Let’s kick off with a double shot from Forrester, the customer obsession-focused analysis firm, busy as ever producing reports. First up, the Global CMO Study from Forrester/SiriusDecisions, looking back at successes and challenges in brand building in 2019.
Among the key findings, from a survey of 358 B2B CMO respondents:
- There has been a shift in priorities towards selling into new markets (new industries, new regions), requiring a shift to focus on unfamiliar audiences
- Selling to new buyers or buying centers remains a very close second
- The two factors most influencing marketing strategy across business of all sizes are the need to focus on customer experience, followed by the need to adapt to changing economic conditions
- Marketing planning and strategy are taking priority over lead management when it comes to enhancing processes
- The two key trends which emerge are building a “purpose driven” brand, and adopting AI to promote personalization at scale
- Despite all this, it still looks like most CMOs will be making use of the resources they have rather than growing their teams.
And we double dip with a new B2C report, Privacy in 2019: The Year in Review. The key takeaways for marketers are that:
- Privacy is becoming a cross-functional commitment, rather than just compliance-based
- Marketers need a seat at the table, or they risk having privacy decisions imposed on them
- Privacy can be a customer experience opportunity: for example, cookie consent banners are often the first interaction with customer; they need to be on-brand and easy to understand.
It’s also clear that, following GDPR and CCPA, self-regulation is no longer an option. The Data Protection Officer and Chief Data Officer roles are growing in significance, while the CMO is under scrutiny as head of a high risk department.
For the big beasts of the jungle, like Facebook and Google, the bad news is that privacy concerns give a new edge to antitrust investigations.
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A major client of mobile marketing platform Vibes saw a major increase in customer engagement, through acess to Infutor’s ID Max solution. Let’s break that down.
Infutor offers a range of data identity solutions. ID Max provides identity resolution across multiple touchpoints, with “as little as a single identifier.” Through an integration, Vibes gives its customers access to Infutor’s identity resolution capability, leading to enhanced profile matching and segmentation.
Sounds good, how about a result? Vibes customer Home Depot reports a 238 percent increase in customer engagement through limiting their inquiry form to one single data point; enough to match a customer identity.
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Let’s exit blowing our own trumpet. Since 2013, the DMN Marketing Hall of Femme has honored some of the most exceptional women in marketing. We are open for nominations for 2020, and we also urge you to draw our attention to Women to Watch, which highlights marketers who are high-flyers at early stages in their careers. Here’s the page with all the details.
