The complete customer view – blending data and CX for your marketing A-game
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What can marketers expect for 2019 – new year, same customers… the same, but different? In a marketing climate cluttered with data perspectives, too much is getting lost in the mix, including a focus on CX.
This article was sponsored by SAS to let customers know about its Darkness of Digital Shadows white paper »
If you’re dealing with the same customers, should you continue marketing to them the same way as last year? Not necessarily. Read on to learn how to have your marketing A-game on in 2019 and keep your customers loyal.
According to HubSpot, some of the most popular digital marketing trends of the past have now reached their expiry date. These included impersonalised drip campaigns, text-heavy ebooks, marketing automation overload and organic-only Facebook strategies.
Predicting the top fresh marketing trends for 2019, HubSpot gives the number one spot to the idea of ‘customers as marketers’. This says goodbye to the marketing funnel and hello to the flywheel.
For most this isn’t a new concept, even if it’s the first time you’re hearing this. It’s really bringing things back to basics – prioritising the customer experience (CX).
CX has been a top priority in recent years and 2019 will be no different. This is because we’ve shifted from products to experiences. Customers no longer stay loyal due to price or product alone – instead their loyalty is based on the experience they receive. If you can’t keep up with increasing demands, you’re in trouble.
Customers crave unique, fast, interactions with the brands they love. Moreover, customers have become smarter, aware that their data is in use. In turn, they expect marketers to use their information to deliver personalised experiences, regardless of when and where they choose to engage:
- A Walker study found that by the year 2020, CX will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator
- Gartner supports this with research showing 89% of marketers will primarily compete on CX instead of price in coming years, and
- McKinsey reveals that organisations using analytics to leverage customer behavioural insights outperform peers by 85% in sales growth and more than 25% in gross margins.
Improving brand experience for your customers is key to increasing retention, satisfaction and revenue.
As marketers are faced with endless volumes of customer data from multiple channels, it’s becoming more of a struggle to understand how exactly we can improve the customer experience. With options including Facebook interactions, in-store purchases, email engagement – it’s common to feel overwhelmed and confused.
The role of analytics in enhancing CX
Gartner reports that the biggest share of marketing budgets spent on marketing analytics in 2017 was 9.2%
Like most organisations, you’re probably already using analytics to enhance decision making, but have you optimised this for CX?
Many organisations are struggling to use analytics to predict customers’ next actions, capture customer interactions in a timely manner and respond in real time. This means they’re making decisions with an incomplete view and missing the opportunity to deliver relevant customer experiences.
The technology is here for marketers to overcome these challenges.
SAS commissioned 3Gem Research and Insights to survey 350 heads of marketing, CX, digital and data, working in the sectors of retail, government, telecoms, insurance, media, energy and retail banking, to learn about the:
- information currently collected on customers
- ability to segment customers and personalise campaigns based on current and anticipated customer behaviour
- impact of GDPR on data collected, and
- use of analytics and AI to enhance CX.
The results show marketers aren’t using data effectively. Too often, they are targeting broad audiences and therefore casting customers into ‘digital shadows’. This contradicts most organisations’ claims to be putting the customer first.
The top three challenges for customer data and analytics are:
- ensuring against an incomplete customer view
- delivering insights at speed, and
- actioning insights in real time.
To learn how you can overcome the top three customer data and analytics challenges and have your marketing A-game on for 2019, read Darkness of Digital Shadows »
Image credit:Štefan Štefančík
