Columbia, Md. – September 21, 2009 – Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing database marketing agencies, announced its latest research study entitled "Integrated, Customer-Centric Marketing." Commissioned by Merkle and conducted by Forrester Consulting, the study highlights key findings from a survey involving 149 senior-level marketers from U.S. companies in industries such as consumer and high-tech products manufacturing, financial services, retail, healthcare, telecommunications and many others.
Merkle will be reviewing the findings of the research during an instructional webinar on September 29. Registration is free. To sign up or to hear the session later on demand, go to www.merkleinc.com/forresterwebinar.
The survey sought to evaluate how marketers perceive and practice "Integrated Customer Marketing" -- a term created by Merkle to describe a systematic approach to delivering customer interactions that create competitive advantage and drive shareholder value. The findings show that, while marketers typically recognize the importance of targeted, data-driven marketing programs, few actually integrate their customer data effectively and leverage that knowledge to better understand their customers to the fullest extent possible.
Findings shed light on marketers’ efforts to deploy customer-centric multi-channel strategies:
• Leaders have a customer value metric: The foundation of their approach is understanding and maximizing customer value. They have a customer value metric (80%), have a consistent framework to measure all marketing activities (94%), and only 6% say that marketing has little interest outside the marketing department.
• Marketers must customize: Only 32% of marketers say that they often tailor their communications based on a customer’s engagement with their product, service or business. And only 11% say customer engagement is the primary factor in their marketing communications strategy.
• Marketers must integrate: While many marketers report using behavioral as well as demographic, attitudinal and other segmentation approaches, only 18% say that their activities are highly integrated in that they track and measure the impact across the organization’s marketing, sales and service divisions.
David Williams, Merkle’s President and CEO said, "We are very pleased to make our newest study available to the marketing community. Given the rise of social media and proliferation of new marketing channels, consumers are expecting marketers to communicate with them on their own terms. The study’s findings may likely serve as a wake-up call to marketers who have grown complacent practicing tried-and-true, outdated approaches when the technologies and frameworks exist today to support fully integrated customer marketing. The message is that marketers must take a customer-centric approach in order to fully engage the consumer and maximize effectiveness over the lifecycle of the customer relationship."
The study is available free of charge on Merkle’s website at www.merkleinc.com.
About Merkle
Merkle is one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing database marketing agencies. For more than 20 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. By combining a complete range of marketing, technical, analytical and creative disciplines, Merkle works with clients to design, execute and evaluate Integrated Customer Marketing™ programs. With more than 1,000 employees, the privately held corporation is headquartered near Baltimore in Columbia, Maryland with additional offices in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Little Rock, Philadelphia, Seattle and Hagerstown, Md. For more information, contact Merkle at 1-877-9-Merkle or visit www.merkleinc.com.
