If nothing else you read puts your marketing efforts in perspective, this should:

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

Henry Ford

Our customers deserve our respect. And I believe that, by and large, marketers treat their customers with the respect they deserve. But like with anything in life, creating happy customers only happens by making their experience relevant and satisfying – a complex task in an ever-changing environment.

That’s why SAS has introduced SAS Customer Intelligence 360 . It gives you the ability to integrate data from all of your customer touchpoints and share and gather customer intelligence across your entire organization (not just customer-facing departments).

One of the important modules of the new platform is SAS 360 Engage that does just what the name implies – helps you better engage with your customer by using analytical insights to make the right offers, faster.

Contextual marketing: Being in the moment with your customers

In the omnichannel world that marketers now inhabit, you know that you have to be hyper-alert at all times, or you miss an opportunity because you were too slow or make a misstep you’re not in a channel that your customer prefers.

The real power of SAS 360 Engage is in its ability to help you respond effectively to changes in customer behavior – say for example, the customer breaks a pattern of channel preference and moves to a different channel. You’ll be able to recognize behavior shifts and choose the best action for each interaction.

Personalizing, and even individualizing, the content that is placed on digital properties leads to higher engagement, loyalty and retention. It makes perfect sense. If customers see content that is relevant to them on a webpage or in a mobile app – they are much more likely to remain engaged – versus seeing generic content that is targeted to everyone. Targeting this “segment of one” increases uptake rates of offers and messages.

It's really the best of all possible worlds --  acquiring new customers while delighting existing customers --  using contextual customer engagement across digital channels and devices. Delivering a contextual offer allows you to boost new-customer acquisition rates and ultimately leads to a stronger, more profitable customer base and higher return on marketing investment.

Editor's note: This is an update of a post that originally appeared in April, 2016