Customer experience is king! For marketing leaders in 2020, this is the truth that is shaping the path of the profession. To achieve this, top marketing teams are focused on driving integration in almost everything: campaigns, technology even previously disperate functional departments.
Salesforce.com has compiled trends and insights from nearly 4,000 top marketing teams. You can download the full report via the link below, but here’s a brief overview of the nine most prominent findings:
Top marketing teams win with a customer journey strategy.
High-performing marketing teams are eight times more likely to adopt a customer journey strategy as part of their overall business strategy. Successful marketers are connecting with customers in new ways across mobile, email, social, and the Web. 73 percent say that a customer journey strategy has positively impacted overall customer engagement.
Top marketing teams are integrating the customer experience.
Successful marketing leaders are crossing the boundaries of business units to create a single view of the customer. High-performing marketing teams are leading customer experience initiatives across the business — bridging the gap between marketing, sales, and service. 64 percent of top teams also say they are excellent at creating a single view of the customer, versus only 4% of under-performers.
Top marketing teams get smart with tech adoption.
To keep pace with a dynamic industry and continually make marketing communications smarter, 72% of top teams will increase spending on marketing tools and tech in the next two years. 55 percent of high performers qualify as heavy tech adopters, compared to only 7% of under-performers. Top teams are also more likely to extensively use marketing analytics
Top marketing teams align with business leadership.
The world’s best marketing teams have buy-in from company leaders. As such, marketing budgets are more likely to be prioritised. 88 percent of high performers say their executive team is completely committed to supporting the overall marketing strategy, compared to only 31% of under-performers.
Real-time channel orchestration strikes a chord.
Leading marketers understand the value of a cross-channel approach. In fact, top teams are three times more likely than under-performers to strongly agree they’ve integrated their social media activity into their overall marketing strategy . Among high performers who have integrated their digital marketing channels with their overall marketing, at least 95% rate the integrations as ‘very effective’ or ‘effective’.
Mobile momentum hits a tipping point.
From 2015 to 2016, every aspect of mobile covered in this research has risen significantly in usage. This growth encompasses both mobile as a marketing platform (such as mobile apps) and mobile as a marketing channel (such as SMS). With 98% growth in mobile app usage and 111% growth in SMS usage, the majority of marketers are now using these mainstream mobile tactics to engage customers.
Intelligent email is driving higher revenue.
As email personalisation capabilities grow more sophisticated, the channel becomes even more integral for marketers to deliver a holistic customer journey. Top teams are four times more likely than under-performers to leverage predictive intelligence or data science to create personalised emails. Forty-nine percent of marketers say email is directly linked to their business’ primary revenue source — a notable jump from the 20% of marketers who said the same in 2015.
Social sees massive ROI growth.
Last year, three of the top five areas where marketers planned to increase their spending involved social outlets. Now, those investments appear to be paying of. 75% of marketing leaders report that social is generating ROI. Top teams are also nearly two times more likely than under-performers to align their social media marketing strategy with other social activities such as customer service, pursuing a more united customer view.
Advertising accelerates on social platforms.
Nearly two-thirds of marketers are boosting budgets for advertising on social platforms in 2016, making it the third largest area for increased investment. Among high performers, 80% will increase spending on advertising on social platforms. In order to create a unique experience based on real customer identity, 83% of top teams use customer data (e.g., email or phone data) to segment or target ads.
Saleforce.com – State of Marketing 2017
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