Antics Digital Marketing: An enterprise class real time Marketing Automation Platform

“For us, creativity is a broad term. There’s creativity in visual design, copy, content, user experience design, and software design. Yes, we consider engineering to be a creative position and our technology teams participate in brainstorming sessions alongside strategy and design teams. We find that these three skill sets are both complementary and necessary–the creative process can influence strategy and technology; technology can expand creative and strategic thinking; and strategy can impact creativity and the development of technology. Our experience has taught us that an interdisciplinary team of strategic, creative, and technology experts yields the most successful marketing and sales programs,” says Ogden.

Real time marketing fetches a huge chunk of data every second. It’s one thing to capture data for the purpose of analysis; it’s another to apply it in real time to improve the customer’s experience. Using data to improve the customer experience has become an absolute necessity to leave the competitor behind. The team at Antics considers big data and utility marketing to have a significant impact on the marketing initiatives for organizations in the near future. “Utility marketing is a way to build brand affinity by providing functional value in your marketing campaigns. Through the use of technology and apps, marketing programs are crossing over into product territory, adding utility value to a customer’s brand experience. There aren’t many people talking about this trend yet, but it has started and it will improve both marketing efficiencies and the customer experience. These utility campaigns are like products themselves. It provides the same type of ongoing benefit. The advantage for marketers is that a utility marketing campaign can both attract customers and help build retention and loyalty, driving overall marketing efficiency,” says Ogden.

Antics differentiates itself by an objective of not selling as many similar configurations as possible. Instead, the company strives to enable as many unique configurations as possible that provide more benefit to the clients as well as their customers. “It’s why we’ve created a product strategy and business model to embrace customization and market change, giving us an ability to continually launch highly customized and unique initiatives very rapidly. Our approach is a model for companies that provide both services and technology,” asserts Ogden.

For the past 16 years, Antics’ has helped clients build customer loyalty and value through CRM. It launched Antics DMS to fill a market need for brands to rapidly deploy customized real time marketing programs. For instance, Actavis, a pharmaceutical company, uses Antics DMS to power a consumer marketing program for women that awards points for their activities. Consumers can allocate their points to participating women’s charities and the company makes donations accordingly. Consumers engage with the program on the website, with the mobile app, in Facebook, through email or SMS. After implementing the program, the company is experiencing customer retention rates twice as high than before.

“Moving forward, Antics foresees that brands will need to drive loyalty earlier in the customer lifecycle. “To stay ahead brands can use marketing automation not just to attract customers, but to provide exceptional experiences throughout the lifecycle,” says Ogden. “When you offer value and improve brand engagement, you accelerate loyalty and reduce defections.” By enabling marketing innovation, the company is helping its clients enact Drucker’s philosophy”.