In a study by Influitive, conducted by Demand Metric, the resources and investment organizations are making in Customer Marketing… “pursuing revenue from existing customers…” is considered to be significantly important to roughly three-quarters of the respondents.
The view most organizations have of revenue generation is pretty straightforward, says the report: generate leads, qualify them, pass them on to the sales team who then closes deals with new customers. But, what sometimes gets lost in the shuffle is the revenue generated from current customers.
Customer Marketing is often a backwater in many companies, but any firm’s customer base is an asset, though often an underutilized one. It involves cross selling, upselling and building better relationships with established customers. Far from being a backwater, it is a proven contributor to revenue growth, says the report.
The analysis of this study’s data provides these key findings:
The results organizations are getting are evenly varied across of spectrum of no revenue or measurements to significant revenue contribution.
The responses were put into two groups to analyze the results of this study:
Relationship Between Company Size And “Moderate/High Revenue Impact” Revenue Results From Customer Marketing | |
Company size | % Reporting Significant Impact |
Small companies (those producing $25 million or less in annual revenue) | 52% |
Medium companies (producing from $26 million to $500 million annually) | 45% |
Large companies (over $500 million annually) | 72% |
Source: Influitive/DemandMetric, September 2014 |
Study analysis detected threenoteworthy differences in the Customer Marketing activities pursued by survey participants in the no/low revenue status group compared to the moderate/high revenue status group.
Customer And/Or User Group Events Are The Top Customer Marketing Activity | |
Customer Marketing Activity | % of Respondents Utilizing |
Customer and/or user group events | 61% |
Customer testimonial program | 54% |
Online customer community | 54% |
Cross-sell and/or upsell campaigns | 50% |
Customer advocacy program | 48% |
Customer referral program | 46% |
Customer satisfaction program | 41% |
Renewal campaigns | 31% |
Other activities | 6% |
Source: Influitive/DemandMetric, September 2014 |
Measuring anything that marketing does is important, and Customer Marketing activities and results are no exception, says the report. First, the perception of the ideal metrics; then, metrics are actually in use and compare the differences, if any.
Ranked Metrics For Tracking Customer Marketing Effectiveness | |
Rank | Measurement Metric |
1 | Upsell and/or cross-sell revenue |
2 | Renewal rate or churn |
3 | Customer influenced revenue via referrals or references |
4 | Satisfaction |
5 | Product usage or adoption |
6 | Number of customer-related campaigns (e.g. email, newsletters) |
7 | Net Promoter Score (NPS) |
Source: Influitive/DemandMetric, September 2014 |
Customer Marketing Metrics Study Participants Say They Are Currently Using | |
Customer Marketing Metrics in Use | % of Respondents |
Renewal rate or churn | 44% |
Customer influenced revenue via referrals/references | 42% |
Upsell and/or cross-sell revenue | 39% |
Number of customer-related campaigns | 37% |
Satisfaction | 37% |
Net Promoter Score | 29% |
Product Usage or adoption | 27% |
None | 15% |
Other metrics | 11% |
Source: Influitive/DemandMetric, September 2014 |
The report points out that the metric identified as most important, upsell or cross-sell revenue, ranks third in actual usage. The most important metric should probably also be the most frequently used, opines the report. But, the reason it’s not is probably due to the difficulty of accurately tracking upsell or cross-sell revenue.
A final observation about metrics, says the report, comes from analyzing the metrics in use through the “Status” variable, and concludes that there are two important metrics associated with moderate to significant revenue impact:
When either of these metrics were in use by an organization, it was more likely for their Customer Marketing activities to have a higher revenue impact, concludes the report. And, the greatest insight from this study, says the report, also provides the most compelling justification for Customer Marketing: the strong relationship between Customer Marketing and customer satisfaction.
To access the complete PDF report, please visit Influitive here.