CMOs: Personalized Communications Not Measured, Underutilized

Inadequate customer data is the key obstacle facing top marketing executives in their adoption of personalized communication techniques, according to findings from “The Power of Personalization” global survey, issued by the CMO Council, MarketingCharts writes.

(See chart of key obstacles.)

About half of the chief marketing officers surveyed report having only “fair” to “poor” knowledge of their customers, complicating campaign design and implementation.

Moreover, a surprising 38 percent of survey respondents said they didn’t even know whether personalized communications had outperformed traditional mass marketing tactics.

Nevertheless, more than 55 percent of respondents plan to allocate 10 percent or more of their marketing budgets toward personalized communications in 2008, despite the reluctance to declare past personalization efforts successful.

Additional Findings

• Despite marketers’ increasing interest in personalized communications techniques, levels of adoption are relatively low - 43.5 percent indicated only a “low” usage of personalized communications in their customer acquisition and relationship management programs (see chart).
• 55.1 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their 2008 marketing budget allocations for personalized communications by more than 10 percent (view chart).
  • Another 25.3 percent said they plan to allocated more than 20 percent of their marketing budgets to personalized communications.
  • Another 21.8 percent said they were undecided on allocations.
• In terms of gauging the success of personalized communication initiatives, top measures of program success included conversion and close rates, quality and volume of leads, customer feedback, email opening and forwarding rates, and website traffic and pageviews.
• Data issues are central to the challenge facing marketers that are embracing personalized communication strategies (see first chart, above):
  • 49.1 percent of respondents blamed “inadequate systems and infrastructure” for limiting personalized communication initiatives.
  • “Lack of customer data and insight” and “cost and complexity” were also cited as major contributing factors, by 46.2 and 43 percent of respondents, respectively.
• Among the company divisions maintaining data used in personalized marketing initiatives:
  • Sales and customer relationship management (47.8 percent)
  • Marketing and research groups (40.4 percent)
  • Customer service and support (30.1 percent)
  • IT organization (28.4 percent)

MarketingChart has more findings, including winning strategies for personalized communications.