New Research Finds Marketers Struggling to Keep Pace with Consumers’ Cross-Channel Interactions

A new study by Forrester Consulting finds 48 percent of interactive marketing executives rank understanding customers’ cross-channel interactions as one of the top challenges facing marketing today.

“As a result, marketers are unable to deliver optimized, relevant, and customized digital experiences for customers.”

The June 2011 study commissioned by Forrester Consulting on behalf of ExactTarget entitled “The New Campaign Management Mandate”, finds the lack of cross-channel insights result in brands interacting through disconnected channels that fail to deliver seamless brand experiences and the real-time, relevant dialog consumers expect.

“Interactive marketers are adept at planning and executing campaigns across each individual interactive channel, but continue to grapple with creating a unified view of customer interactions across channels,” states the study. “As a result, marketers are unable to deliver optimized, relevant, and customized digital experiences for customers.”

Based on a survey of nearly 160 marketers, the study identifies the key challenges marketers face to meet the new reality of cross-channel engagement and includes persona-based recommendations to help marketers evolve their interactive campaign management capabilities.

Key recommendations include:

• Enable real-time management – Employ technology to enable real-time multichannel messaging, data analysis and monitoring.
• Enhance relevance and personalization – Use data to create and deliver unique brand experiences with the help of marketing technologies such as Web analytics, customer data hubs and campaign management suites.
• Improve data and process integration – Manage and understand data in real-time from all channels to develop a single view of the customer and their cross-channel interactions.

“Marketers have long relied on multiple channels to drive engagement, but today marketing requires a new approach – one built on a single view of the customer that puts real-time interaction over static channel-focused campaigns,” said Tim Kopp, chief marketing officer, ExactTarget. “We believe the ExactTarget Interactive Marketing Hub provides the solution organizations need to plan, manage and engage in real-time across all online channels.”

Unveiled in September 2010, the Interactive Marketing Hub is a cross-channel interactive marketing platform that enables marketers to engage in real-time marketing, consolidate all data to create a common view of the consumer and deliver targeted, permission-based interactions across email, mobile, social media and the Web. Currently in beta with more than 500 of the world’s leading brands, the Interactive Marketing Hub is an online marketing suite that provides a platform for marketers and technology providers to connect disparate data sources to power more relevant real-time cross-channel marketing. The Interactive Marketing Hub and suite of applications for content creation, real-time segmentation, reporting and automation will be generally available later this year.

To download “The New Campaign Management Mandate” study, visit www.ExactTarget.com/Mandate.

About ExactTarget

ExactTarget is a leading global provider of on-demand email marketing and interactive marketing solutions. The company’s Interactive Marketing Hub ^TM technology provides organizations a single solution to connect with customers via email, integrated text messaging, landing pages and social media. Supported by collaborative global services teams, ExactTarget’s technology integrates with more sales and marketing information systems than any other in the industry, including Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Omniture and Webtrends among many others. ExactTarget powers permission-based multichannel communications for thousands of organizations around the world including Expedia.com, Best Buy, Aurora Fashions, Papa John’s, CareerBuilder.com, Gannett Co., Inc., The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, The Home Depot and Wellpoint, Inc. For more information, visit www.exacttarget.com or call 1-866-EMAILET.