Marketers who have adopted multichannel marketing practices (i.e., integrating interactions with customers across digital, social, mobile, and offline channels) are recording solid business benefits across key metrics, including shorter sales cycles and higher ROI from marketing investments, according to a report conducted by Forrester Research on behalf of Sitecore.
Moreover, such marketers are more likely to report a hardy appetite for new technologies, as well as stronger alignment with their technology departments.
Below, additional findings from the study titled "The Multichannel Maturity Mandate."
Multichannel marketing is gaining in popularity: 40% of surveyed marketers assess themselves as mature practitioners of multichannel marketing, 40% are in transition to the approach, and only 5% have no plans to implement multichannel marketing.
Such mature practitioners of multichannel marketing are improving tactical results which, in turn, are driving strategic outcomes:
- 48% have increased impressions more than 15%.
- 43% say they've gained more than 15% in customer satisfaction scores.
- 40% are generating more than a 15% improvement in marketing-attributed revenues.
- 24% report a 15% reduction in average sales cycle length.
- 34% report more than a 15% increase in return on marketing investment.
Technology Adoption
Mature multichannel marketers tend to aggressively adopt technology, and work in close partnership with their technology teams.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of mature multichannel marketers say they are at the forefront of technology adoption, compared with 42% of other marketers who say them same:
Similarly, 56% of mature multichannel marketers report an "excellent" relationship with IT (information technology) departments, and characterize the relationship as one in which IT "understands our requirements and we almost always achieve our technology objectives," compared with 28% of other marketers who say the same.
Mature multichannel marketers also tend to report better collaboration with their sales colleagues—from executing field programs to working jointly on collateral and messaging—the study found.
Room for Improvement
However, marketers need to better optimize multichannel customer engagement models to increase marketing performance: 77% say they would likely drive more sales and profit by evolving into an effective multichannel organization.
Moreover, 35% of marketers say they lose business because they are not able to integrate customer interactions across digital, social, mobile, and offline channels.
About the data: The commissioned survey, conducted by Forrester on behalf of Sitecore, is based on a poll of 226 marketing professionals across a wide range of industries and geographies, in December 2011. Survey participants included marketing decision-makers in both B2B and B2C organizations with 100 or more employees.
