Commentary

2016 Marketing Banner: Optimize Customer Experience!

According to a global survey of more than 7,000 marketers and ecommerce professionals by Econsultancy/Adobe, the 2016 Digital Trends report shows that the priorities on top of marketers’ lists are tied together by their focus on individual personalization (31%), content optimization (29%) and social media engagement (25%). The customer’s experience and the content to support it continue to be top priorities for both marketers and their agencies.

22% of client-side respondents ranked optimizing the customer experience as the single most exciting opportunity for the year ahead, slightly ahead of other areas such as creating compelling content for digital experiences and data-driven marketing (both 16%).

Identifying their strategic priorities for 2016, more organizations chose ‘data-driven marketing’ with their top vote (53%) than any other, says the report. While data skills remain elusive in many organizations (only 37% are satisfied with their ability to attract and keep analysts to make sense of their data), more companies report having a good data collection infrastructure.

The latest research also focuses on the role of workflows and collaboration in the context of digital success. 94% of organizations say that optimizing creative workflows will be important in delivering a great customer experience, while 91% say the same about the importance of improving collaboration between creative and marketing teams.

Organizations are still grappling with difficulties, says the report, particularly when it comes to fostering a collaborative culture. 46% of respondents rank the process of creating a cross-team approach with the customer at the heart of all initiatives as 4 or 5 on the difficulty scale (highest).

The research also found that:

  • Optimizing the customer experience is much more likely to be the single most exciting opportunity for organizations in the automotive (37%) and retail (29%) sectors compared to the average organization surveyed
  • Though the vast majority of those surveyed recognize the importance of creative workflows and internal collaboration, ongoing testing and experimentation are perceived to be ‘very important’ by less than a third (31% and 29% respectively)
  • 51% of company respondents and 61% of agencies rank mobile as a top-three area of priority for their organization (or their clients) in 2016
  • The interest that marketers have for the Internet of Things is largely future-looking, with only 6% citing as important today, says the report. Their agency partners, though, see more possibility and impact, with nearly 20% saying that these everyday digital connections will be their clients’ most exciting opportunity
  • The proportion of retail respondents saying they use geo-targeting technology has increased from 7% in 2015 to 11% this year.

Stefan Tornquist, Econsultancy’s VP of Research, said: “… customer experience… is increasingly accompanied by an emphasis on data… the drive to better understand and serve customers is real and evident in the data… companies (are becoming) more customer-centric… investing in technology, reworking strategy, making mistakes and achieving success… “

John Travis, VP, EMEA Marketing, Adobe, concludes by noting that: “… the customer experience mandate is permeating everything else these businesses are doing… ”

For additional information contained in this report, please visit here. The full report is available from the Econsultancy website here. 

 

 

Next story loading loading..