The increasing demand for real-time communication, instant insight and customer ‘stickiness’ from clients means today’s businesses have a big task on their hands.

Never before has it been possible to gain such detailed insights into consumers; how they behave, and what they browse, choose and purchase. Because, with the right technology in place, today you can analyze who visits your site, their previous browsing patterns, interactions with your social channels – and more.

As a result, organizations are looking to apply real-time insights to their business in a bid to target products and services at the actual moment a customer demonstrates purchasing intent. So, if you know a traveller is in the market for a hotel room, you can deliver a timely offer that triggers a booking. Leave it a day or so, however, and that moment is gone for the consumer. You’ll have missed the boat and lost a revenue generation opportunity.

The rise of real-time marketing also means today’s brands can eliminate wastage from their programs. By profiling how consumers interact with campaigns and websites, organizations can stop shouting their message at crowds, and instead, pick and choose the individuals they want to talk to using powerful live retargeting techniques.

Clearly, mastering real-time communications off the back of live intent data takes the guesswork out of targeting. And the fresher that data is, the more accurate it will be – and the greater chance you have of using it successfully before someone else does.

But, as a recent article on the challenges of making real-time marketing work in practice reveals, acting on live intent data and responding fast to customer needs is a complex issue.

The key is not only getting the right data, but having the right infrastructure in place to deliver it at the right time, to the right person, on the right device, while enabling end users to interact with that information instantly. With all this in place, you can ensure that real-time marketing delivers on its promise. We believe instant data gratification enables real-time marketing and gives consumers the information they want.