Have you ever wondered what drives the nation’s top marketers?
Well, this is exactly what Econsultancy and Responsys set out to discover with the first ever State of Customer Engagement Report.
What did they find?
That better customer engagement and marketing interactions are the top priority for the country’s marketing leaders.
In today’s relationship era of marketing, almost all (94 per cent) respondents believe customer engagement is important to their company. Surprisingly though, almost half (46 per cent) center their marketing activity around sending campaigns, rather than supporting the customer journey. Talk about not practicing what you preach…
Further, while marketing leaders have a firm desire to drive success, more than half of the respondents (56 per cent) say their organisations don’t have a single view of each of their customers. What does this means? They lack a foundation on which to build lucrative long-term customer relationships.
The research also found that marketing leaders face a number of challenges in striving for individual customer engagement, with nearly a quarter of respondents (23 per cent) citing a lack of vision as the biggest barrier they face.
Significant barriers to customer engagement also include a lack of internal resources (71 per cent) and an inability to effectively manage customer data (65 per cent). More than one in three (37 per cent) believe they are too focused on short-term strategy and the same percentage feels their marketing campaigns lack overall direction.
What’s more, seven in ten respondents (69 per cent) rate the cross-channel experience of their customers as either ‘average’ or ‘poor’, and 58 percent say they lack the adequate tools and technology to engage with their customers at an individualised level. This is significant given the increasing expectations of customers to have seamless experiences across channels and devices. Yes, sometimes the tools are to blame, not the workman…
In an increasingly competitive marketplace, consumers have more choice and it is increasingly challenging for businesses to harness brand loyalty, so building relationships is more important than ever. Brands need to focus on the relationships which are the most lucrative, yet the report reveals only a third (35 per cent) are well equipped to measure the value of customers.
Commenting on the results, Paul Cross, President of Responsys Asia Pacific said, “It’s clear that customer engagement is fundamental to successful marketing, yet far too many marketers are still focusing on campaigns rather than driving smarting marketing interactions that lead to better experiences and lasting relationships with their customers.”
“By employing marketing cloud software to automate, individualise, and coordinate cross-channel marketing interactions at scale, these challenges can be confronted head-on. Marketing leaders need to work with their teams to ensure that the customer is always at the center of their digital marketing activity or in most cases totally flip their marketing model on its head,” said Cross.
