Marketing campaigns lacking customer-centricity - report

Everyone’s talking about customer-centricity but few organisations are turning the hype into reality.

According to the second annual Cross-Channel Marketing Report by Econsultancy and Responsys, many businesses are still failing to implement marketing programs that focus on building relationships with the customer.

The survey of around 900 digital marketers globally showed that just 30% said that they’re ‘very committed’ to relationship marketing whilst a further 22% admitted they conduct no relationship marketing at all.

Additionally, the survey showed that whilst the overwhelming majority (70%) believe that it’s cheaper to retain existing customers rather than acquire new ones, nearly half (44%) of businesses are currently focusing primarily on acquisition compared to just 16% on retention.

Overall, businesses showed a balanced approach to acquisition and retention with 21% believing they should focus more on acquisition and 22% on retention. Most (56%) said an equal focus was needed, the figures showed.

In terms of the biggest challenges to multi-channel campaigns, integration between specific digital and offline marketing disciplines was shown to still be a stumbling block – less than half of those surveyed  described their digital efforts as ‘very integrated’ with their broader marketing strategy.

Mobile integration is also proving a barrier to cross-channel campaigns with only 20% claiming their mobile web efforts are very integrated, with similar findings for mobile messaging (23%) and mobile apps (17%).

So what factors are enabling marketers to achieve success in their multi-channel campaigns? According to the figures, a clearly defined strategy (37%) retains the top spot from last year’s survey.

Specifically, channels believed to offer the greatest marketing opportunities over the next year include social (50%), followed by email (43%) and web (35%).

Simon Robinson from Responsys said of the findings: “Marketers need to focus their entire marketing strategies directly around the customer. The mass marketing era is over, replaced by the relationship era of marketing, in which personalisation and delivering relevant content at scale across all the digital channels reigns supreme.”

Forrester recently outlined the four stages of its multichannel marketing maturity model – from channel entropy all the way through to multichannel engagement. Shawn Cabral from Sitecore, which commissioned the research, advised marketers that it's important to create consistent messaging across all channels because customers will engage with marketers who meet their changing needs for different information and options during the buying journey. 

"Customers want a brand to work really hard for them, to make their life easier by anticipating their needs and listening and responding to their requirements. They now expect digital communications to be completely joined-up, with one on-going digital conversation across all channels.

Therefore, marketers must leverage highly dynamic websites to drive unique experiences for customers. They need to deliver content, messages, experiences, products and offers from pools of content assets based upon knowledge of the customer’s profile, behaviour, and engagement history. Those who continue to focus on purely product-centric campaigns and offers risk becoming irrelevant," he said.