Dive Brief:
- The Chief Marketing Officer Council released the results of a new survey on marketing strategy and execution gaps it conducted with RedPoint Global that found only 7% of marketers deliver real-time, data-driven engagements across physical and digital touchpoints, according to an organization press release.
- A scarce 5% of marketers report they can determine the bottom-line impacts of engagements in real time, and a tiny 3% contend there is alignment across technology platforms with regard to data, metrics and insights. Slightly more (6%) say they can obtain complete views of their customers from available data sources and a tad more (8%) state they’re able to implement systems to establish best-in-class technology platforms.
- In the CMO Council’s survey, marketers shared several explanations for why organizations aren’t effectively executing data-driven customer strategies: budget limitations (54%), failure to embrace a customer-centric culture (43%), lack of senior-level support (32%) and absence of a solid foundation upon which a customer data strategy can be built (31%).
Dive Insight:
With mobile now the first place consumers often to to research a product or service, being able to follow activity across social, email and search in real-time and engage customers with relevant messaging is something brands are increasingly interested in. CMO Council's research paints a picture of marketers increasingly challenged to keep up with consumers demanding frictionless experiences in real time and failing to meet those challenges. In its survey of 263 marketers, the group discovered senior marketing executives attempting to respond to demands with an array of disconnected systems that don’t react nearly as fast as they need them to. Processes often require manual transports of data at a time when those sorts of transports are antiquated.
“Marketers are still dealing with complex processes and offline data, which is delaying their access to the intelligence they need to create the next best action with a customer,” said Liz Miller, senior vice president of marketing for the CMO Council. “These delays are further increased due to a lack of clear ownership over the customer experience strategy as a whole, with multiple teams and departments battling for customer attention across a growing, fragmented landscape of data and engagement systems.”
Marketing executives blame the organizations they work within for subpar approaches to data-driven customer strategies. The CMO Council study revealed 78 percent of marketers think CMOs should be leading these strategies, while a mere 19 percent are actually charged with the developing them. About half report customer engagement strategies are handled through individual teams on either an organized or ad hoc basis. Unfortunately, marketers just can’t seem to get on the same page on how to turn strategy into action, and the CMO Council concluded customer engagement execution suffers as a consequence.
Dale Renner, chief executive officer of RedPoint Global, argued the widening gap between customer expectations and the experiences brands provide has grave implications for brands. He insisted they won't fully grasp and connect with their customers if they don't address this issue. “To consistently meet customer expectations, brands must be relevant; and to sustain profitable revenue growth, they must be more relevant than competitors,” said Renner. “This can only be achieved by having the deepest understanding of a customer, making decisions at the cadence of each customer, and then intelligently orchestrating engagement across any touchpoint in the enterprise.”