Marketers Must Rethink How to Sustain Profitable Engagement Across the Entire Customer Life Cycle

London, UK – 8^th August 2012 – A new study of the marketing industry, titled “The Multichannel Maturity Mandate,” finds that senior level marketers need to better optimise a multichannel customer engagement model to increase marketing performance. According to the study, 77% of marketers agree they will drive more sales and profit by evolving into an effective multichannel organisation. Furthermore, 35% of marketers concur they lose business because they are not able to integrate customer interactions across digital, social, mobile and offline channels.

Multichannel marketing refers to the approach that marketers have adopted to manage and optimise customer engagement across the burgeoning landscape of customer touch points. The commissioned survey, conducted by Forrester on behalf of Sitecore, includes responses from more than 270 marketing professionals across a wide range of industries and geographies.

Forrester’s study yielded five key findings:

• Marketers have accepted multichannel marketing as common practice – 40% of respondents assessed themselves as mature practitioners of multichannel marketing.
• A skills gap impedes efforts – Despite seeing the value, some respondents are not moving toward a multichannel marketing strategy due to a lack of knowledge and skills.
• Mature practitioners have realised significant business gains – Benefits ranged from improved campaign performance to higher return on marketing investment (ROMI).
• Significantly different practices are in place – Yet, despite different practices, mature multichannel marketers tend to collaboratively engage with sales, aggressively adopt technology and work in close partnership with IT.
  
• There are significant opportunities to improve – Some of these opportunities include better organisational alignment, process definition and technology integration.

“Marketers continue to struggle with measuring digital strategies and marketing campaigns and their impact on strategic objectives and business success,” said Darren Guarnaccia, senior vice president product marketing, Sitecore. “This study highlights the gains in revenue and customer satisfaction that mature multichannel marketers can achieve, yet many still need help to meet the expectations and demands of the multichannel customer.”

An important part of the study highlighted how mature multichannel marketers improved tactical results which, in turn, drove strategic outcomes including:

• 40% reported a very significant increase in marketing-attributed revenues
• 60% reported a significant reduction in the average sales cycle
• 40% were more likely to collaborate with sales on field programs
• 60% reported a significant increase in return on marketing investment
• 69% gained more than 10% in customer satisfaction scores

Check out the complete results of the paper.

Contact our business optimisation experts to help transform your customer engagement processes into integrated, mature, customer-centric processes.

About Sitecore

Sitecore redefines how organisations engage with audiences, powering compelling experiences that sense and adapt to visitors both online and in-person.

Sitecore’s leading Content Management System software is the first to cohesively integrate with marketing automation, intranet portal, e-commerce, web optimisation, social media and campaign management technologies. This broad choice of capabilities enable marketing professionals, business stakeholders and information technology teams to rapidly implement, measure and manage a successful website and digital  business strategy. Businesses can now easily identify, serve and convert new customers with Sitecore’s Digital Marketing System, part of its encompassing Customer Engagement Platform.

Thousands of public and private organisations have created and now manage more than 32,000 dynamic websites with Sitecore including ATP World Tour, CA Technologies, Comcast, easyJet, Heineken, Microsoft, Nestlé, Royal Navy, The Knot, TOP-TOY, Visa Europe and Verizon.

Media Contact:

Media Contact:

Marco Fiori, Bamboo PR

0207 702 6061 / marco@bamboopr.co.uk