More Informed Marketing

According to a new survey by the CMO council, less than half of marketers polled have a good understanding of how profitable their consumers are, their lifetime value and how they might be retained. The focus tends to be on the individual campaign performance. However, it appears that the intentions are there to address this - more than 60% of the survey’s respondents put better segmentation, profiling and targeting strategies as a top priority for identifying and engaging core customers.

Other planned activities listed include:

• Adding or improving database marketing systems
• Acquiring new customer and market analytics capabilities
• Personalizing multi-channel communications and customer touch points
• Individualizing print, email, text messaging, call center or Web interactions
• Building online customer communities and interactive channels
• Capturing more customer information via the Web and at point-of-sale

The insights derived from analytics must do two things, while indicating where you are not performing as expected they must also highlight alternative paths... The essense of optimisation.