Consistency and Measurement STILL Elude Marketers
A new research study just came out from Forrester and it seems that the proliferation of marketing channel options has made consistency of messaging, relevance through personalization and measurement of marketing overall much harder than it was previously, even with the advent of advance campaign management software tools.
Some other trends worth noting include:
* Longer term marketing partnerships — over 40% remain with the same partner for more than 3 years.
* Marketers use select channels like email (84%), direct mail (66%), and web site (55%)
* Ease of integration and costs determine marketing software chosen
Some interesting revelations from the survey:
* Even though retention is key to marketing today, few practioners say they are good at managing customer churn.
* The areas needing the most improvement were with contact optimization, online/offline integration, and inbound/outbound integration.
From this research, it sounds like direct marketers are poised to become even more dominant in their role as marketing integrators who know how to measure and get to customer relevancy through a comprehensive testing plan.
