A new report by The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council titled “Gaining Traction With Every Digital Interaction,” brought some intriguing statistics to light on marketers success with revenue-producing digital opportunities. The CMO Council polled 179 senior marketing leaders, 43 percent of which worked with an organization with revenues over $500 million a year. The majority of chief marketers are failing to optimize the value of existing customers and capitalize on customer revenue potential.
When asked if brands were realizing the revenue of potential customers, 77 percent of respondents said no, a 1 percent increase from 2008. Marketers are missing opportunities to leverage customers by missing triggered communications, such as transactional email, to communicate with customers. Nearly 34 percent of marketers admitted that transactional emails aren’t leveraged as a relationship builder because they are created outside the marketing scope and offer little opportunity to collaborate.
Thirty percent of marketers believe triggered emails are engaging customers, but only to confirm a transaction, not to deepen the customer relationship. The report found that 94 percent of respondents agree that creating personalized content across multiple channels is the key to a profitable customer experience.
“Collaboration around the customer should not be an afterthought,” said Liz Miller, Senior Vice President of Marketing for the CMO Council. “Consumers are triggering communications, quite literally giving brands the go-ahead to continue communications. According to the BMA, 75 percent of revenue attributed to email is generated by triggered campaigns versus the traditional marketing campaign. Yet far too often, we view the triggered email as an operational byproduct of an action…a functional task that can be automated and not a valuable opportunity to continue a dialogue. To overlook this touchpoint is, quite plainly, to overlook revenue and growth opportunities.”
Email campaigns both triggered and transactional, are engaging customers and optimizing profits if done correctly. Customized campaigns will see the most reward, with personal communications helping to identify new sales paths.
“For marketers to execute on their commitment to optimize value across all touchpoints, they will be required to take specific and intentional actions to close the gaps that exist across functional silos,” explained Matt Harris, Co-founder and CEO of Sendwithus. “This means facilitating efficient collaboration between teams, from marketing to product to engineering—teams committed to the common goal of delivering individualized, real-time, relevant and insight-driven email experiences. Transactional and triggered emails represent a massive opportunity to improve the customer experience and fuel growth, and effective, cross-functional collaboration is the key to unlocking that opportunity.”
To learn more about today’s marketer, check out this article on the SiriusDecisions Summit.