Bringing 20/20 Foresight to Marketing

With the explosion of social networks, mobile devices, and micro sites, marketing executives are challenged to gain a truly integrated view of customer behavior across the range of established and emerging channels.

A report from Coremetrics, Bringing 20/20 Foresight to Marketing, is based on an exclusive survey of more than 300 marketing and senior-level executives at large companies ($250M-plus in revenues) in the U.S. and the U.K. Survey respondents were asked about their efforts to meet business goals using online marketing software to manage their programs. The findings provide a glimpse into a fast-paced future fueled by robust and far-reaching analytics data used to manage and enhance the customer experience.

In addition, the study reveals how top performers -- those businesses that rate their marketing technology investment as a world-class differentiator -- take a more proactive and agile approach to marketing. For example, these world-class marketers are three times as likely to track their campaign performance in real time, and more than four times as likely to adjust their campaigns in real time.

KEY FINDINGS

• Marketers' priorities are customer-centric. More than half (52%) cited customer retention as their top current priority, followed by customer acquisition (38%), and customer profitability (29%). These will remain top priorities a year from now.
• Marketing budgets mirror these priorities. About four in ten executives (39%) are dedicating the largest chunk of their funds to customer retention; customer acquisition runs a close second (36%).
• Online tactics will see significant lifts in budgets. Over the next year, 56% will increase their online marketing spend, 54% will increase their social media spend, and 50% will increase their mobile marketing spend.
• Greater emphasis is being placed on data-based decisions. Nearly half of respondents are increasing their spending on business intelligence, and 78% say there is greater scrutiny placed on what works and what doesn't than there was a year ago.
• Marketers are challenged to understand the influence of their campaigns beyond the basic metrics of acquisition and conversion. Top performers are using technology to get at these results and optimize their channels.
• Marketers are not always clear on what tools they need to meet their top challenges. Respondents admit being concerned about their ability to get a deeper understanding of customer interactions or obtain an integrated view of customer behavior. But there appears to be a disconnect in how they solve that issue, as the tools that could help-reconciling multiple online marketing applications and lack on an integrated marketing suite-are at the bottom of their list of concerns.
• Marketing is moving at light speed, but most marketers are not watching or adjusting their campaigns accordingly. Just 9% review their online marketing performance in real time, and only 9% adjust their campaigns in real time.
• Top performers are more proactive in tracking and adjusting their campaigns. Among companies that said their investment in marketing technology was "world class," 27% track their performance in real time, and39% adjust their campaign performance in real time.
• While nearly two thirds of respondents said they segment and target customers based on an integrated view of customer behavior, that view is not necessarily complete. Just 30% have a view of mobile behavior, and just 34% look at social media behavior.

(Source: Forbes, May, 2011)