customer experience.  

We had a chance to sit down with Sheetal and learn more about his upcoming Q&A with Plan International Canada on their journey to composable Sitecore DXP and what you can expect during his session. 
Q: How do you define connected experiences? How does this approach influence your work?
Connected experiences are those that enable consistent, relevant, and contextual messaging to customers and they make the customer feel like that brand is speaking to them on a one-to-one basis. This approach helps us to design, imagine, and architect solutions that put customers at the center of everything we do.
Q: When it comes to customer experiences, what advantages do you provide clients with?
We provide the ability to service clients end-to-end (Strategy, UX, CX, Development, QA, and Managed Services), which gives us an edge in delivering connected experiences across both experience platforms, like Sitecore, and engagement platforms, such as Salesforce. We call this achieving ‘customer 360’ for brands.
Q: What do you want the main takeaway of your session to be?
A lot of organizations are embarking on a composable journey, but with the vast nature of the digital ecosystem, it is a complicated endeavor to solve for composable architecture. This session helps organizations to understand the nuances of embarking on a composable journey. We will learn how Plan International Canada planned and executed their first phase of their composable journey.
Q: Can you give us a glimpse of your journey in the Sitecore ecosystem?
With over 15 years of experience in Technology and Digital Transformation consulting services and client-side experiences in diverse set of industries ranging from Healthcare to Retail to Financial Services, I’m a 10X Sitecore MVP currently heading up the global Sitecore technology team for Horizontal Digital while managing a portfolio of over $40Million in revenue. My passion for technology helps me continuously evolve and deliver connected experiences for our customers, while transforming their digital presence through customer experience management solutions and customer engagement solutions.
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Meet Sheetal Jain

Google Analytics 4: Why it's important and what you need to know
Google recently announced  that Google Analytics 4 (GA 4) will formally replace the long-standing Universal Google Analytics (UA). It also announced that Universal Analytics properties will no longer collect any data starting on July 1st, 2023. GA 4, which was formerly known as “App + Web”, has been around for a little while now — but many Google Analytics users had been still relying on UA for its analysis and reporting.  
 
These announcements signal the time to focus on migrating to GA 4, and for the first time ever with Google Analytics, to continue collecting data for your site!
What is Google Analytics 4?
GA 4 was originally introduced to the world as “Google Analytics App + Web” with the intent of unifying and combining data from your native app and your website. It was the first attempt at using consistent metrics and dimensions for your website and any apps your organization had. Previously, these were seen as completely different platforms and even had different metrics (like “screen views”). Eventually, Google announced that “App + Web” was being redeveloped into Google Analytics 4 and started adding additional features. One of the key reasons for the move to GA 4 is the unification of website and app data. Some other reasons per Google include: 
 

    Privacy-focused and durable for the future
     Intelligent, using machine learning to unearth insights about the customer journey across platforms and devices
    Enhanced, seamless integrations with Google's advertising platforms to optimize campaign performance and drive greater marketing ROI

The focus on privacy and the future here are key. GA 4 is better prepared for a future that doesn’t rely on cookies and is more secure and private for the user. GA 4 is entirely based on events — a pageview or session start are events, for example. GA 4 is also focused on capturing custom events much easier and many common events are collected by default, such as page scroll and link clicks. 
Some common complaints about Universal Analytics will also be improved with GA 4. Data sampling will not be an issue in standard reports when using a secondary dimension, which happened often in Universal Analytics. Another common complaint was around cross-domain tracking. Previously, this had to be completed at the code level or in Google Tag Manager. In GA 4, cross-domain tracking has been simplified — now you can simply configure your domain settings in the Admin Settings and not have to alter the code for this setup. 
Metrics you might be used to in UA might also be slightly different in collection or in title. For example, you will not be able to compare the metric of “page views” between UA and GA 4 as the way that metric is collected is completely different. Some metrics will have changed dramatically or might disappear as standard metrics. One example of this is “bounce rate”. Things might change, but, as of right now, “bounce rate” is not a standard metric in GA 4. There are also new metrics, like “user_engagement”, which is a time and focus based metric. 
Which version do I have now?
In case you aren’t sure what version of Google Analytics you currently have on your site, Google provides a quick and easy way for you to check.
What should I do now?
First, it’s okay to be overwhelmed by this change and to ask for help. There will be a sizable amount of work in making this migration to GA 4 for most existing Google Analytics implementations. If you haven’t already, the first and most important step is to create a GA 4 property to start collecting data. For now, this property will collect data in parallel with your current UA property. To create that new GA 4 property, you can use Google’s “GA 4 Setup Assistant Wizard”. It will guide you through the process. This will not influence any current UA Properties you have collecting data right now. If you need more information or help, Google’s documentation on this topic might also be useful.
Migration and Measurement Strategy

One of the key efforts that will have to happen for migrating from UA to GA 4 will be translating your current custom events into a GA 4 schema. This will also provide a good opportunity for you to consider re-evaluating your website measurement strategy as you complete this process. Do you have a documented measurement strategy for your side that aligns the business objectives of your organization to the various goals, KPIs and tactics of your site? If not, this is the best possible time to go through that process.
Once you feel confident with your measurement strategy, it’s time to start migrating events. For events you want to migrate to GA 4, you’ll want to evaluate how it fits into the new GA 4 schema of:
Enhanced measurement event

    Some example events are page scrolls, page views, link clicks, file downloads and video engagement.


Automatically collected event

    Some example events are error collection, session start, user engagement and notification send. Some enhanced measurement events are also automatically collected events.

Recommended event

    Some example events are login, purchase, refund and sign up.

Custom event

    Any event that is not in any of the above groups will be a custom event, similar to all events created before GA 4.

Training and communication
This is going to be a big transition for everyone. What made up the structure of UA and past versions of Google Analytics have been in place for well over a decade. Users of Google Analytics are used to the interface, metrics and reporting of UA.
One part of this migration that simply cannot be overlooked is the training and education for you and anyone who is using Google Analytics on a regular basis. It would be wise to name a subject matter expert on your marketing or analytics team or to utilize a consultant or agency to help with the migration and the education and training. Also, GA 4 is going to change a lot over the next few months and years. New features will be added, some things will change, and some things might even be removed. It will be important for your expert or partner to stay on top of the constantly moving landscape. 
As an experience-forward consultancy, we understand the importance of having the right data that leads to actionable insights that drive results. Things are moving fast with Google Analytics 4 and by the time you read this, there may have been more changes. Let us know how we can leverage our data and analytics expertise to help as you embark on your new journey with GA 4.
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Google Analytics 4: Why it's important and what you need to know

 PaaS vs SaaS – How your cloud strategy can play a role in delivering CX
The economic realities 

While delivering meaningful customer experiences is critical in the decision-making process, the cost of doing business is also a key decision factor. Some things to keep in mind include how your organization will provide ongoing support and optimization, the speed to market to drive maximum ROI and how your experience will competitively differentiate.
It’s also important to consider the operational realities of the employee experience can be just as important as the customer experience and they are often overlooked. As you evaluate cloud service models, it will be important to identify areas where even modest technology restructuring can improve efficiency and the customer experience.  

PaaS Considerations
Pros

    Can be highly scalable and easily support multi-tenant
    Offers the ability for maximum customization 

Cons

    More costly to maintain over time
    Requires in-house technical resources or vendor reliance  



SaaS Considerations 
Pros

    Offers ease of set up and ongoing maintenance
    Includes best-of-breed functionality and responsiveness for packaged business capability
    On-going support in updates is owned by the software provider  


Cons

    May lack end-to-end seamlessness across the full customer journey
    Tends to lack overall control which reduces competitive digital differentiation 

Ultimately, it’s important to choose a cloud service model depending on your business requirements and the number of tasks you want to perform yourself or delegate to a separate partner or service provider.  

Embracing a composable future
Depending on the business capability, most organizations have several business platforms that make up their full MarTech stack. So, why not have a mix of both? While your approach may vary, you aren’t “stuck” choosing one model over the other as brands and organizations ‘pick-and-choose’ different technology platforms to support the specialized capabilities needed to support the experience and business needs.  

In the early days of CMS, content management – combined with web experience management – was the standard, giving the power to marketers to create and manage content across experiences as well as providing advance marketing features like personalization and analytics.  

In the past 10+ years, Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) have emerged as an integral part of a MarTech stack and provide a fully integrated set of core functionality to support the composition, management, delivery and optimization of contextualized digital experiences. Today, DXPs are available in two ways: Monolithic and Composable.  

A monolithic, or traditional, DXP provides all digital marketing capabilities in a single architecture – with the main benefit, and why many brands choose this solution, is simplicity. A monolithic DXP is an enterprise system that reduces the need for internal users and administrators to switch from system to system to manage an end-to-end digital experience. 

A composable solution allows you to build your own DXP by integrating multiple capabilities from different platforms. This means that you can choose the solutions that are best for you and your brand, enabling your organization to build a ‘best-in-breed’ approach to your tech stack – one that is tailored to the nuances of the business while meeting the needs of your customer experience. 

Plus, choosing a composable solution also means that you don’t have to go “all-in” from the onset. If existing components of your marketing stack are working well for you and fit within your strategy, then keep them! You only have to implement what you need to fill the gaps.  

To help determine the progression of a DXP for your organization, the following outlines three categories that cover the situation for most brands: 
1. Monolithic Invested

    Currently driving value/ROI
    Existing Paas MarTech footprint

2. Composable Curious

    Interested in maturing the end-to-end CX
    MarTech includes both PaaS and SaaS solutions

3. Composable Ready

    Truly integrated CX across end-to-end journey
    SaaS leverages the full capabilities of the cloud, beyond storage and hosting, including elastic scaling of highly available resources.

Your plans for ongoing optimization and support matter – including how capabilities may be provided by multiple solutions to make up your MarTech stack. The possibility to use a variety of tools from your preferred vendors allows for considerable flexibility while helping you reach and adapt faster to change.  

Once you have modernized your applications for better business value, it's time to look at gaining efficiencies to help reduce the dependency on technology and IT teams in maintaining these marketing platforms. This can be addressed by the adoption of SaaS solutions into your marchitecture that allow you to integrate with your existing business applications.  

Switching to managed solutions provides not only hosting but also monitoring, alerting and corrective actions that are carried out by an outside partner. The idea is not replacing your IT with an external partner, but to optimize the IT focus on delivering business value that your organization creates rather than on maintaining servers and applications. 
Final thoughts on CX technology
Hopefully, you’re seeing parallels for your organization in terms of how you’re thinking about evolving, maturing and/or even modernizing your Martech stack. You might also notice some alignment with ways to progress your organization’s hosting model and DXP maturation.  

The good news is that there’s no right or wrong answer – only what’s right for you and your organization. With the right approach, the right team and a great consulting partner, the journey your organization takes can:

    Meet the demands of your customers and business today
    Lay the foundation for future maturity and evolution of your DXP
    Fiscally plan budgets that align to current CapEx parameters while considering long-term growth and scale investments

Regardless of where your starting line is, your process must begin with the intersection of your company’s objectives and customer needs. From there, it’s about determining the business capabilities you need to achieve them.
McKinsey
Additionally, SaaS-based technology solutions are on the path to becoming the default software-delivery model with an increase from 6% of enterprise software revenues in 2010 to 29% in 2018. Given that the recent growth of remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic an, the shift to SaaS models is only continuing to accelerate. 
As a marketer, delivering the smart, connected experiences your customers want requires anticipating their needs in real time. These connected experiences ensure that an end-to-end journey is cohesive and seamless — so that each interaction builds upon the last, informed by customer data and intelligence, from behavior and intent.
 
While the vision for this level of engagement may be in-place, the reality is that a connected Martech stack is needed to provide the functionality to develop and activate these types of experiences. Two key considerations for scaling an organization’s marchitecture are a DXP (Digital Experience Platform) and the approach to connecting older legacy systems to newer platforms and ongoing maintenance.
 
As part of conversations with potential clients that are involved with or considering a technology transition, it’s not uncommon to hear comments like:
 

    We need to improve the digital experience for my customers, but I know the technologies and systems in place are not allowing me to do that.
    Will our platforms grow with us and support the experiences we're trying to create?
    As we look to embrace a composable future, will our marchitecture support a seamless customer experience?

 While technologies alone will not drive world-class relationships with your customers, having a better understanding of where your organization is at with its technology enablement can help provide a roadmap to a strong Martech starting point – upon which your organization can deliver more connected customer experiences.  

The foundational cloud model of your Martech platforms may seem like an unlikely place for marketers to begin mapping their CX, but it's a key piece to set the stage for building end-to-end connected experiences. Making the selection between a PaaS (Platform as a Service) or SaaS (Software as a Service) solution not only impacts capability, but also determines how seamless the integration may be between platforms and the value it drives for your business long-term.

PaaS 
PaaS is a cloud computing model that provides customers a complete cloud platform—hardware, software, and infrastructure—for developing, running, and managing applications without the cost, complexity, and inflexibility that often comes with building and maintaining that platform on-premises.

    IBM
    

SaaS
SaaS is a way of delivering applications over the Internet—as a service. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simplyaccess it via the Internet, freeing yourself from complex software and hardware management. 

    Salesforce

Start with the end in mind

At Horizontal, we embrace an experience-forward philosophy that puts users and their needs at the center of how we design and build digital experiences. When evaluating potential directions to start building or evolving your marchitecture, it's critical to identify technology platforms that align back-of-house operations and how your business will properly support the experiences your customers engage with regularly. Marketers, CX leaders, digital professionals, and everyone involved with ensuring successful business outcomes for their organization have a slew of technology options to choose from. 

As you and your IT team work to identify a roadmap to attain the ideal approach to modernizing your organization’s technology, it’s important to consider composable solutions that allow the ability to ‘pick-and-choose’ different technology platforms for specialized capabilities as there's no one-size-fits-all approach. Listed below are some key factors to keep in mind that can help guide the decision-making process when selecting the right cloud foundation optimize your CX capability. 

Customization versus configuration

Central to figuring out which technology path is best for your business is understanding how unique and proprietary your experience will need to be to engage your customers and support the business. 

If you’re creating an experience that’s highly unique or creating a digital product that will essentially be the basis of your business, then a PaaS solution may be the best fit. As a highly scalable, cloud-based solution with the capability to support the development, testing and hosting in the same environment, PaaS solutions are ideal for providing the ability to fully customize your digital experience to fit your unique business needs.  

If your organization is looking for standard business capabilities that platform providers have widely available (CRM functionality for example), then a SaaS solution may be the best fit. With no need to download, install or upgrade software, SaaS solutions offer out-of-the-box business capability that you can configure to your business needs. Also, since SaaS solutions are scalable and customizable, these solutions often provide the quickest way to get your experience to market.
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 PaaS vs SaaS – How your cloud strategy can play a role in delivering CX

Elevating Empathy to Support Your Customers 
With consumer sentiment dropping, this typically leads to more conservative consumer spending. Naturally, consumers are adapting behaviors to accommodate rising prices of inflation by eating more at home, switching to products that are more cost-friendly and shopping at retailers that they perceive are doing better at managing prices.  

So how do brands support consumers as they change their spending habits?  

“People tend to have a rational response to gains but an emotional response to loss,” said Michael Finke, a professor of wealth management at The American College of Financial Services. (Forbes) 

What’s interesting about the human psyche based on Michael Finke’s point, is that while consumers will be fickle in daily spending like groceries and gas, they’ll still be willing to shell out for bigger ticket items – such as appliances or TVs that aren’t replaced as frequently - before the cost of those products increases. 

And as a result of this mindset shift, brands may once again find themselves needing to expand to meet consumer needs. It’s no secret that the pandemic materially altered how brands operate and do business – with many brands quickly amplifying and enhancing their digital experiences. This nearly overnight overhaul included everything from ensuring ecommerce seamlessly fulfilled customer demands as brick-and-mortar closed their doors to BOPIS (Buy-Online-Pickup-In-Store) opportunities to increasing delivery service logistics all powered through an app. But now the question is will these previous changes be enough or will brands once again be faced with trying to keep up with new customer behaviors.  

We’re not the only ones thinking about this. Salesforce’s State of Marketing 7th Edition polled industry professionals to understand the priorities and challenges they face: 
As you can see, innovation and real-time customer engagement made the top-five in both categories. And one interesting challenge that was a carry-over from the year prior is creating a cohesive customer journey across channels and devices.  

Which is why we place so much emphasis on helping our clients realize truly connected experiences. 

We know that competitors are just a “click away” for our clients who are in a mature, saturated landscape. Which means customer loyalty can erode if those customers find it difficult to engage with a brand at any point in their journey. So when customers traverse through the conversion funnel, it’s imperative their journey is seamless across touchpoints, channels, departments and devices. 

In order to do this, brands need to tie everything together. Starting with stitching individual customer data at each moment along the conversion continuum. Eliminating data siloes. Where each interaction is informed by the previous point of engagement. It’s also imperative to integrate the technology stack systems in a way that enable teams to collaborate in creating a frictionless customer journey, while having data flow unobstructed between platforms. All to anticipate customer needs, while proactively surpassing their expectations.  

That’s where the art of empathy comes into play. Brands that have illustrated their ability to adapt with the new demands of customers will continue to thrive with meaningful customer connections. And knowing that consumers will likely be more discerning with how they spend, brands will need to place a higher-level of empathy on supporting their customers through this period of economic instability.  

Let’s take a closer look at how brands can activate this level of empathetic intel. 

Unified Customer Data: Shining a Light on Where Consumers Place the Importance of Their Dollar 

If your organization has a means to aggregate and unify customer data, you’re well on your way to understanding how your customers may be shifting their behaviors.  

    Identify patterns of past interactions and purchases. If you see shifts beginning, leverage personalization to surface cost-friendly options commensurate with new buying patterns. 

Analytics: Capitalize on Channel and Touchpoint Analytics to Optimize Content and Search 

Arguably, consumers may be doing more due diligence up front to research what products and/or services are being offered at the best price.  

    Utilize analytics to understand where your customers are searching and discovering product pricing. If search engines are surfacing competitive offerings above yours, it’s critical to employ an SEM investment to combat it, while you boost your organic search to regain the top spot on SERPs. 
    Content may be another key aspect of the digital marketing strategy to examine. If consumers are shifting what’s driving them – leverage analytics to find ways to meet them with the content that conveys affordability AND quality which all ladders up to perceived value. 

Journeys: Refactor Pathways to Conversion that Entice Loyalty 

Now is not the time to cut back on incentivizing your most valuable customers. The general rule of thumb is that the top 20 percent of your customers account for about 80 percent of your company revenue. Given the potential volatility of the market, customers tend to look elsewhere if it saves them money in the short-term. But the long-term is where brands survive and thrive in times like these. 

    By knowing your customers and whether they’re in your top 20 percent base, you can now focus on ways to encourage driving them towards programs that keep them loyal. For instance, if your brand has an app that automatically identifies and applies discounts to products as they shop, create journeys that encourage downloads and usage (e.g. Target Circle). 
    This not only rewards customers, but it also has a beneficially cyclical effect where you continue to capture rich data on customers to improve the experience and content for them.  

First-Party Data: Proactively Own Customer Intelligence 

Privacy regulations are changing the way brands collect customer intel in the new ‘‘cookieless world.’’  

    Because first-party data is intel your customers have explicitly given you (with permission), every data point they provide is like casting a vote in favor of your brand to continually improve on the 1:1 personalized experience you create for them. 
    This is key for building a 360-degree view. Profile information and explicitly identified preferences combined with implicit behavioral data allows you to get a full understanding of who they are and what they need from your brand (especially now in a time where consumers are looking for help in their buying decisions).  


Customers are more than just your company’s basis of revenue. They’re people – like friends in your inner circle or members of your family. They’re human. And they deserve to be treated with experiences and moments that elevate empathy. By putting people at the center of everything you do, you’ll craft and create connected experiences that support them in the right ways, while driving greater lifetime value.  

Learn more about Horizontal’s approach to connected experiences. Drop us a line.
Reuters
U.S. consumer sentiment fell more than expected in early March as gasoline prices surged to a record high in the aftermath of Russia's war against Ukraine, boosting one-year inflation expectations to the highest level since 1981. Support will also be coming from plentiful jobs and abundant available cash and credit for many. The volatility of income expectations may suggest consumers are struggling to understand how labor market tightness and inflation will impact their budgets. 
Elevating empathy is a core value here at Horizontal Digital – a value that empowers us to put ourselves in our customers’ shoes and build experiences based on where they’re at. So as we’re coming out of a pandemic, now deeply entrenched in the conflict in Ukraine, along with rising inflation and gas prices, market analysts are somewhat split on if the economy is on the verge of a recession. Which begs the question…how are consumers reacting to these uncertain times? 

A recent article from Rueters (March, 2022) published a study from the University of Michigan indicating that the consumer sentiment index had fallen to 59.7 (the lowest reading since 2011). 
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