In March 2013, Silverpop commissioned Forrester Research to evaluate how marketers are leveraging automation in their customer engagement processes. If you remember reading my blog post “Top 5 Marketing Trends for 2014” (Jan 2014), then you know that #3 and #4 were directly pointing to big payoffs from Marketing Automation and more specifically Personalization powered by Data Intelligence. You may also recall #1 where I call on 2014 to be the year of Channel Agnosticism. Forrester clearly re-enforces these insights, and specifically points to Multichannel and Cross-Channel Automation as being two keys to the kingdom.
Their research tested the hypothesis that marketing automation generates significant insight into the context and intentions of customers and prospective customers. It is also made clear that marketers who manage and leverage this insight will see significant improvements across a number of key marketing performance indicators.
So…what drives success in the Age of the Customer?
Key Findings
Forrester’s study yielded four key findings:
• Marketing automation enables marketing success. Marketing automation is broadly deployed to manage core marketing processes from campaign development to lead management. But top performers seem to be leveraging their tech investments differently, executing a higher number of more focused campaigns and setting higher targets.
• Both B2B and B2C marketers have accepted multichannel marketing as common practice. Marketers are familiar with the concepts and practices of multichannel marketing. One-quarter of our survey respondents assessed themselves as mature practitioners of multichannel marketing. Another 39% were in transition. Only 7%
of respondents had no plans to implement multichannel marketing.
• Behavioral marketing is a slightly less mature practice. Only 17% of our survey respondents assessed themselves as mature practitioners of behavioral marketing. But early adopters perceive significant benefits to becoming more buyer-centric. Significantly, a higher percentage of behavioral marketers grew revenue faster than plan (53% versus 41%) and contributed more than half of the sales pipeline (20% versus 11%).
• Practitioners of behavioral marketing have significantly different practices. Those marketers who self-assessed as “mature” reported significant differences in their approach to marketing: They have more fully implemented marketing automation, run more campaigns, and run a greater variety of campaigns.
It’s NOT rocket-science…but it’s getting close to it 🙂 Blending science and creative content is a remarkable route to #INBOUND Success. Don’t let it scare you – let it drive you to new heights in 2014 and beyond!
ecommadvisor 