CMO Council-Sendwithus Survey Report: The Importance of Customer Relationship Marketing

Here at Sendwithus, we see our Enterprise customers struggle with complex processes that hinder collaboration between the cross-functional teams responsible for transactional, triggered, and automated email.

The result is often a failure to fully realize the power of these important post-purchase and post-signup communications to improve the customer experience and contribute to growth.

Curious about the extent of the challenges we see our customers facing, we recently partnered with the CMO Council to survey almost 200 Enterprise marketing leaders on the importance of customer relationship marketing and the operational inefficiencies that impact success.

The most surprising result is that only 13% of survey respondents are realizing the full revenue potential of their existing customers. That means a full 87% are not.

But even more surprising is that number is down from 15% in 2008, when the CMO Council last asked marketing leaders the same question.

So why, a decade later, are marketers doing worse instead of better at engaging current customers?  The answer, we believe, lies at least partially in those cumbersome processes that impede collaboration between the teams responsible for post-purchase and post-signup emails — we’re talking about order confirmations, receipts, app notifications, password resets, abandoned cart reminders, etc.

In fact, 76% of survey respondents indicate they are using highly inefficient methods of collaboration between the teams responsible for transactional, triggered, and automated emails, including stakeholders from marketing, product, IT, and engineering.

Coincidence that 87% are failing to realize the full revenue potential of existing customers while 76% struggle with inefficient methods of collaboration? We don’t think so. We believe that improving collaboration on these key touch points will improve customer relationships and significantly contribute to growth.

After all, the old marketing adage remains truer than ever today — it costs less to retain an existing customer than it does to acquire a new one.

Download the full survey report, titled Gaining Traction with Every Digital Interaction, to learn more.