Customer Marketing Benchmark Report

Resource Overview

In a September 2014 study sponsored by Influitive, Demand Metric conducted a survey to explore the resources and investment organizations are making in Customer Marketing.

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Introduction

The view most organizations have of revenue generation is pretty straightforward: generate leads, qualify them, pass them on to the sales team who then closes deals with new customers. While there are lots of intricacies and moving parts in that short process description, it is a critical process for most organizations, one that is the recipient of heavy investment and constant scrutiny. The value and importance of keeping leads flowing through the funnel is high

What sometimes gets lost in the shuffle is the revenue generated from current customers. Customer Marketing – pursuing revenue from existing customers – is often a backwater in many companies. It is done if and when there is time leftover from new customer acquisition activities.

The perceived value of hunting for new customers often exceeds the value of farming the existing customer base. Any firm’s customer base is an asset, but often an underutilized one. With some intentional care and nurturing, the yield from the farm can increase substantially. This “farming” of the customer base is called Customer Marketing, and it involves cross selling, upselling and building better relationships with established customers. Far from being a backwater, it is a proven contributor to revenue growth.

Customer Marketing as a strategy makes a lot of sense for many reasons. Firms that have the right systems in place and manage the customer experience well will have great insights into the wants, needs and preferences of their existing customers. It’s likely that something about their satisfaction level is known. Perhaps most importantly, customers have experience doing business with the firm, and most of the time some level of trust and credibility comes with that. In short, current customers can represent low-hanging fruit from a revenue perspective. But modern marketers can’t just wait for that fruit to fall into the organization’s revenue basket. A Customer Marketing strategy helps maximize the harvest from current customers.

In a study sponsored by Influitive, Demand Metric conducted a survey to explore the resources and investment organizations are making in Customer Marketing. The goal of this study was to understand the staffing, resources, activities, measurements and effectiveness of Customer Marketing as it exists today. With these insights, Demand Metric can provide benchmark data to help modern marketing organizations do a better job with Customer Marketing.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Executive Summary
  3. The Status of Customer Marketing
  4. Customer Marketing Activities
  5. Customer Marketing Metrics
  6. Importance & Satisfaction
  7. Customer Marketing Skills
  8. The Future of Customer Marketing
  9. Analyst Bottom Line
  10. Acknowledgements

  11. About Influitive
  12. About Demand Metric
  13. Appendix - Survey Background

 

Research Methodology

The Customer Marketing Benchmark Study survey was administered online during the period of August 13, 2014 through September 2, 2014. During this period, 326 responses were collected, 237 of which were complete enough for inclusion in the analysis. The data was analyzed using SPSS to ensure the statistical validity of the findings. The representativeness of these results depends on the similarity of the sample to environments in which this survey data is used for comparison or guidance.