Data is the inhibitor and enabler as CMOs drive business growth

As the use of online chan­nels and plat­forms has pro­lif­er­at­ed over the past year, CMOs have played a key role in facil­i­tat­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion across the enter­prise. Hav­ing helped busi­ness­es adapt to serv­ing more dig­i­tal cus­tomers, now they are tak­ing cen­tre stage in the next key goal: cap­i­tal­is­ing on the rapid eco­nom­ic rebound expect­ed to fol­low the pan­dem­ic.

The rea­son for CMOs’ ele­vat­ed role in recent years, and increased account­abil­i­ty for busi­ness out­comes, is sim­ple – they are clos­est to one of the most impor­tant busi­ness assets today: cus­tomer data. Recent research by Gart­ner has shown a rapid and sig­nif­i­cant growth in CMOs’ invest­ment in ana­lyt­ics and data sci­ence tools and tal­ent, as quan­ti­ta­tive savvy becomes foun­da­tion­al to mar­ket­ing craft skills. But data is as much of an inhibitor as it is an enabler, and mar­keters are strug­gling to meet their tar­gets.

Salesforce’s annu­al State of Mar­ket­ing report revealed that the top chal­lenges mar­ket­ing lead­ers fac­ing are engag­ing cus­tomers in real time, cre­at­ing cohe­sive cus­tomer jour­neys, shar­ing a uni­fied cus­tomer view with data from var­i­ous sources, and con­tin­u­ous­ly inno­vat­ing. Besides tack­ling these, their key pri­or­i­ties include the improved use of tools and tech­nol­o­gy, and com­ply­ing with pri­va­cy reg­u­la­tions.

This chal­lenge around shar­ing a uni­fied view of the cus­tomer and giv­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty across an orga­ni­za­tion is only grow­ing, and data con­tin­ues to explode across chan­nels and plat­forms. In the past two years alone, the num­ber of data sources used by mar­keters to under­stand their cus­tomers and opti­mise cam­paigns grew by 50%, accord­ing to Sales­force. Iden­ti­ty man­age­ment is just one; know­ing a per­son who signed up for a company’s newslet­ter with a work email is the same per­son who reg­is­tered with its ecom­merce store using a per­son­al address.

“As parts of the world begin to enter a new nor­mal — and with employ­ees con­tin­u­ing to work from any­where — build­ing a com­plete pic­ture of each cus­tomer becomes more impor­tant than ever,” says Shan­non Duffy, exec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent of cloud mar­ket­ing at Sales­force.

“Mar­ket­ing lead­ers need to focus their inno­va­tion strat­e­gy on cus­tomer data. Right now, only one in three mar­ket­ing lead­ers is sat­is­fied with their abil­i­ty to rec­on­cile cus­tomer iden­ti­ties across data sources. Tech­nolo­gies like cus­tomer data plat­forms will help brands man­age data across any chan­nel to get that all-impor­tant uni­fied cus­tomer pro­file. And then be able to per­son­al­ize every inter­ac­tion for them based on those insights.”

While brands increas­ing­ly want to pro­vide per­son­alised expe­ri­ences, only 28% of mar­keters are com­plete­ly sat­is­fied with their abil­i­ty to bal­ance per­son­al­i­sa­tion with cus­tomer com­fort lev­els.

As we are reimag­in­ing mar­ket­ing for the post-pan­dem­ic era, it is cru­cial for suc­cess that mar­ket­ing teams dou­ble down on com­mu­ni­ca­tion with cus­tomers, telling them exact­ly how and why they are col­lect­ing and using their data, and what cus­tomers will get in return. This is now becom­ing of utmost impor­tance for brands to think long-term and invest in build­ing trust­ed rela­tion­ships with their cus­tomers.

In 2020, when assess­ing the skillset of their teams, glob­al mar­ket­ing lead­ers said that data sci­ence, cod­ing and emo­tion­al intel­li­gence (EQ) were their team’s least advanced skills. If you think about this chal­lenge of per­son­al­i­sa­tion ver­sus trust, it is a com­bi­na­tion of these tech­ni­cal and empa­thet­ic-led skills that a mod­ern mar­keter needs to be suc­cess­ful.

“One of my pas­sion projects at Sales­force is pro­vid­ing free learn­ing tools to all mar­keters to grow or change their careers, espe­cial­ly to dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties. We are build­ing on the suc­cess of our free on-demand learn­ing plat­form Trail­head this year and launch­ing a tai­lored learn­ing expe­ri­ence to help cur­rent and future mar­keters gain these crit­i­cal skills,” says Duffy.

As mar­ket­ing lead­ers are rethink­ing their entire strate­gies to cater for the all-dig­i­tal cus­tomer, they are look­ing for tech­nol­o­gy part­ners to help them be suc­cess­ful long term, achieve a more holis­tic view and evolve with their busi­ness needs. This is dri­ving a shift from point solu­tions to a more all-encom­pass­ing approach that allows both speed and scale ground­ed in the vast data col­lect­ed and acti­vat­ed by mar­keters. In short, CMOs want to sim­pli­fy their mar­ket­ing stack.

For two decades, Sales­force has helped brands build a 360-degree view of their cus­tomers, first for sales teams and cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment, and now across the cus­tomer and buy­er expe­ri­ence. While it has been a key tech­nol­o­gy part­ner, Sales­force has also been a trust­ed advi­sor on cre­at­ing the organ­i­sa­tion­al roadmap for meet­ing far-reach­ing busi­ness goals.

The com­pa­ny recent­ly launched Sales­force CDP to enable mar­keters to ingest, organ­ise, analyse and acti­vate cus­tomer data from a vari­ety of sources inside and out­side the Sales­force ecosys­tem, both in batch and via stream­ing (real-time) data inges­tion. For com­pa­nies with mul­ti­ple organ­i­sa­tions col­lect­ing and stor­ing data, the vari­ety of inges­tion choic­es allows them to eas­i­ly con­nect all these orgs and gain a com­bined view of the data for cross-team col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“We are in a unique posi­tion, because of our his­to­ry, to not only help mar­keters achieve a scal­able, sin­gle source of truth but do it in a way with trust at the core,” says Duffy. “Com­pa­nies can now acti­vate their data for per­son­al­i­sa­tion across cus­tomer touch-points, serv­ing the right mes­sage in the right moment, and on the chan­nel that indi­vid­u­als are most recep­tive to. Your inter­ac­tions become more human, build­ing a last­ing con­nec­tion with cus­tomers on their terms.”

From hun­dreds of con­ver­sa­tions every day, we know that mar­ket­ing lead­ers are work­ing tire­less­ly at the fore­front, deliv­er­ing busi­ness growth, reduc­ing uncer­tain­ty in the board­room, embrac­ing data-dri­ven deci­sion mak­ing and lead­ing their teams with con­fi­dence and authen­tic­i­ty through these times of change. We seek to empow­er them with tech­nol­o­gy and help them do the best work of their careers.

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it sforce.co/marketer

Pro­mot­ed by Sales­force