SOURCE: CMO Council

October 09, 2008 09:05 ET

New Research by CMO Council Reveals Companies Are Failing to Realize Customer Revenue Potential

CMO Council Unveils Preliminary Findings of New Study on Maximizing Routes to Revenue™

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - October 9, 2008) - The shift to Individualized Relationship Marketing (IRM) is one of the key preliminary findings from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council's new thought leadership initiative, "Precision Promotion: Timely, Targeted and Trackable," sponsored by the InfoPrint Solutions Company, a joint venture between IBM and Ricoh. Using more personalized, relevant and precise customer communication is a key strategy marketers intend to leverage to achieve greater revenue and profitability from existing customers.

The research is part of a multi-faceted program aimed at exploring strategies and techniques for customer revenue optimization, including integrating transactional print and electronic communications with personalized promotional marketing offers. To date, more than 600 sales and marketing professionals have completed the survey that focuses on the challenges, solutions and new strategies for realizing greater bottom line growth through deeper, more targeted communications with customers.

"Top-line growth mandates, inflationary pressures and a more constrained economic environment are challenging marketers to explore every possible area of customer revenue optimization and marketing efficiency," said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. "By combining new technological delivery mechanisms with good old-fashioned marketing savvy, companies can better sustain current business relationships while exploring new routes to revenue."

Among the key findings:

--  Maximum revenue is still out of reach: Over 76 percent of marketers
    surveyed felt that they were not realizing the full revenue potential of
    their current customers. Over 10 percent claimed to not know at all.
--  Strategy is getting personal: Messaging that is more personalized,
    relevant and precise is the top strategy marketers will deploy for
    achieving greater revenue and profitability according to 60 percent of the
    respondents. Marketers will also look to find new ways to up- or cross-sell
    current accounts (45 percent), address under-penetrated markets or new
    customer segments (41 percent), and will use more efficient channels or
    alternative media to engage (32 percent).
--  Bribery won't lead to loyalty: As marketers look for new routes to
    customer loyalty, providing new inducements and incentives to do business
    will probably not factor into the strategic roadmap (9 percent of
    respondents).
--  Good news for database marketing solution providers: Marketers will be
    introducing better segmentation, profiling and targeting strategies (60
    percent of respondents), adding or improving database marketing systems (49
    percent) and acquiring new analytics capabilities (30 percent) to better
    target and engage.
--  Better news for direct marketing solution providers: Marketers also
    indicate continued investment in personalizing multi-channel communications
    (30 percent) and individualizing print, email, text messaging, call center
    or web interactions (26 percent).
    

"The opportunity to directly engage with consumers and present them with meaningful promotions, messages and information could not hit businesses at a more critical time," said Sandra Zoratti, Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions for InfoPrint. "Solutions like TransPromo and multi-channel personalized communications have the ability to cut through the clutter of today's irrelevant direct mail with targeted content that sends the right customer the right message at the right time."

At Bertlesmann Direct North America, operators of direct-to-consumer media company Columbia House, personalization and direct communications and promotions to customers is key to success. "I feel that wherever we've been able to personalize a message we've always done better than just a mass approach, always," said Patrick Adams, SVP of Interactive Customer Marketing. "Whether that be a reply card that gets inserted into a bi-monthly mailing or an email that says 'Hi Patrick' versus 'Hi Customer' or 'Hi Member' or nothing. Even with something as little as that, we always see an increase in response and in engagement."

Jeff Meyer, SVP of North America Event Marketing & Sales for Feld Entertainment, which produces Ringling Brothers and Disney on Ice, said, "I think if we don't go that route we're all going to be in trouble. It's only going to help us as time goes on. The more personal and relevant we can be with our messaging to our consumers the better off we're all going to be. I think that's going to make a profound impact on our business."

Sponsored by InfoPrint Solutions Company, the Precision Promotion research initiative includes a series of online member engagements, qualitative interviews, audits and dialogues that look at ways to realize greater business value from existing customer relationships, distribution channels, derivative products, as well as new and adjacent markets or product offerings. The comprehensive report, expanding on the initial key findings, will be released in early December, with detailed discussions and best practices presented at the year-end CMO Summit Elite Retreat (www.cmosummit.org) on December 10 and 11, 2008 in Monterey, California.

About the CMO Council

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council's 3,500 members control more than $90 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 6,000 global executives across 57 countries in multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Brand Management Institute, and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). More information on the CMO Council is available at www.cmocouncil.org.

About InfoPrint Solutions Company

InfoPrint Solutions Company, headquartered in Boulder, Colo., brings to market the advantages IBM and Ricoh have in the development, manufacturing, marketing and building of strategic solutions for customers, creating a growth-oriented global enterprise that is strategically focused on the output market.

The InfoPrint Solutions Company portfolio includes solutions for production printing for enterprises and commercial printers, as well as solutions for office workgroup environments and industrial segments. The company offers customers the highest quality output solutions that optimize productivity by providing efficient workflow and, at the same time, delivering low cost of ownership and high return on investment. The heritage of InfoPrint Solutions Company includes the development of the IBM Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) Architecture -- now an industry standard -- and Intelligent Printer Data Stream (IPDS), which has since become the standard for mission critical business printing. The company also leads the industry in print management solutions with both InfoPrint ProcessDirector and InfoPrint Manager. Please visit www.infoprint.com for more information.