• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 23, 2017

According to a new Koyne/Influitive Marketing survey of company leaders and top marketers, examining how organizations currently manage the planning, resourcing and measurement of customer marketing efforts, only 61% were satisfied with the results. Customer marketing says the report, is the complete set of activities undertaken by a company following a customer’s purchase of products and services.

With data collected from CEOs and marketing executives at more than two hundred B2B organizations representing small companies with annual revenues up to $25M, medium companies with revenue between $25M and $1B, and large companies with revenue greater than $1B, the analysis reveals some significant findings:

• Of the satisfied respondents, most were from large organizations. This represents a significant opportunity for growth in the customer marketing arena
• Over 90% of respondents acknowledged that customer marketing is somewhat or very important
• Over the next year, 93% of organizations expect that their customer marketing efforts will take on greater importance, and 62% will increase their staff or budgets in the customer marketing area

Companies identified three main skills as vital to the success of customer marketing efforts: relationship building, communication, and customer service.

49% of companies reported that their customer marketing efforts resulted in moderate to significant revenue gains. 71% of large companies report greater gains due to customer marketing than medium (52%), or small companies (44%). The three most frequently tracked metrics were:

• Upsell/cross-sell revenues
• Renewal/churn rate
• Customer satisfaction

Organizations reporting moderate to significant revenue from customer marketing are more than two and a half times more likely to report high levels of customer satisfaction. The most frequently used customer marketing strategies reported were:

• Customer referrals and testimonials
• Customer user groups
• Events and newsletters

60% of survey respondents state that customer marketing is very important to their revenue; 33% believe it is “somewhat” important; 7% are neutral or think it’s not important. Although 49% of respondents see moderate or significant revenue impact, 93% agree that customer marketing efforts are important or very important.

In response to respondents requested to rank critical customer marketing skills, these are the summarized results:

• Relationship building
• Communication
• Customer service
• Digital marketing
• Creativity
• Organization
• Social media
• Selling
• Event planning

Less than half of the survey respondents felt satisfied or very satisfied with the results of their current customer marketing efforts. Clearly, there is a lot of room for improvement, concludes the report.

For additional information from influitive, please visit here.