CMO Council maps new Routes To Revenue in '09

8 Dec 2008

Despite a depressed global economy, 76% of senior marketers believe they are not realising the full revenue potential of their current customers, reports the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council in a new “Routes to Revenue” study released this week, two days ahead of its annual CMO Summit in Monterey, California.

In addition, only 46.5% say they have good insights into retention rates, customer profitability and lifetime value.

Sponsored by Ricoh/IBM InfoPrint Solutions Company, the international audit of some 650 senior marketers earlier this year, revealed that making communications more personal and relevant, as well as more targeted and timely, was among the top strategies for realising greater revenue and profitability from existing customers. Other leading strategies included addressing under-penetrated markets or new customer segments, as well as finding new ways to up-sell and cross-sell existing accounts.

The CMO Council study highlighted three key obstacles and deficiencies for not optimising the full revenue potential and lifetime value of existing customers. This included:

Lack of real-time data and analytics that captures insights from across all customer touch points.
Information not only being selectively gathered, but often inaccurate or incomplete.
Data being siloed and restricted in its availability and use across the organisation.

“It is inexplicable that the vast majority of marketers are still struggling to source and extract meaningful insights from customer data at a behavioural, transactional and account value level,” noted CMO Council executive director Donovan Neale-May. “Marketing must assert its role as the owner of both customer experience and information and apply this to devising growth strategies that leverage better knowledge of customer opportunity and potential.”

When it comes to acquiring new business, the "Routes to Revenue" study showed that global marketers have a much broader and more comprehensive set of strategies. The top six include:

Testing and launching new products aimed at specific market segments

Establishing new partnerships and revenue-sharing agreements

Stepping up demand generation and customer acquisition programs

Expanding geographical presence and intensifying international focus

Ramping up eCommerce and customer-direct communications

Restructuring or expanding channels of distribution

When asked what companies were doing to improve top-line and bottom-line performance, 40% said they were reducing head count, overhead and/or budgets. Other plans included automating complex and costly processes (38.7%), outsourcing more services and function (31.2%) and reformulating products or minimising packaging to contain cost (27.8%).

In taking a deep dive into where marketers were seeking more efficiency and effectiveness, almost 64% of CMO Council survey respondents said they were evaluating all areas of marketing spend to increase yield and accountability. Primary areas of focus included:

Bringing more discipline and rigor to marketing budgeting and spend (47.3%)
“There's a big shift to more individualised delivery of marketing messages,” noted Sandra Zoratti, VP of Strategic Business Development and Transformation for Ricoh/IBM InfoPrint. “The Routes to Revenue findings clearly underscore the value of more personalised offers and interactions across all customer touch points, particularly regular monthly communications, such as statements and invoices.”
According to nearly 60% of "Routes to Revenue" respondents, introducing better segmentation, profiling and targeting strategies topped the list of ways companies are trying to better engage core audiences. Other initiatives included:
Adding or improving database marketing systems (48.7%)
Acquiring new customer and market analytics capabilities (30.3%)
Personalising multi-channel communications and customer touch points (29.8%)
Individualising print, email, text messaging, call centre or web interactions (26.4%)
Building online customer communities and interactive channels (25.8%)
Capturing more customer information via the web and at point-of-sale (25.2%)
More information on the "Routes to Revenue" study is available at the CMO Council website at http://www.cmocouncil.org/index.asp.