Say hello to the new CMO. Now customer and revenue-driven, today’s Chief Marketing Officers are expected to understand complex customer data and use the latest technology to create efficient, effective sales and retention programs.

More than ever, your marketing efforts are tied to the emerging customer experience (CX) discipline, where you manage the cumulative experiences across multiple touchpoints over multiple channels over time. That’s a tall order.

Consider these 2016 trends from Forrester(1):

  • Two-thirds of CMOs are responsible for Customer Experience, tasked with aligning to a common vision across all channels.
  • CMOs are now full-fledged business partners delivering against P&L results.
  • CMOs are facing organizational transformation challenges requiring the mastery of more integrative thinking skills.

While financial and organizational responsibilities are increasingly part of the CMO’s day-to-day tasks, customer experience most certainly rises to the top of the list.

Marketing in the era of the customer means looking for ways to gain a deeper understanding of what drives your customers. Predictive analytics can help you gain the customer insights you need to make sense of—and take action on—your data.

But according to a study conducted by Radius and Demand Metric, marketers are struggling to implement this useful customer insight tool. While 44 percent of the study’s respondents claimed to understand predictive analytics, only 11 percent reported using them.

This gap, however, can be easily explained. For many companies, it’s a matter of staffing and not having the right talent on their team. Today’s evolved CMOs, however, don’t have to wait to hire data scientists. Instead, they can partner with a customer analytics software provider to fill this gap.

This strategy comes with a distinct advantage—access to proprietary tools that quickly turn disparate sources of data into the insights needed to more easily attract and retain customers.

 

Choosing an Analytics Partner

According to Forrester(2), there are about 50 software analytics vendors vying for your business. While many vendors claim to offer analytics for everyone, they typically specialize in one of the following:

  • Customer Analytics
  • Marketing Analytics
  • Vertical Specialists
  • Customer Data Management
  • Strategy Consulting
  • Advanced Analytics

With behavioral customer segmentation, churn analysis, and customer lifetime value as core competencies, Customer Analytics vendors can help you get to the single source of customer truth you need for more effective marketing.

Your Next Role: Chief Customer Obsessor

As CMOs continue to live and breathe customer experience, CEOs will increasingly demand to know customer insights before green lighting critical marketing decisions. Evolved CMOs are leveraging predictive analytics to anticipate what their customers need and the next action they will take. 

We’ve just skimmed the surface of the CMO’s role in customer insight marketing. To dive deeper into the information we’ve referenced here, read Forrester’s The Evolved CMO In 2016: CMOs Broaden Their Influence And Leadership and Vendor Landscape: Customer Analytics Service Providers, Q2 2017.

Or contact us to learn how Lityx can be your analytics partner, providing the advice and tools you need to evolve your organization’s predictive analytics marketing.

1 The Evolved CMO In 2016: CMOs Broaden Their Influence And Leadership, by Sheryl Pattek and Michelle Moorehead, July 6, 2016, Forrester

 

2 Vendor Landscape: Customer Analytics Service Providers, Q2 2017: Tools And Technology: The Customer Analytics Playbook, by Brandon Purcell, May 16, 2017, Forrester