December 8, 2008 (Palo Alto, CA) – Despite a depressed global economy, a surprising 76 percent of senior marketers believe they are not realizing the full revenue potential of their current customers. In addition, only 46.5 percent say they have good insights into retention rates, customer profitability and lifetime value, reports the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council in a new “Routes to Revenue” study released this week, two days ahead of its annual CMO Summit in Monterey, California.

Sponsored by Ricoh/IBM InfoPrint Solutions Company, the comprehensive international audit of some 650 senior marketers earlier this year, revealed that making communications more personal and relevant, as well as more targeted and timely, was among the top strategies for realizing greater revenue and profitability from existing customers. Other leading strategies included addressing under-penetrated markets or new customer segments, as well as finding new ways to up-sell and cross-sell existing accounts.

The CMO Council study highlighted three key obstacles and deficiencies for not optimizing the full revenue potential and lifetime value of existing customers. This included:

• Lack of real-time data and analytics that captures insights from across all customer touch points.


• Information not only being selectively gathered, but often inaccurate or incomplete.


• Data being siloed and restricted in its availability and use across the organization.

“It is inexplicable that the vast majority of marketers are still struggling to source and extract meaningful insights from customer data at a behavioral, transactional and account value level,” noted CMO Council executive director Donovan Neale-May. “Marketing must assert its role as the owner of both customer experience and information and apply this to devising growth strategies that leverage better knowledge of customer opportunity and potential.”

When it comes to acquiring new business, the Routes to Revenue study showed that global marketers have a much broader and more comprehensive set of strategies. The top six include:

• Testing and launching new products aimed at specific market segments


• Establishing new partnerships and revenue-sharing agreements


• Stepping up demand generation and customer acquisition programs


• Expanding geographical presence and intensifying international focus


• Ramping up eCommerce and customer-direct communications


• Restructuring or expanding channels of distribution

When asked what companies were doing to improve top-line and bottom line performance, 40 percent said they were reducing head count, overhead and/or budgets. Other plans included automating complex and costly processes (38.7 percent), outsourcing more services and function (31.2 percent) and reformulating products or minimizing packaging to contain cost (27.8 percent).

In taking a deep dive into where marketers were seeking more efficiency and effectiveness, almost 64 percent of CMO Council survey respondents said they were evaluating all areas of marketing spend to increase yield and accountability. Primary areas of focus included:

• Bringing more discipline and rigor to marketing budgeting and spend (47.3 percent)


• Leveraging existing resources within the organization to enhance customer communications (47.3 percent)


• Exploring new customized communications technologies (40.9 percent)


• Moving more marketing investments to Internet and mobile channels (38.7 percent)


• Improving behavioral targeting of advertising and online marketing campaigns (33.3 percent)


• Driving adoption and use of CRM and sales automation applications (31.5 percent)

“There’s a big shift to more individualized delivery of marketing messages,” noted Sandra Zoratti, VP of Strategic Business Development and Transformation for Ricoh/IBM InfoPrint, which is a pioneer in “precision promotion” and the market leader in developing database-driven “transpromo” print-on-demand systems. “The Routes to Revenue findings clearly underscore the value of more personalized offers and interactions across all customer touch points, particularly regular monthly communications, such as statements and invoices.”

According to nearly 60 percent of Routes to Revenue respondents, introducing better segmentation, profiling and targeting strategies topped the list of ways companies are trying to better engage core audiences. Other initiatives included:

• Adding or improving database marketing systems (48.7 percent)


• Acquiring new customer and market analytics capabilities (30.3 percent)


• Personalizing multi-channel communications and customer touch points (29.8 percent)


• Individualizing print, email, text messaging, call center or web interactions (26.4 percent)


• Building online customer communities and interactive channels (25.8 percent)


• Capturing more customer information via the web and at point-of-sale (25.2 percent)

More information on the Routes to Revenue study can be sourced from the CMO Council web site at http://www.cmocouncil.org/index.asp .

About the CMO Council
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council's 3,500 members control more than $100 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and it's strategic interest communities include over 6,000 global executives across 57 countries in multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Brand Management Institute, and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). More information on the CMO Council is available at www.cmocouncil.org .

About InfoPrint Solutions Company
InfoPrint Solutions Company, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, brings to market the advantages IBM and Ricoh have in the development, manufacturing, marketing and building of strategic solutions for customers, creating a growth-oriented global enterprise that is strategically focused on the output market. The InfoPrint Solutions Company portfolio includes solutions for production printing for enterprises and commercial printers as well as solutions for office workgroup environments and industrial segments. The company offers customers the highest quality output solutions that optimize productivity by providing efficient workflow and, at the same time, delivering low cost of ownership and high return on investment. The heritage of InfoPrint Solutions Company includes the development of the IBM Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) Architecture – now an industry standard – and Intelligent Printer Data Stream (IPDS), which has since become the standard for mission critical business printing. The company also leads the industry in print management solutions with both InfoPrint Process Director and InfoPrint Manager. Please visit http://www.infoprint.com for more information.