In 2007, the CMO Council embarked on a study to track how senior marketers were embracing the customer in real-time, personalized engagements—were we realizing the goal of “right message, right time, right channel” in our communications? At that time, 47 percent of marketing respondents felt they did not have a full view into the profitability of a customer, including access to customer lifetime value insights. Some 60 percent indicated that they planned on looking at personalization as a key route to maximizing customer revenue, and when asked what could hold back their plans, the majority indicated they did not have the analytics, insights or predictive technologies needed to effectively leverage data to personalize experiences.
Eight years later, many marketers feel they are in the same position, struggling to optimize the customer journey using real-time insights and intelligence that enable them to craft robust customer experiences where revenue (and not engagement metrics, like clicks or views) is the goal.
While marketers are still looking to power experiences with personalization and relevance, customers are in a very different space than in 2007. The expectations for service—from self-service to always-available personal or face-to-face service—continue to increase rapidly as customers are not willing to wait for answers or resolutions to issues. Our customers are also being offered new and often more compelling options from new contenders and disruptors…and even worse, despite years of loyalty building, customers are even more willing to leave the brand fold in favor of experiences and service options that can overshadow pricing and promotions. Customers are not just wanting to be known and heard; they are demanding it.
So how are leading marketers predicting where and how customers will react along their engagement journeys? Are there new, harder and more pointed questions that marketers must ask of their own customer experience strategies to better shift to the expectations of the customer? Are we too focused on campaign success while ignoring customer success? How do we know if the customer experience we have developed is actually aligning with the customer’s mindset, behavior and expectations? Have we really thought about the customer first?
To address some of these issues and better understand how real-time marketing decisions are directly impacting customer engagement in this age of “un-marketing,” the CMO Council, in partnership with Pegasystems, presented a strategic overview of how marketers are feeding the always-on marketing brain. Gone are the strategies that simply look to maximize campaign engagements as they are being replaced by customer journeys that traverse acquisition, retention and advocacy to maximize customer lifetime value.
