Report: “Customer-Obsessed” Marketers See More Overall Success | B2B Marketing
Not all marketers are “customer obsessed,” or hyper-focused on their target audience, but new research shows that those who are tend to see more overall success.
Forrester Consulting and Adobe recently conducted the “Email Marketing Can Launch Customer Obsession” report and found that 45 percent of marketers are at least “customer aware,” while 12 percent are “customer obsessed.” About 22 percent of respondents who fall into the latter category said that they have exceeded their revenue goals three years in a row or more. This was more than the “customer committed (15 percent),” “customer aware (9 percent),” and “customer naive (2 percent)” groups of marketers.
“In addition to greater revenue, more customer-obsessed firms report higher customer satisfaction scores, differentiate from competitors, innovate, and accelerate with digital than respondents who are committed, aware or naive,” wrote the authors of the report.
In terms of leading down this pathway, the research suggests that email marketing may be the key. About 91 percent of “customer obsessed” respondents said that they use their email marketing program as a strategic asset for innovation, and 50 percent use email to test and learn what products or promotions customers like. Thirty-four percent use email to collect customer insights that they use in other programs.
Marketers Continue to Rely on Email to Achieve their Top Goals
Previous research shows that regardless of their level of customer obsession, marketers overall are turning to email to achieve their objectives.
The Manifest recently conducted the “State of Email Marketing in 2018” survey to determine how frequently marketers turn to email. Most businesses (69 percent) said that they spend time and money on email marketing.
Companies send a variety of emails, but product/company updates (69 percent), promotional emails (69 percent), newsletters, (68 percent), and event invitations (65 percent) are the most popular.