SAN JOSE, Calif. (February 9, 2016)—Clicks, views, posts, shares and visits have taken a back seat to acquisition, retention and revenue growth as core measures of customer experience and engagement success, reports the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.

According to a new study conducted with Microsoft Corp., marketers are de-prioritizing digital campaign metrics in favor of business-focused measurements that more directly tie customer experience to financial performance and business outcomes.

Some 40 percent of marketers surveyed believe that because of these new business measures, they are able to better prove the impact of customer experience investments.

The new strategic brief entitled, “Making Personalization Possible,” also reveals that while 49 percent of marketers are hopefully optimistic about creating lasting relationships with customers through personalized engagements and campaigns, more than one in four are totally confident that personalization is the path to customer gratification and retention.

Key findings of the study include:

• Thirty-seven (37) percent of marketers believe that personalization success will hinge on the ability to deliver experiences that are powered by a single view of the customer.


• Thirty-six (36) percent of marketers admit they are currently only able to personalize engagements in select channels but are struggling to properly align the data needed to personalize across the entire relationship in a consistent and meaningful manner.


• Twenty-one (21) percent are able to deliver highly relevant, one-to-one experiences to their customers, both online and offline.

“Marketers are moving away from defining customer experience success through moments in time like clicks or views,” said Liz Miller, Senior Vice President of Marketing for the CMO Council. “Those have become critical tools for real-time campaign success. But to measure customer experience success and the overall impact of marketing on the business, marketers are turning to financial KPIs: revenue, costs, conversions and impact on the bottom line.”

As leading executives continue to make personalization possible, they are actively seeking out tools and solutions that will amplify the customer’s voice and turn that data into real, actionable intelligence. Among the top strategies for accelerating value in 2016, marketers will look to bolster analytics and lifecycle management strategies and platforms (65 percent), along with implementing personalization platforms (65 percent), engaging in comprehensive journey mapping (56 percent), and getting smarter about predictive analytics (52 percent).

“Marketing leaders are increasingly focused on personalization,” said Gretchen O’Hara, General Manager of Enterprise Marketing at Microsoft. “In today’s data-driven marketplace, personalization is imperative. As innovations like predictive analytics and machine learning technologies become more accessible and easier to manage, they have become an essential part of every marketer’s toolbox, driving an organization’s competitive edge.”

The 11-page strategic brief is available for download today and includes a summary of key findings, along with insights into the performance of best-practice leading respondents who are already well versed in personalization and engagement. The study includes input from 179 senior marketers, with 34 percent hailing from organizations with $1 billion (USD) in revenue or more, 48 percent from primarily B2B organizations, and 34 percent from hybrid (B2B2C) businesses. Visit https://www.cmocouncil.org/thought-leadership/reports/making-personalization-possible to download your copy today. 

About the CMO Council

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is the only global network of executives specifically 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 10,000 members control more than $450 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include more than 35,000 global executives in more than 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, India and Africa. The council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Mobile Relationship Marketing (MRM) Strategies Forum, LoyaltyLeaders.org, CMOCIOAlign.org, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Institute, GeoBranding Center and the Brand Inspiration Center. Learn more at www.cmocouncil.org.