Less is more was a key theme emerging from the Gartner Marketing Symposium and Expo 2023 on May 22-24 in Denver. According to John Nash, chief marketing & strategy officer at Redpoint, the lesson is that while it is still vital to create magical moments for customers and strive for customer centricity vs. customer obsession, there must be a clear value case for any marketing investment.
With stretched budgets, an inundation of customer data and fears of a possible recession, marketers are asked to get more bang for their buck, being more selective of how, when and why they engage with customers. The silver lining, though, according to Gartner, is that we may be nearing a data overload tipping point where being customer-obsessed may not be a good thing; customers are seemingly wary of brands that seem to hound them as they go about their daily lives.
As for doing less due to resource constraints, research from Gartner’s CMO Spend and Strategy SurveyOpens a new window (released at the Gartner Marketing Symposium and Expo 2023) reveals that 71% of CMOs believe they lack the budget to successfully execute this year’s strategies – and 75% said they feel pressure from other parts of the enterprise to cut their technology spending.
To address the point about data saturation, Gartner VP analyst Ben Bloom cited survey research where 72% of marketers who believe they need every customer data point to be successful also report that the more data they collect, the less benefit they see.
Carlos Guerrero, VP of advisory in the Gartner Marketing Practice, said that CMOs should be wary of increasing activity and taking on more projects, claiming that customer obsession goes to “unprofitable extremes†that customers find “intrusive.†Rather than trying to meet customers in every conceivable channel to deliver countless relevant messages, Guerrero said that marketers should instead focus on “catalytic marketing,†defined as experiences that change customers’ understanding of their own needs. Â
 See More: How Customer Journey Mapping Provides Value to Business
A Single Customer View Is Possible – and Profitable
While I agree in principle with Gartner’s message that less can indeed be more, my contention is that the reason 71% of CMOs believe they lack the budget to successfully execute this year’s strategies is rooted in a lack of capabilities.Â
Over-investments in channels, content and commerce have indeed made omnichannel orchestration and event-driven triggers exceedingly difficult, but the answer is not to double down on those investments because, in essence, what you’re doing is just creating more siloes and introducing more customer experience friction.Â
By all means, be more selective with how you’re using customer data, but with the right capabilities, it is entirely possible to break through the traditional barriers of siloed data, processes and channels of engagement to deliver what Gartner terms catalytic marketing. The right capabilities make it possible to transform CX while simultaneously increasing revenue and reducing costs.Â
 As I said in an interview at the SymposiumOpens a new window , I think one thing Gartner may have overlooked in its assessment to pull back delivering countless relevant messages is that customers have a vote in this, and they’ve made it abundantly clear that they want real-time, personalized omnichannel experiences. Our own research bears this out. In a survey we conducted with Dynata, 74% of consumersOpens a new window surveyed said that personalization that demonstrates a personal understanding was key to their connection with a brand.
A Real-time Unified Customer Profile
Shoring up the capabilities to deliver the kinds of personalized experiences that resonate with customers begins with developing a golden record, a real-time unified customer profile. A living, breathing golden record that evolves as the customer moves through a customer journey supports the concept of starting small and/or paring back; insights gleaned from valuable customer data enable pinpointing next-best actions that are more meaningful because of their relevance.Â
To Gartner’s point, you do not have to flood the zone; less becomes more by virtue of precision. By knowing everything there is to know about a customer through possessing the right capabilities (i.e., integrated data, elimination of siloes, real-time), your selectivity becomes strategic, meaning you can focus on high-value use cases from the beginning because you know what motivates a customer.
See More: How Ambitious Marketers Hold the Key to a Differentiated, Personalized Customer Experience
Orchestrating Omnichannel Experiences
A Symposium session with Prabhakar Manuel of Avis Budget Group showed the art of what’s possible when orchestrating omnichannel experiences using a golden record. According to Manuel, the unified customer profile created through the company’s customer data platform (CDP) is “the foundation for (customer) engagement,†and “the heart of everything that we do.â€
Manuel said that the company’s laser focus on transforming CX intensified post-Covid to align with consumer expectations for self-service expedience such as contactless pick-up and drop-off. To do this, the company doubled its efforts on compiling a unified, 360-degree customer view (contact data, preference data, behavioral data), knowing that a unified view would be central for seamlessly orchestrating rather complex customer journeys. Those complexities include fluctuating travel dates, multiple booking channels and frequent change requests, not to mention fleet vehicles that transmit reams of new data every second.Â
But, Manuel said, by integrating data from multiple channels to create a real-time unified profile, the company consistently delivers personalized experiences that are in the context of a customer journey. With a customer’s contact preferences, credit card information and perhaps corporate information linked to the vehicle, a customer might receive an e-receipt (or SMS) shortly after breaking a geofence when returning a vehicle to the airport. Manuel also touted the ability of the company’s call center agents to proactively resolve a customer’s situation because they have a real-time view of the customer journey, such as an agent having a transcript of a customer interaction with a chatbot that might have just taken place.
The key to enabling this, Manuel said, is to know a customer’s identity across various touchpoints. “We wanted an omnichannel engagement that is connected,†he said. “You cannot have a multi-channel approach where one channel is not aware of what is happening on another channel.â€
Manuel also said that knowing all there is to know about a customer through a unified profile has significantly improved segmentation capabilities to the point where the company is now running campaigns in days as opposed to weeks and months prior to having an integrated view.
Creating Catalytic Customer ExperiencesÂ
Lisa Bloom, CMO of Liveramp, seemed to support the view shared by some vendors at the event that a 360-degree customer view does not necessarily run counter to Gartner’s stance that “less is more†requires delivering “catalytic†experiences. Bloom said that a 360-degree customer view is essential to find the right customer at the right place in the customer journey. With that, you can then deliver the catalytic moment or experience.
Using the golden record as the foundation for customer engagement, marketers and business users of customer data have the best of both worlds, the ability to selectively hone in on high-value use cases while also providing ROI for their marketing investments.Â
Do you agree with the key points discussed at the symposium? What’s your take on catalytic omnichannel customer experiences? Share with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!
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