What is relevance? The term is thrown around quite a bit in the marketing world. Marketers continually strive (and at times, struggle) to achieve it and even define it. Many marketing departments struggle with implementing a relevance-based approach and often encounter several barriers like out-dated or ineffective technology, and other organizational constraints.

I am in the midst of penning a six piece series for MarketingProfs on achieving relevance in direct digital marketing. The series sheds some light on how to achieve relevance, outlines the common barriers to achieving it, and offers five keys to overcoming those barriers. For this post, I am going to break out some of the key takeaways and give you a taste of what’s to come with the rest of the series.

In the first installment of the series, I defined relevance in the realm of direct digital marketing as: Tailoring direct digital marketing communications to customers and prospects, and ensuring that the information, offers, and calls to action are optimized based on a user's known attributes, behavioral attributes, and past activity.

Now that we have a working definition of relevance, how do we get past the various barriers to implementation?

For many marketers and brands, the most significant hurdles to delivering timely and relevant marketing communications come from inside a marketing organization.  Challenges from within an organization can put limitations on the adoption of technology and best practices, as well as the manpower to create engaging programs and campaigns.

As I mentioned in my second series installment, “Achieving Relevance in Direct Digital Marketing: Overcoming Organizational Constraints,” you may have to shake things up a bit within your organization to overcome these barriers.

Sure, the thought of making organizational changes can be daunting, but the need to make the necessary changes to adopt a relevance-centered direct digital marketing approach is very real.

If you’re feeling intimidated by the thought of where to begin or how to approach the process, take a look at the three most common organizational constraints, and how to overcome them in the second installment of the series.

Barriers from within an organization may be the most significant hurdle to overcome. But, barriers to technology adoption come in a close second.

It is important to remember achieving relevance with your marketing communications requires technology that makes the process more efficient and effective, not painful and prohibitive.

It is also important for marketers to ask themselves, "How involved in the technology selection process am I?" If you’re not very involved, it’s time to grab the reins and aggressively drive technology adoption and consolidation within your organization.

If marketers are being held responsible for a brand’s connection with consumers over the digital channels, they can’t afford to be isolated from the technology evaluation and selection process.

So how do you piece together the technology puzzle to find out what you need, and how do you become more involved in the evaluation and selection of that technology? Take a look at the two critical steps every brand must take when choosing a technology, outlined in the third installment of the series, and what marketers can do to become more involved in the selection and implementation process.

The upcoming fourth installment of the series focuses on the importance of segmentation and targeting in a relevance-centric approach to direct digital marketing. It will be full of actionable ideas and analysis to help you achieve relevance in your direct digital marketing efforts. Articles five and six will focus on how to take an incremental approach, and how to develop a plan for implementing what you’ve learned.  Stay tuned!

What barriers do you encounter when implementing a relevance-based approach? How are you overcoming them?