Thunderhead ONE Answers Questions

The problem:

If you've been involved in marketing or selling software in the digital marketing / customer engagement / customer journey / {insert your buzzword here} market, you know one thing:  IT'S CROWDED.  If you've been tasked with evaluating these tools and platforms, you know another thing:  IT'S CONFUSING.  Why does everyone say the same thing?  Where does one platform begin and the next one end?  How many of these different things do I need and how in the world are they going to stitch together?

After all, you've been tasked with gaining insight, improving your customers' experience and engagement with your brand.  You didn't know you signed up for this.

The solution:

I wish I could write one article to clear it up for you.  I won't fully, but I'll start.  My goal here is to describe very simply why Thunderhead ONE is something different, something that is going to change your career, something that will allow you to skip writing that 17th RFP questionnaire, something that will start to answer your questions.

The "3" things:

So that we can leverage the power of 3, here's a way of thinking about what Thunderhead ONE helps you accomplish:

1. Listen across all your systems (really! non-invasively) so that you can start to understand your customer journey, appreciating all the places you and your customers interact.
2. As you're listening, watch as your customers assemble into Audiences based on a combination of things you might know about them (CRM, attributes you already store), and journey-context behavioral flows.
3. Have the Next Best Conversation with that customer wherever and whenever it happens, with the authority that you've listened to and reacted to your customer's needs.  You've earned the right to cater the next message or offer.

OK, so why is that different?

I wanted this article to tee things up...now, in follow-up articles we can tackle very specific questions about your customer journey and see how Thunderhead ONE can answer them.  To start to consider why ONE is different, and as you evaluate the barrage of messaging coming at you, I'll leave you with some bullet points to consider:

• Your overall digital strategy will not be covered by one platform.  Don't lock yourself in to something that promises it's best of breed at everything.  The landscape is too rich, the channels too broad, the future too uncertain.
• Find platforms and groups that represent them who talk about future flexibility, about the ability to be nimble, to react.  We all know we don't know what's next.
• Relax about the mess of systems you have in place!  Embrace it!  There's a reason for it...you have lots of different groups in house with different needs and skill sets.  There's inertia.  Beware the vendor who tells you it's all going to be different with this one last (massive) change.
• Find platforms and groups that represent them who talk about the fact that insights are all around.  You need something flexible and non-invasive to collect lots of small insights that lead to greater understanding.