Pragmatic Agility (for Marketers)
Agility is not only for developers but also for winning marketers too
As you’ll know (probably from experience!) if a project takes too long to complete what you need has changed before you’ve even finished! Understanding how to be agile helps you put new ideas in place quickly and maximize your results.
Agile is not just for software developers.
It is a mindset that you can, and should, apply to marketing activation too. It comes down to Start Small, Think Big: Take a complex problem, break it down into small pieces and try to deliver as fast as you can. Once you deliver, learn and adapt quickly to maximize your success (and minimize any negatives)
Starting small means low upfront costs and effort for new initiatives. You can also save money and time over the longer term as you’ll invest in what you know you need to activate your customers and what you will use, rather than features you might not get around to exploring.
It’s very important to be able to truly deliver quickly with the support of your team, your leadership, and your technology partner. Success comes from responding to change and iterating rather than sticking to a hard-and-fast plan. Agility is a way to keep innovating – maintaining or building an advantage over your competitors because you learn faster.
Why be pragmatic about agile?
Pragmatic agile means starting with a proof of concept that will define a strategy (or tactic) and define a business case with minimum setup. You can test out your ideas, clear the blockers, learn from what is working and what isn’t. By having a ‘testing and doing’ mindset you also collect learnings based on results, which allow you to prove that what you do has impact.
Don’t confuse being pragmatic with taking shortcuts though. Keep the goal of minimizing waste and creating value. “When faced with two or more alternatives that deliver roughly the same value, take the path that makes future change easier” - Dave Thomas, Pragmatic Programmers.
In the past it may have been easier to predict your future needs and write that long RFP document (though from experience that was never really the case!). Today there is less certainty than ever about the future. What’s required now is a set of tools and approaches that offer you the chance to adapt and grow, over time, when you need.
Checklist for a successful Marketing Activation Project
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What are the ingredients to apply and succeed with Pragmatic Agility?
Creativity.
Don’t be scared off by this point. You don’t need to be super creative. You just need to be looking and listening for what’s out there and what it possible. Whether you are scientific or artistic, creativity is at the heart of discovering something new. The aim doesn’t need to be reinventing the wheel, just making it better.
“Successful people understand that you don’t need to make things complicated” Anne McKewitt.
Clear Vision.
Vital to success is keeping your overall goal or vision very clear in everyone’s mind. The more everyone understands what you are trying to achieve the easier it is to make good decisions. Solve small pieces but keep that big picture in your sights and work toward achieving your KPIs.
Senior (enough) Buy-in.
Given the option of one large-scale project delivered in 12 months (or perhaps longer), or regularly having new wins to show the C-Suite, most Senior Managers will go for the latter. Making sure you communicate your frequent successes and learnings will get you the buy-in you need to do more things in an agile way. Define your big ambitious goals clearly with your senior management and what you are going to share/show every 2 or 3 weeks.
System to connect new tools as you identify the need for them.
Within nearly every organization two things about time and resources are true: they are shared, and they are limited. Integrating new Best-of-Breed tools, activating data sources and expanding marketing channels as you grow rather than in one mammoth implementation can create efficiency and help you to get further faster.
Feedback is the breakfast of Activation Champions.
Marketers need to be learning machines and embrace feedback from all sources: customers, internal, data/figures. Making sure you have ways to encourage and source feedback is crucial for Agile to work in your organization.
EXAMPLES OF AGILE IN ACTION
DON'T CALL ME JENNYFER
Selecting best-of-breed tools to fit their emerging needs has supported D.C.M.J's successful digital transformation and allowed them to seize their best opportunities quickly.
DON'T CALL ME JENNYFER
WEBEDIA
Agility helps Webedia to differentiate gradually in line with the current business needs and they’ve been able to double their revenue.
WEBEDIA
BELGIAN RED CROSS
When the Belgian Red Cross lost the ability to fundraise in person they had to think quickly and put new donation streams in place fast, or risk not having the resources they need to support 1000s of people every day.
BELGIAN RED CROSS
How does Actito make Agility reality for you?
Five of the ways Actito makes agility a reality for its users:
Get value fast
with a quick implementation that’ll deliver your first success in 4 weeks.
Model your data the way your business needs
it with the flexibility of our Data Studio. Adding datapoints when they become opportunities and activating your data across audiences and multi-channel campaigns.
A/B testing for marketing automation
and marketing campaigns allows you to quickly iterate and identify impact.
Speed of our product development
– with 4 major, client-driven releases a year to make sure it keeps fitting marketers growing needs.
Get true collaboration
from our Customer Success Managers who are trusted by our clients to support them in delivering a pace. It’s very important to have the support of your whole team to truly deliver quickly – your immediate team, your leadership and your technology partner.
Bonus:
Leverage Best of Breed partners across your tech stack with our Open Integration Framework. It enables you to connect more, easier and quicker.
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