• by Ray Schultz , January 14, 2021

Most firms can’t implement real-time customer insights to improve engagement, judging by Market Survey Research: The Biggest Opportunities For Mobile Brands in 2021, a study by CleverTap.  

In depends on how you define real-time, but 16.34% say they can do it in hours, 12.42% in minutes and another 9.15% in seconds.  

More disappointingly, 22.22% claim that they can respond in the same week, and 11.11% say they can do it the next day. Another 14.38% say they can react within the same day. 

And 14.38% say they “currently cannot implement real-time insights but plan to.”

That puts a damper on the growing hype about real-time CX, and does not point to triggered email communications.  

On the same track, the respondents list these customer engagement pain points: 

• Lack of immediate stickiness — 44%
• High uninstall rate — 38% 
• Low frequency of returning customers — 36% 
• Lack of long-term loyal customers — 31%
• Long periods of time between individual customer purchases — 27%
• Generic customer experiences — 22% 
• Low revenue per customer — 20%
• Low total amount spent per transaction — 14% 

What is causing these challenges?: Companies also complain about the following internal process pain points: 

• Not enough quality customer data — 42%
• Customer outreach restricted to limited marketing channels — 37%
• Heavy reliance on manual processes — 30% 
• Lack of resources to implement customer data into business strategy — 29%
• Lack of real-time data — 25% 
• Lack of skills to analyze customer data — 23% 
• Customer data is siloed within separate marketing channels — 22%
• Lack of communication across departments—20%
• Failure to integrate new technology with legacy systems—16% 
• Regulatory compliance — 10% 

Despite those issues, 60.78% of the companies polled saw higher revenue in 2020 than they did in 2019, 21.57% were flat and 17.65% suffered a decrease.  

Those most likely to see an increases were in the gaming (88.9%), Edtech (87.5%) food delivery service (77.8%), Fintech (64.3%) and ecommerce (57.1%) sectors.  

In contrast, 77.8% of travel marketers suffered a decrease, and only 22.2% saw an increase. 

Email is maintaining a steady second-place position among engagement channels used by companies, second only to push notifications:

• Push notifications — 77% 
• Email — 65% 
• In-app messages — 63% 
• Google Ads — 61%
• SMS/Text — 61%
• Facebook audiences — 56%
• Company website — 53%
• Desktop and mobile web pop-ups — 24% 
• Mobile app Inbox — 24% 
• Browser web Push — 23% 
• Web-hooks — 19% 
• Desktop & mobile exit-intent — 13% 
• Customers change to native app/web design — 12% 

Of the companies surveyed, 55.64% send between one and five emails per week, while 18.05% send between six and 10, 3.76% send between 11 and 15, 5.26% send between 16 and 20 and 5.6% send between 21 and 25.

Another 12.03% send no emails at all. 

What are their goals in using customer data? They are: 

• To understand more about customers in order to tailor campaigns for different groups — 75%
• To build logical and effective customer journeys — 63%
• To retain long-term loyal customers — 52% 
• To reduce immediate customer churn — 48% 
• To understand different customer buying behaviors and create proactive campaigns — 47%
• To personalize customer messages — 46% 
• To understand how to contact customers, e.g. channels — 37% 
• To understand when to contact customers — 37% 
• To develop new products and services — 34%

CleverTap surveyed 150 mobile and marketing executives.