Tibco Engage seeks to go beyond mere customer loyalty programs
Add Tibco to the list of vendors pushing a full stack of so-called "customer engagement" software, which companies use to track and analyze consumer behavior in hopes of building deeper relationships with them and ultimately, selling more products and services.
Tibco Engage, announced Monday, is a SaaS (software as a service) package that builds on the vendor's Loyalty Lab product for customer loyalty programs. Also in the mix is Tibco's event-processing technology, capabilities for social networking and communities, and connections to third-party sales and marketing systems.
But Engage is far from a "Frankenstein" put together a la carte from Tibco's product list, said Leandro Perez, director of product marketing for customer engagement and social. Much work has been done to present marketers with a simple, unified interface that shields them from the plumbing at work behind the scenes, he said.
Customer engagement isn't just about sending repeat customers coupons or special offers, as is seen with typical loyalty programs, Perez said. The goal is to gain a much better understanding of what a given company or brand's customers want, and getting it to them.
For example, customers may visit a company's e-commerce store, shop around, but then eventually abandon their shopping carts without making a purchase. Later that week, they may walk past a physical store and cross a geo-fence that recognizes their mobile device, thanks to a mobile app from the company they installed, kicking off a process that sends them a special promotional offer about the item they browsed online.
In order to perform this type of function at scale, rather than individually for each shopper, Engage provides a rules framework with which marketers can create what Tibco calls "engagement flows."
Oracle, Salesforce.com, IBM, Adobe and others are also working to build out customer engagement stacks, with slightly varying approaches.
Tibco is betting it can have an edge by offering customers tighter integration between Engage's parts, while keeping the platform open to plug into related third-party software for marketing automation, CRM (customer relationship management) and other areas.
The SaaS deployment model is another selling point, Perez said. "We're trying to make this as simple as possible. Marketing departments don't really have an appetite for year-long rollouts."
Engage is priced according to the number of customer profiles a company wants to be able to handle, rather than by the seat, given that some companies may have millions of customers in their database while smaller ones have comparatively few, Perez said.
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com
In the third and final episode of our 3-part CMO50 video series exploring modern marketing and why it’s become a matter of trust, we’re delighted to be joined by Telstra’s former CMO and now digital services and sales executive, Jeremy Nicholas, and Adobe VP Marketing Asia-Pacific and Japan, Duncan Egan.
Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.
Why is it there is no shortage of leadership development materials, yet outstanding leadership is so rare? Despite having access to so many leadership principles, tools, systems and processes, why is it so hard to develop and improve as a leader?
As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.
