The circumstances of 2020 brought to a head the quagmire that has been brewing for marketing leaders over the last five years: Chief marketing officers need to drive customer obsession at their firms, rather than just guiding ad buying and promotions. That means putting the customer at the center of everything you do: leadership, strategy, and operations.
Spend on loyalty and retention marketing will increase by 30%as CMOs assert control over the full customer lifecycle.
Reinvention of themselves, their teams, and the marketing function will be the theme for successful CMOs in 2021. We expect these CMOs to create new commercial and delivery models in order to keep their companies solvent. They will suit up with their teams to do the hard work, not just overseeing it from a distance.
If they haven’t already, leading CMOs will integrate marketing and customer experience in the coming months. Segregating acquisition from everything that happens after a prospect completes a purchase — product utilization, customer service, retention, advocacy — was always a bad idea. Now, pandemic conditions make this disconnect perilous. Disjointed experiences cost millions and lose customers — they are the antithesis of customer obsession. Growth comes from continued use of a company’s offering, so it’s imperative to focus on acquiring customers who will stick around for the long haul.
Marketers will reemphasize the value of their loyalty programs and will mature from frequency-based rewards programs to full-fledged loyalty programs. Already, media money is shifting into retention methods such as email, customer service, and the creation of products that drive growth: We predict that spend on loyalty and retention marketing will increase by 30% in 2021.
Article based on Forrester Predictions 2021
