One of the most impactful areas of change for the digital business is in the area of marketing. It is a real catalyst and accounts for a majority of digital initiatives.

Connected to marketing is customer service, call centers, and all customer facing processes including CRM activities on the sales side.

The digital customer journey is a huge issue. Just consider the data and the data driven marketing. Then there is social CRM. What about the contact center? Is it connected in real time to marketing initiatives?

Layer into all of this the customer experience and you might be looking at a tornado.

• The digital marketing change imperative is driven by changing customer behavior and expectations before anything else.
• With the end of the sales funnel and ongoing fragmentation in an increasingly digital customer reality whereby control has shifted in mind, marketing has no choice than to change.
• It must work closer together with other divisions such as IT and customer service, to name just two.
• This also has consequences for the marketing function and changing role of the CMO.

Last but not least, the need for digital marketing change initiatives goes hand in hand with the connected optimization goals.