Eighty-six per cent of senior-level marketers across the world believe creating a cohesive customer journey across all touch points and channels is ‘critical’ to business success, according to Salesforce’s 2015 State of Marketing Report.
This finding shows the industry’s shift from campaign-focused marketing to personalised one-to-one customer journeys. Marketers cited ‘mobile apps’, ‘marketing analytics’ and ‘CRM tools’ as the technologies that are most useful when creating a successful customer journeys.
Sixty-eight per cent of the 5000 marketers surveyed said they have integrated mobile into their marketing strategy, an increase of 20 per cent since last year. Sixty-five per cent of marketers plan to spend more on mobile push notifications, a 32 per cent year-over-year increase. Fifty-eight per cent now have a dedicated mobile marketing team, up from 35 per cent since 2014’s report.
In addition, 64 per cent of marketers now view social as a ‘critical enabler of products and services’, up 25 per cent since the 2014 report. Consequently, 70 per cent said they would increase spending on social media advertising.
Meanwhile, email remains a vital part of the digital marketing mix. Seventy-three per cent agree email is ‘core’ to their business. Ninety-two per cent said email produces ROI, with 47 per cent using click-through rates as the key metric to measure success, while 43 per cent measure conversion rate.
Scott McCorkle, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, commented on the findings: “The future of marketing is building cohesive customer journeys across sales, service and marketing interactions. It is more important than ever to connect with each person interacting with your brand, and personalise journeys based on their actions and preferences
“Our 2015 State of Marketing report shows that this will be the year that businesses connect the dots accordingly and implement a truly multi-channel approach to personalise each customer’s engagement.”
