Most B2C companies rely on basic consumer information and purchase history to inform their marketing strategies. Yesmail and Gleanster conducted a survey and found that senior marketers lack the data-driven insights that would allow them to send more personalized messages to their customers. Download this report to learn key findings from the study, including: -21% of marketers say they have an excellent understanding of customers' channel preference -Less than half of marketers use data from sources that enable better targeting, like social media (38%) -Just 21% use life-stage triggers such as birthdays or having a baby to trigger automated campaigns

2. Contents
Executive Summary
pg. 3
Key Findings
pg. 4
Chapter 1: The Customer Lifecycle Experience
pg. 5
Chapter 2: Customer Managed Relationships
pg. 9
Chapter 3: Overcoming Challenges with the Customer Lifecycle
pg. 16
Chapter 4: The Future of Customer Lifecycle Engagement
pg. 21
Key Recommendations
pg. 26
Research Methodology
pg. 30
pg. 2

3. Executive Summary
Rapid growth in digital channels has forever transformed the way B2C organizations target and
engage profitable customers. This demands new ways of engaging customers (both online
and offline) and a customer-centric approach. For this reason, B2C organizations continue to
place heavy emphasis on improving the customer experience with the goal of building long-term
profitable relationships with customers. In fact, the customer experience is consistently ranked a
top two source of competitive advantage for B2C companies. But the real question is, what are
companies doing about it . . . and is it sufficient?
To find out, Gleanster and Yesmail conducted a comprehensive study to ascertain the state of
customer engagement among customer-facing mid-to-large organizations. Conducted between
March and April 2013, the study surveyed 100 senior marketers from B2C mid-to-large ($10M to
$1B+) companies with online and offline sales models. It turns out, managing and optimizing the
customer lifecycle is a top two strategic priority for marketing in 2013. But a closer look at current
customer engagement tactics revealed marketers continue to rely on legacy marketing tactics and
struggle to incorporate critical cross-channel data to inform customer messaging and offers. Even
more shocking, however, marketers think they are doing a good job at managing the customer
lifecycle; eight out of 10 respondents think they 1) know their customers sufficiently well and 2) do
an adequate job using data to target messages and offers to current customers.
The average organization relied on little more than basic customer profile data and purchase
history to target and segment customer communications. According to the research, nine out of 10
organizations collected a tremendous amount of customer data that marketers simply don’t have
access to when crafting customer communications (behavioral data, web analytics, online/offline
profitability, life stage attributes, sociographic data, channel preferences, propensity modeling,
etc.). Marketers need to champion change and demand access to a full and comprehensive view
of customer profile data that can be used to deliver relevant, timely, and intimate communications
to remain competitive now and in the future.
pg. 3

4. Key Findings
Key Findings
This report focuses on marketers at B2C companies that leverage a multi-channel strategy to sell
products and services online and/or in brick-and-mortar environments.
Key Takeaways Include:
Anatomy of a Top Performer
Gleanster uses 2-3 key performance indicators
(KPIs) to distinguish “Top Performers” from all other
companies (“Everyone Else”) within a given data
set, thereby establishing a basis for benchmarking
best practices. By definition, Top Performers are
comprised of the top quartile of qualified survey
respondents (QSRs).
The KPIs used for distinguishing Top Performers
focus on performance metrics that speak to yearover-year improvement in relevant, measurable
areas. Not all KPIs are weighted equally.
The KPIs used for this Gleansight are:
• Growth in annual revenue
• Email click-through rates
• Optimizing the customer engagement strategy is a top two strategic imperative for B2C
marketers and the No. 1 perceived source of revenue growth over the next five years.
Marketers acknowledge they must attract and keep profitable customers at all costs. That
means re-thinking the traditional customer relationship through real-time access to customer
data that truly informs and triggers hyper-targeted communications.
• Respondents generally believed they are effectively segmenting and understanding
the customer. But current customer engagement tactics revealed eight out of 10
organizations failed to utilize available customer data that could play a critical role
in improving personalization and relevance. For example, 53% of marketers indicated
they have an excellent understanding of past purchase behavior and 83% believe they are
“effective” at delivering targeted offers and messages using predefined triggers. However, just
two out of 10 B2C organizations incorporated channel preference data, household composition
data, propensity scores, and behavioral data in targeted customer communications. In fact,
the most common form of data used to personalize customer communications was past
purchase data. Just because you know what your customer buys doesn’t mean you know your
customers.
• Marketers rely on multiple channels to send communications (email, website,
social media, direct mail, mobile, etc.), but they aren’t using data to coordinate and
orchestrate communications across multiple channels. Organizations need to message
to customers, not to the channel. That demands a preference-driven, centralized approach
to outbound communications. More importantly, it demands the use of online and offline
customer data in multi-channel strategy.
• Limitations with existing tools (42%) and fragmented marketing systems (34%) are
cited as the top two challenges with sending personalized customer communications.
Fragmented systems lead to fragmented data silos and difficulty managing the accuracy
of customer information. Marketers need to develop an integrated approach to powering
customer communications – from data to creative, execution, and measurement.
pg. 4

5. Chapter 1:
The Customer Lifecycle Imperative
B2C organizations consider the customer lifecycle to be a top
two strategic priority. Marketers think they are effective at
customer management, but only a small subset of existing
customer data is used to optimize messages and offers. It’s
time for a reality check.

6. Chapter 1
Strategic Priorities for Marketing
#1 Priority
#2 Priority
Increase Revenue
Extremely Important – 72%
Important – 15%
Less Important – 9%
Not Important – 4%
Retain profitable
customers
Extremely Important – 48%
Important – 36%
Less Important – 13%
Not Important – 3%
The Customer Lifecycle
Imperative
#3 Priority
Reduce costs
Extremely Important – 30%
Important – 42%
Less Important – 20%
Not Important – 8%
Marketers are divided on customer
engagement priorities
Very High
48%
45%
41%
Moderate
Increase Customer Loyalty
Increase cross/up-sell revenue
Improve relevance of marketing offers
36%
40%
47%
Customer intimacy forms the basis for long-term customer
relationships for successful organizations. That should come as
no revelation. Relevance and personalization in messaging and
offers have long been vital to attracting and retaining customers
and meeting revenue targets. Today it’s widely accepted that
building loyal and profitable customers is largely a function of
targeting the right individuals with the right message through
the right channel and the right time. The challenge lies in
translating the cliché into action. The research suggests that
mid-to-large B2C companies struggle to create customer
intimacy. But marketers have a difficult time putting their finger
on the issues because limitations in current systems and the
availability of customer information cripple marketing success.
In the hyper-competitive B2C environment, the battle
for market share and revenue growth will be fought with
outstanding customer experiences and satisfied lifelong
customers. Customer profitability is a top two priority for
marketers in 2013, second to revenue growth. (See Figure
1.) Respondents demonstrated steadfast commitment toward
optimizing and improving the customer lifecycle through
relevance and personalization. To do this, marketers must tap
into readily available customer data to inform relevant and
timely communications. But that has long been the goal for
marketers, and the survey results reveal that many companies
still struggle to liberate fragmented customer data. In fact,
a small percentage is actually used in ongoing customer
communications.
Figure 1
Customer profitability is expected to drive topline revenue growth. Customer profitability is a
top two strategic priority for marketing. But B2C
marketers struggle to bridge the gap between
creative strategy and customer data, leaving
massive opportunities for improvement.
pg. 6

7. Chapter 1
How effective are you at delivering targeted offers and
messages using predefined triggers?
The research suggests B2C organizations are collecting and
purchasing tremendous amounts of critical information about
customers (what they buy, how they shop, where they buy,
when they buy, channel preferences, life stage attributes,
income, household makeup, etc.), but this information is not
being used to inform customer communication strategy even
though it already exists internally. Marketers struggle to act on
available customer data. But here’s the kicker: marketers don’t
realize it. Respondents generally believed they are doing a
good job at customer engagement. (See Figure 2.) Marketers
framed their success around the optimized use of “readily
available” data – which accounts for about one-third of the data
that should be informing customer engagement strategy.
12%
%
33
Very effective
Somewhat effective
88%
Not effective
55 %
Which of the following data sources / inputs, if
any, do you currently use as the basis for
creating targeted email marketing campaigns?
Customer profile and purchase history
67%
Customer feedback / satisfaction
59%
Point of sale (POS) transaction
56%
Campaign response data
54%
Third-party geo-demographic data
51%
Customer loyalty scores
46%
Likelihood-to-purchase scores
41%
Web browsing / online behavioral
41%
Social data
38%
Customer value scores
36%
Third-party behavioral / attitudinal
36%
Store loyalty card data
36%
Propensity-to-recommend scores
It is imperative for marketers to tap into available data to
personalize customer communications. Research has
consistently shown that relevance drives revenue. Marketers
need to tap into available data such as life stage, purchase
behavior, online browsing history, likelihood-to-purchase
scores, and profitability models to deliver hyper-targeted
messages across customer defined preferred communication
channels.
28%
Figure 2
Use of existing
customer data
(Not so effective)
Organizations think they are doing a good job
at targeting customers, but fail to leverage a
comprehensive source of data in customer
engagement. Marketers’ perception of
effectiveness is skewed by limited access to
data.
0% 25% 50% 75%
pg. 7

8. Chapter 1
Marketers think they are using data effectively
for customer lifecycle optimization.
Think again.
Organizations leverage a small
fraction of the available data on
customers for ongoing customer
communications.
Marketers overwhelmingly indicated they have sufficient
knowledge of their customers and perceive themselves to be
effective at targeting offers and messages. However, current
use of available customer data in targeted campaigns tells
a different story. B2C marketers actually access a subset
of the information that is collected on customers in ongoing
customer communications. In practice, marketers rely heavily
on purchase behavior and basic customer profile information
to optimize the customer lifecycle. It’s not that marketers are
naive or ill informed, it’s that the perception of success is
skewed by the availability of customer data. Eighty-six percent
(86%) of marketers indicated they believe they can generate
more revenue from customers if they have access to a more
complete picture of customer attributes.
pg. 8

9. Chapter 2:
Customer Managed Relationships
Do you really know your best customers? Which segments are
the most profitable? Do you adapt the customer lifecycle by
segment? Don’t constrain your customer strategy based on the
availability of customer data.

10. Chapter 2
Effective at knowing the optimal message and time
12%
%
35
Very effective
Somewhat effective
Not effective
53 %
Could you do a better job at customer
engagement with access to more
comprehensive data sources?
Yes
The State of Customer
Lifecycle Engagement
The research findings suggest that marketers are confident
that the current tactics used to deliver targeted customer offers
at the right time with the right message are working well for
customer engagement. Only 12% of respondents self-reported
that they are “not effective” at delivering offers using predefined triggers or knowing the reactivation likelihood for each
customer. In general marketers perceive customer engagement
strategies to be effective.
But a closer look at current tactics suggests marketers place
too much weight on transaction-oriented data. The reality is,
respondents did a good job using this transaction and basic
profile data, which is typically easily accessible through CRM.
Almost nine out of 10 respondents believe they can be doing
better at customer engagement if they have access to the right
customer data. The state of customer lifecycle engagement
reveals a number of glaring opportunities for immediate
improvement.
Figure 3
Perception of effectiveness with current data.
88% of marketers believe they are effective at
customer communication based on the right
message and right time, yet 86% readily admit
they can do a better job if they have access to a
more robust customer data repository.
86 %
pg. 10

11. Chapter 2
Marketers struggle to inform customer
lifecycle strategy with customer data
If the goal of customer engagement strategies is to build more
intimate and relevant relationships with profitable customers,
then marketers should be laser-focused on gaining access to
a more comprehensive view of customer data. This data forms
the foundation for more meaningful offers and communications.
Respondents were far too wedded to leveraging data about
what customers purchased rather than data about who
customers are or why they purchased.
“My biggest challenge is that I don’t
know personal attributes about my
customers, so my targeting strategy
is very basic.”
VP Marketing
Retail
While any attempt to target customers based on past purchase
behavior or basic demographic attributes is better than nothing,
the overwhelming focus on improving customer engagement
between now and 2014 suggests B2C marketers see obvious
room for improvement. Actually, Top Performing marketers are
four times more likely to use propensity-to-buy models, channel
preference information, and household composition data to
customize messages for hyper-targeted customer audiences.
Personalization based on past purchase history or profile
information is a parity play, not a competitive differentiator.
Figure 4 illustrates the self-reported level of understanding
marketers perceive themselves to have with respect to different
forms of customer data. Note that, overall, marketers admit to
having limited access to data that could be used to build one-toone relationships with customers. It is imperative for marketers
to expand the availability of relationship-oriented data and use
this data to optimize their customer communication strategy.
pg. 11

12. Chapter 2
Relationship-Oriented
Customer Data
5
10
GOAL
9
6
7
3
4
No Understanding
Excellent Understanding
8
1
2
Transaction-Oriented
Customer Data
1. Customers’ demographic makeup
2. Customers’ past purchase behavior
3. Customers ranked by “value”
4. Customers’ wants, needs, likes and
interests
5. Customers’ channel preference
6. Propensity to buy
7. The profitability of cross channel
shopper/buyer
8. The profitability of online versus
offline customers
9. Customers’ level of participation in
social media
10. Customers’ household composition
(marital status, number of children, etc.)
Limited understanding of
relationship-oriented
customer data
Excellent understanding of
relationship-oriented
customer data
Limited understanding of
transactional customer data
Figure 4
Level of understanding about customers.
Marketers primarily rely on transaction-oriented
data for segmentation. Building long-term
customer relationships demands a better level of
understanding about customers.
Excellent understanding of
transactional customer data
pg. 12

13. Chapter 2
The survey results also revealed marketers desire more
automation around response-based engagement. It’s about
achieving relevancy at scale. Unfortunately, managing the
customer lifecycle in an environment where data is fragmented
or generally unavailable in the marketing communication
platform is cumbersome, expensive, and time-consuming. This
calls for a rules based and automated approach. Many midto-large organizations rely on multiple creative agencies and
marketing technology partners, making automation difficult to
impossible. Orchestrating a cohesive brand experience across
multiple channels (online and offline), multiple agencies, and
fragmented technologies is no easy task. It’s no surprise,
therefore, that companies frequently rely on legacy tactics for
longer than they should.
The battle for market share will be forged on customer
relationships, not customer transactions. Building relationships
demands intimate knowledge of customer needs, wants, and
desires – something only one-third of marketers confidently feel
they understand about current customers. As such, technology
will play an enabling role in taking robust customer data and
multi-channel preference data and automating response-based
communications with customers. In the future marketers won’t
send campaigns; they will trigger dialogues.
pg. 13

14. Chapter 2
42%
34%
Limitations in
marketing tools
Poor data quality
Marketers blame technology limitations, but
incomplete access to customer data would
cripple success with the most robust platform.
Marketers rank limitations with marketing tools (42%) as the
most significant barrier to sending personalized customer
communications. This is followed by fragmented systems (34%)
and poor data quality (34%). Ideally, customer lifecycle strategy
should be informed by a comprehensive view of customers.
Purchase behavior is valuable, but it informs marketers about
what a customer bought, not necessarily who they are. Do they
have a family? Do they engage in social media; and if so, which
sites? What is their annual income? Are they profitable? Why
do they prefer to purchase online or offline? Answers to these
questions demand a comprehensive and centralized strategy
for aggregating available customer information (and possibly
even augmenting customer records with third-party data). While
technology can be a barrier, it is of secondary concern to the
availability of information.
Email is still the most prevalent channel.
34%
Fragmented marketing
systems
Email is just as relevant today as it was 10 years ago. In fact,
100% of the organizations that participated in the survey
use email and the web as a primary means of customer
communication. What has changed considerably is the role of
email in multi-channel engagement. Email is no longer just a
communication platform; it’s a vehicle for engaging in highly
personalized communications with customers. Email is also
the glue that binds together mobile, social, and other channels
and forms the basis for building intimate relationships with
customers. Eighty-four percent (84%) of respondents actively
engage with customers via social media.
Figure 5
Top three challenges with sending personalized
customer communications. Technology and data
quality are perceived to be core challenges.
Marketers should be identifying access to
existing customer data as a top three concern.
pg. 14

15. Chapter 2
Customer segments should dictate customer
strategy.
Primary
Deploy more effective loyalty
programs
63%
Implement reactivation programs
for stagnant customers
61%
Understand regional or value
differences
39%
Understand differences in
customer sub-populations
37%
Fine-tune acquisition and
targeting strategies
32%
Create relevant offer/channel
strategies
28%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Secondary
70%
80%
Companies that sell online and offline (in brick-and-mortar
stores) need to explore buying trends within customer
segments to identify unique customer segments based on
behavior, not just demographic attributes. According to the
research, marketers tend to have an inflated sense of “knowing
how to target the online/offline buyer.” Aggregate online
and offline customer purchase behavior can be misleading
because it normalizes the most profitable and least profitable
customer segments. But online and offline data about unique
sub-populations of customers may reveal missed opportunities
or even unprofitable customer segments that are a drain on
performance.
When asked about the primary goals of the current customer
segmentation strategy, marketers indicated loyalty and
retention are primary concerns. The secondary concern is
the segmentation tactics that ultimately enable improved
loyalty and retention. (See Figure 6.) Do you know who your
most profitable customers are? Do you understand regional
or value differences? Can you fine-tune offers by channel or
propensity to purchase? The average B2C marketer from the
survey placed more weight on the goals of segmentation with
respect to loyalty programs, and less weight on the use of
segmentation to define unique customer segments or for finetuning customer targeting strategies.
Translating theory to action
Figure 6
Goals with customer segmentation. Marketers think they
have a good understanding of the demographic make-up of
customers (See Figure 4). But, they contradict themselves
when asked about the goals of segmentation. Marketers
seek to deliver more relevant, targeted, and intimate
communications but place more granular understanding as a
secondary concern with segmentation.
The research revealed a path of least resistance for optimizing
customer engagement within mid-to-large B2C companies.
Organizations must let customer data dictate strategy, mitigate
the use of legacy customer engagement tactics, expand the
use of customer data to optimize the customer lifecycle, and
focus on managing customer relationships (not customer
transactions).
pg. 15

16. Chapter 3:
Overcoming Challenges with the Customer
Lifecycle
Legacy processes plague the customer engagement strategy.
How do B2C marketers intend to overcome these challenges?

17. Chapter 3
CRM data
67%
15%
Customer feedback /
satisfaction
59%
21%
Point-of-sale (POS)
transaction
56%
10%
Campaign response data
54%
18%
Third-party geodemographic data
51%
15%
Customer loyalty scores
46%
18%
Likelihood-to-purchase
scores
41%
23%
Web browsing / online
behavioral
41%
33%
Social data
38%
31%
Customer value scores
36%
33%
Third-party behavioral /
attitudinal
36%
33%
Store loyalty card data
36%
5%
Propensity-to-recommend
scores
28%
31%
Currently use
Plan to use
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Figure 7
Sources of customer data. The top two sources
of customer data used for segmentation include
transaction data.
70%
40%
Purchase and profile data
60%
30%
20%
10%
Moving Beyond Legacy
Practices
The research findings revealed four main areas marketers
need to focus on in order to achieve success with customer
lifecycle engagement: data, multi-channel strategy, technology,
and segmentation.
Expose new sources of customer data to the
customer segmentation strategy
Surprisingly, less than half of marketers incorporate data
from some of the most prevalent sources of information; for
example, 41% of marketers incorporate web browsing and
online behavior data in targeting criteria (although one-third of
respondents plan to leverage this source in the future). Web
data is a rich source of insight about the sub-populations of
customers and buying triggers.
According to Figure 7, transaction data remains a consistent
theme with respect to currently available data (POS systems,
CRM contact information, etc.). One-third of marketers plan
to incorporate social data and third-party augmented data in
customer communication strategy. Data append and scrubbing
services are critical to the customer engagement strategy,
but marketers still struggle to manually upload and scrub
customer data, particularly when it is fragmented across one or
more campaign management tools. Twenty percent (20%) of
respondents augment in-house customer data with third-party
data at a customer level and 24% augment customer data at an
aggregate level (such as industry or region).
0%
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of respondents currently purchase
or plan to purchase third-party data to augment customer
records. However, this data can also be used to define hypertargeted customer segments and communication strategies;
but it’s largely used to validate data integrity for transactionbased customer communications. In addition, marketers have
a good understanding of customer profitability at an aggregate
level, but know very little about profitable individuals outside of
transaction data. Maximizing up-sell and cross-selling revenue
demands a more granular view of customers.
pg. 17

18. Chapter 3
Overcoming challenges with multi-channel
marketing
Email
Website
100%
100%
Six out of 10 respondents admit to being moderately effective
at knowing the optimal channel to send an offer or message to
by customer. But there is a huge difference between sending
communications across multiple marketing channels, and
orchestrating lasting relationships via multiple channels.
Customers have little patience for inconsistent or confusing
brand communications. According to Gleanster, Top Performing
organizations consistently rank the online customer experience
as a top two source of competitive advantage.
Social Media
Direct Mail
Marketers need to do a better job collecting channel preference
information from customers and delivering optimized
communications via preferred channels. This demands an
integrated communication platform whereby centralized
customer data can be used for trigging information. Figure 8
shows the channels respondents regularly used for customer
communications. Notice in obvious disconnect between multichannel communications and the availability of channel data for
segmentation and customer preference. Only 46% of marketers
actively leverage data from social media, direct mail, and mobile
to inform email marketing communications to customers.
84%
Mobile
63%
Figure 8
Use of channels for customer engagement.
Data from communications via social, direct,
and mobile is not available for segmentation and
targeting.
64%
Marketers need to consider a response-based multi-channel
marketing strategy whereby communications are triggered
based on customer behavior and delivered across preferred
communication channels. Mid-to-large enterprises therefore
need to do a better job collecting and aggregating cross-channel
data on individual customers (such as social profiles, mobile
opt-ins, etc.). In addition, website and email properties should
be optimized for mobile access through responsive design
and CSS design templates. Mobile represents a huge source
of traffic for today’s B2C organizations. But poorly optimized
mobile experiences don’t take advantage of this critical customer
engagement medium.
pg. 18

19. Chapter 3
48%
Web analytics integration
Marketing technologies are impeding
personalization
47%
46%
46%
45%
Third-party data append/
customer data integration
Data quality
(merge/purge and data cleansing/
hygiene list management)
Multichannel campaign configuration
(e.g., email, mobile, social)
Respondents were asked about their level of satisfaction with
respect to current marketing technologies across a variety of
categories and processes. The results showed marketers are
generally unsatisfied with existing capabilities, the majority of
which revolve around data integration and data management
challenges.
Respondents overwhelmingly indicated that limitations within
their existing marketing tools pose the biggest challenge with
respect to sending personalized customer communications.
This is followed by fragmented marketing systems, which
present serious challenges in managing disparate data
sources. According to Gleanster, the average B2C organization
supports three to five marketing technologies. Disparate
technologies lead to data silos and a general lack of cadence in
marketing communications. (See Figure 9.)
Data mining/customer segmentation
Percentage of marketers that were "currently
satisfied" with capability
Figure 9
Limitations with existing marketing technologies.
Respondents are looking to marketing
technologies to help mitigate the challenges with
data quality and making data actionable.
pg. 19

20. Chapter 3
Request-based triggers
50%
(customer inquiries, responses to calls-to-action)
Transaction triggers
40%
(new product purchase, change in purchase
patterns, account deposits, etc.)
Online behavioral triggers
37%
(browsing patterns, requests for information, etc.)
Expiration triggers
29%
(warranty date info, renewal date info, product
maturity date, etc.)
Threshold triggers
Insight delivered, relevant, real-time customer
message streams
The research findings reveal that mid-to-large organizations
need to be more strategic about the types of triggers that
initiate customer communications. Respondents indicate that
the No. 1 source of customer interaction is the customers
themselves. Very few marketers are actively exploring life
stage and behavior-based triggers that provide a vehicle
for targeted up-selling and cross-selling opportunities.
Furthermore, marketers are not taking a proactive approach to
building relationships with customers and recommending nextbest actions based on customer preferences.
22%
(exceeding a spending or usage limit,
consumption amount, etc.)
Life stage triggers
21%
(home purchase, birthday, new baby, car
purchase change in marital status, etc.)
Credit bureau triggers
8%
(credit card and mortgage accounts, changes
to credit scores, etc.)
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Underutilized, huge potential
Figure 10
Current use of triggers. Customer outreach and
transaction data are the most commonly used
triggers. Augmenting existing customer records
with new data about customers would offer new
opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell to existing
customers.
pg. 20

21. Chapter 4:
The Future of Customer Lifecycle Engagement
Exploring the four imperatives for customer engagement

22. Chapter 4
Stagnant
Data
Real-time
Data Access
Data
Campaign
Centric
Customer
Centric
Insights
Non-integrated
Multi-channel
Integrated
Multi-channel
Connected
Analytics,
Strategy, and
Creative
Consumers have blurred the lines between online and offline
engagement and multi-channel communications. It doesn’t
matter how marketers “want” to communicate; it’s about how
consumers are willing to engage. And these days capturing
mindshare demands highly intimate conversations with
customers. As such, there are four strategic imperatives
that marketers must embrace to meet the exceedingly high
expectations of customers and win share of wallet in today’s
hypercompetitive business environments.
Strategy
Disconected
Analytics,
Strategy, and
Creative
Where are we headed?
Creative
Figure 11
Customer engagement imperatives. A
comprehensive strategy should include data,
insights, strategy, and creative.
pg. 22

23. Chapter 4
4 Imperatives for Customer
Engagement
Marketers need to wake up and smell the data that is right
underneath their noses. B2C marketers are at a crossroads,
and the competitive edge goes to the organizations that move
at the speed of the customer. Yes, it’s going to be painful to
divest of legacy processes and solutions. But it’s going to
result in more revenue from customers and improved customer
satisfaction – which all marketers rank as a top two priority.
From stagnant data to real-time data access
Customer data is in a constant state of flux. Consider: This
year there will be more than 40 million residential moves in
the United States. There will also be 4 million births, 2 million
marriages, a million divorces, a million retirements and 2.5
million deaths, give or take a few hundred thousand. And that
barely scratches the surface on the dozens, if not hundreds,
of fields of customer information that can help drive improved
marketing relevance.
The goal is to move away from data silos to a centralized
model where customer attributes are accessible in real time
and available for segmentation, campaign triggers, and
customer insights. Customer data can be physically moved to
a centralized datamart, or a federated model can link data from
disparate systems and make it available to marketers.
pg. 23

24. Chapter 4
Request-based triggers
50%
(customer inquiries, responses to calls-to-action)
Transaction triggers
(new product purchase, change in purchase
patterns, account deposits, etc.)
40%
Online behavioral triggers
37%
(browsing patterns, requests for information, etc.)
Threshold triggers
22%
(exceeding a spending or usage limit, consumption
amount, etc.)
Life stage triggers
21%
(home purchase, birthday, new baby, car purchase
change in marital status, etc.)
Credit bureau triggers
Sometimes, it seems, marketers are laser-focused on
the channel and campaign strategies while losing sight of
customers’ wants, needs and preferences. You message to the
customer, not to the channel. It’s about using customer data
to listen to customers’ needs and wants instead of guessing
based on purchase behavior or demographic attributes. Listen
to customers, engage them and understand their preferences
by communication channel, communication frequency, and
interests. Then activate customer data to deliver real-time
didactic communications. Top Performers achieve superior
performance by showing customers they are listening, and
they are constantly hungry for information that can inform
personalized communications.
8%
(credit card and mortgage accounts, changes to
credit scores, etc.)
Currently used
From campaign centric to customer centric
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Are you listening to your customers?
Figure 12
Marketers rely on response-based, transaction,
and online behavior triggers, but there is limited
use of event-based triggers.
pg. 24

25. Chapter 4
Nonintegrated multi-channel to integrated
multi-channel
Companies need to break down and integrate channel-specific
silos in order to deliver seamless customer experiences and
create more profitable customer relationships. This means
gaining an understanding of which channel, or combination
of channels, will be most efficient and effective in eliciting a
favorable response from different segments. Further, they
need to be able to centrally manage the design, execution and
measurement of marketing campaigns across a multitude of
both offline and online channels.
Connecting analytics, strategy, and creative
Effective marketing campaign strategy and creative
development don’t happen in a vacuum. Rather, they are
informed by analytics. Past campaign performance combined
with customer profile information should serve as the basis for
customer targeting and engagement. Infusing a high degree
of analytical rigor into the marketing campaign process is key
to driving relevance and personalization and ensuring that
campaigns achieve optimal performance. Like channels, which
have too often have been treated as standalone elements of
customer communications, analytics, strategy, and creative,
need to come together to form a coherent whole.
pg. 25

26. Key Recommendations
pg. 26

27. Key Recommendations
Fear complacency and legacy practices. Then
commit to overcoming that fear.
Like it or not, your customers shape how they evaluate
great customer experiences by their interactions with your
competitors and companies in other industries. The research
reveals two classes of B2C firms: those that have taken
an active approach to customer lifecycle management and
those that have continued to rely on tactics that increasingly
deliver sub-par results. The bottom line is that widespread
complacency with respect to customer engagement boosts
Top Performing results. Organizations that transform customer
data into more meaningful dialogues with customers will enjoy
a competitive advantage over complacent competitors. What is
more, if organizations achieve relevance at scale with respect
to customer engagement, it means customer data is informing
automated and pre-configured communications with customers
at the right time and in the right channel. That frees marketers
to focus on message creation, creative strategy, and extracting
customer insights from a more comprehensive view of the
customer.
Most marketers and senior leaders avoid the elephant in the
room by focusing on what they perceive themselves as doing
right – “we use customer data to inform customer engagement
strategy.” But the nature of the data used represents less than
one-third of the data that should be used.
• Challenge the assumption that your organization is
doing a good job at customer engagement.
• The data suggests most organizations have room
for improvement.
• Consider how much data is actually collected about
customers and develop a short list of prioritized
data that marketing could use to improve customer
intimacy and deliver more targeted communications
to customers.
Unlock existing customer data, make it
actionable
The research showed that too many marketers rely exclusively
on basic profile, demographic, and transaction information
for customer targeting and offer optimization. Three out of 10
marketers actively leverage social media data, loyalty card
data, customer value scores, third-party data, and propensity
scores. That’s an alarming statistic given the fact that eight out
of 10 marketers are engaging in social media and other critical
sources of customer information. So the data clearly exists, but
it’s not being used effectively to inform customer strategy.
While existing technology platforms are perceived to be
limited with respect to data management and segmentation, it
stands to reason that access to a more comprehensive view
of customer information should help extract more value out of
existing campaigns – even with legacy technologies. Consider
building a business case for the type of data marketers need
access to and the types of decisions that could be developed
with access to this data.
In many cases, a strong tangible business case can be
developed around a lift in customer lifetime value or, better yet,
cross-selling and up-selling revenue. These tangible metrics
should be viewed as opportunity costs to the organization.
If your organization doesn’t have an appetite for large-scale
change, start small and champion a single initiative that
leverages new sources of customer data. Look for ways to
prove the value of more comprehensive customer data in
the form of revenue lift, customer conversion, and customer
satisfaction scores.
pg. 27

28. Key Recommendations
Engage senior leaders in the discussion.
There isn’t a single CEO on the planet who doesn’t care
about improving the customer experience, but nobody wants
to deliver the message that perhaps the organization should
be doing A LOT more with respect to customer lifecycle
optimization. But that’s exactly the message that needs to be
delivered.
The decision to improve customer lifecycle engagement will
require senior-level support and a champion for change in the
following areas:
• Augmenting customer data with new sources of
demographic, sociographic, and life stage information
• A liaison role with IT to champion customer data
integration and data-quality initiatives
• A practical perspective about the real cost of legacy
marketing technologies and an educated perspective
on embracing a customer lifecycle solution that
bridges the gap between creative, insights, execution,
and measurement
• Identifying sources of critical customer information and
developing a strategy for making the data accessible
for customer segmentation and offer optimization
pg. 28

29. Key Recommendations
Customers' household composition
27%
14%
20%
7%
29%
4%
32%
3%
26%
3%
21%
2%
29%
2%
35%
2%
Which customers are most valuable
43%
0%
Customers' past purchase behavior
53%
0%
Customers' demographic makeup
42%
Challenge traditional perspectives on target
customers
0%
Customers' level of participation
in social media
The profitability of online versus
offline customers
Demographic and psychographic
attributes
The profitability of the cross channel
shopper / buyer
Customers' channel preference
When customers are most likely
to purchase
Customers' wants, needs, likes and
interests
Excellent Understanding
No Understanding
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Marketers are limited by what they perceive to be successful
customer engagement tactics. Research suggests the
current view of customers is often limited, leaving marketers
lacking insights about customer desires and channel
preferences. Top performing marketers are seven times
more likely than all others to engage in loyalty programs and
propensity to purchase modeling. Research has consistently
proven that relevance drives revenue for organizations.
Therefore, increasing the level of personalization in customer
communications should result in improved cross-selling and upselling revenue. Given the fact that customer profitability and
revenue are top two marketing priorities for all respondents,
building a businesses case for improving customer
engagement is largely a function of aligning existing targets
and management objectives with the opportunity cost of doing
nothing.
60%
20%
10%
0%
Figure 13
Extent to which marketers perceive the
organization has a clear understanding of the
following. Alarmingly few marketers admit to
knowing customer channel preferences.
pg. 29

30. Company Size
Large ($100M to $1B) 77%
Medium ($10M to $100M) 13%
Very Large (More than $1B) 10%
Research Methodology
Between March and April of 2013, Gleanster conducted a
survey capturing current customer engagement practices from
100 senior level marketers across key industries including
(Retail, Financial Services, Insurance, and Healthcare).
Targeted industries had a propensity for high volumes of
customer interactions, multi-channel communication strategies,
as well as online and brick-and-mortar sales models.
Gleanster used key performance indicators (YoY revenue
growth, click-through rates, customer satisfaction, and
customer profitability) to distinguish Top Performers (defined
as the top 25% of qualified survey respondents) from Everyone
Else (the bottom 75%).
Financial Services (27%)
Consumer Brand (17%)
Industries
Healthcare (9%)
Food and Beverage (7%)
Technology (6%)
Automotive (5%)
Insurance (4%)
Telecommunications (4%)
Retail (3%)
Apparel (2%)
Ecommerce (2%)
Education (2%)
Media (2%)
Pharmaceutical (2%)
Travel (1%)
Other (7%)
pg. 30

31. Gleanster
This study was developed in collaboration with
Gleanster and Yesmail. Yesmail sought to validate
market trends identified by common unmet needs
and wants from their clients – specifically among
mid-to-large B2C organizations. Yesmail engaged
Gleanster for their expertise and third-party unbiased
perspective around the trends that are currently
shaping and molding customer lifecycle management
strategy in mid-to-large B2C companies.
Gleanster hosted and promoted a survey between
March and April 2013. The study captured insights
from 100 senior marketers in B2C mid-to-large
companies with online and offline sales models. The
results benchmarked current customer engagement
tactics and validated the hypothesis that mid-to-large
organizations struggle to realize relevance at scale
with respect to customer lifecycle engagement.
Gleanster is a new breed of market research and advisory
services firm. Its larger, more comprehensive “Gleansight”
benchmark research reports and concise, more bite-sized
“Deep Dive” analyst reports highlight the experiences of top
performing organizations: why they invest in technology,
how they overcome challenges, and how they maximize the
value of their investments. Gleanster also aggregates outside
thought leadership in the form of vetted white papers and
research reports from third-party sources, including those from
technology solution providers – who, for their part, can create
and maintain their own Vendor and Solution Showcases on
Gleanster.com to help further educate the marketplace. For
more information, visit www.gleanster.com.
Yesmail
We power intelligent customer interactions. We give you the
insights to recognize and understand your customer to deliver
contextually relevant digital communications – while respecting
their preferences and privacy. We help marketers evolve
their customer relationships through intelligent interactions
via technology, insights and services in a near real-time
multichannel environment. We help you compete in the age of
the customer. For more information, visit www.yesmail.com.
pg. 31