OREANDA-NEWS. April 01, 2015. Oracle and The CMO Club today released the findings of a study that shows CMOs in every industry are struggling to deliver a consistent customer experience across all customer touch points, and that organizations are not getting the most out of their marketing technology platforms. To help CMOs address this complex challenge, The CMO Club and Oracle Marketing Cloud worked with the heads of marketing from major brands, including American Express, Gap, Hilton Worldwide, and PetSmart, to develop “The CMO Solution Guide to Leveraging New Technology and Marketing Platforms.” The guide is one of the first to be developed in collaboration with CMOs, shares insights into marketing technology challenges, and offers best practices for leveraging emerging marketing technology to deliver a consistent, personalized and engaging customer experience.

To help meet skyrocketing boardroom expectations around financial performance and unprecedented customer expectations, the CMO’s role is expanding to encompass a broader customer experience remit, which requires a clear vision, greater collaboration with technology counterparts, and breaking down organizational silos to meet consumer expectations. “My job now is to look at the decision journey of the customer and optimize based on what the customer wants,” said Mary Ann Fitzmaurice Reilly, senior vice president, Marketing Integration & Customer Insights, American Express.

“CMOs are increasingly responsible for delivering the right customer experience at every touch point,” said Nadine Dietz, CMO of The CMO Club. “Marketing automation helps deliver consistent experience at scale, but requires the right mix of technology, analytics, people, and processes for success. Given the sea of technology options available and monumental integration challenges faced while implementing marketing solutions, we felt it was time to issue a Solution Guide for CMOs from CMOs to collectively support each other in this shared mission."

The study found that optimizing the customer experience across all touch points, including marketing, sales and support, was the number one priority for CMOs. Yet, only 13 percent of the 110 CMOs surveyed said they are able to truly deliver a personalized and engaging customer experience across channels. Additionally, 21 percent did not know where to start in terms of understanding a customer’s end-to-end experience with their brand, and said they needed help evaluating marketing technologies to be sure they are aligned to the organization’s goals.

Marketing and Technology Best Practices

The CMO Solution Guide to Leveraging New Technology and Marketing Platforms outlines five solutions from CMOs for CMOs to better leverage technology and enhance the customer experience. Solutions include:

Be the customer champion every step of the way: CMOs need a clear understanding of how customers and prospects interact with their brands at every stage, from consideration, to engagement, to purchase and advocacy. They are the voice of the customer, translating insights to actions across every organizational function.

Become BFFs with your CIO: Of those surveyed, only one of 110 respondents referenced a positive relationship with their CIO. A critical action item for a CMO is to reach out to their CIO to collaborate, plan, and integrate activities.

Co-design the optimal customer-driven technology roadmap: CMOs need to develop an understanding of the technology that is required to deliver the optimal customer experience and co-design the technology roadmap with the CIO, allowing flexibility in design to incorporate new technology and third party applications.

Rethink your marketing organization and processes: There are many formal and informal opportunities to create collaboration across marketing departments and technology. As critical as it is to building the right culture and cross-functional environment, it’s also critical to hire the right talent.

Establish a system for continuous improvement: The customer is outpacing companies in terms of their expectations for personalized service compared to a company’s ability to act on the information – both technologically and analytically. The CMO of today must – in addition to being agile – be open to taking chances and remain risk receptive.

“Most brands and marketers are only utilizing 15 percent of technologies and capabilities they are already paying for, so the focus should not be in adopting more technologies, but in applying them to solve business needs and inspire behaviors,” said Mayur Gupta, global head, Marketing Technology & Innovation, Kimberly-Clark.

“Every business talks about focusing on the customer, but few actually deliver. Why? Simply put, digital marketing technology alone can’t tell a compelling story. It requires the right mix of people, process, and technology to be successful,” said Andrea Ward, vice president, Marketing, Oracle Marketing Cloud. “Customer centricity and marketing simplicity is at the heart of the Oracle Marketing Cloud, which enables marketers to focus on what they do best – getting compelling and relevant content in front of the right audiences across any digital channel in a way that drives actions.”