What High Performing Marketers Did to Win in 2016

As we enter 2017, we thought it’d be helpful to revisit key highlights from our latest research report, the “2016 State of Customer Journey Marketing”.

This report draws from a survey of 505 US-based marketing decision makers, which was designed to discover where they were investing in 2016, what strategies they adopted to achieve growth, and which marketing tactics and channels produced results.

The bottom line: Customer journey marketers are winning

Seventy-one percent of high performers have mapped their customer journeys, with an astonishing 88% say their customer journey initiatives are driving better acquisition, satisfaction, and retention.

Marketers who have defined a customer journey initiative report many benefits, including faster revenue growth, positive business results, and a more personalized customer experience.

Eighty-four percent of respondents said that marketing owns or is a key stakeholder in their company’s customer journey initiative, with 66% of high performing marketers leading the charge. This speaks to a significant shift in the modern marketer’s role to primary business architect and revenue driver.

Where did marketers invest in 2016?

As 2016 came to a close, marketers were investing first in online ads (30%) and customer events (also 30%), followed by email marketing, social media ads, and content.

High performers focused more on the customer experience than ads by investing in customer events and marketing (35%) as well as referral and loyalty programs (29%) to get ROI from creativity, proof points, and buyer incentives to drive referrals and repeat purchases.

High performers also invested heavily in analytics and attribution (19%), meaning that as budget allocation shifted from advertising to customer-focused marketing, marketing leaders chose to hire math men over mad men to analyze behavioral and purchasing data to accurately attribute what content and campaigns generate ROI.

Download the report for the complete 2017 investment priorities list.

Marketing automation adoption took off

Marketing automation software (MAS) is widely seen as critical to communicating with customers and prospects in a scalable, yet personalized manner.

Until recently, many companies had yet to implement it. In fact, research completed in mid-2014 suggested that MAS adoption hovered around just 3% for non-technology companies. The complexity, high costs, and arduous implementation of traditional MAS vendors have warded off most companies, particularly SMBs, from adopting the technology.

But in 2016, adoption of MAS took off. Fifty-three percent of marketers surveyed (including 71% of high performers) said they use marketing automation to nurture leads and personalize their customer’s experience. Cost, not lack of awareness, is now the main impediment of use.

Which automated customer journeys were effective?

High performers said marketing automation’s biggest impact was on lead generation (32%). For example, the Corporate Mobility Solutions (B2B) unit of ride-sharing service Lyft reported a 600%+ increase in leads in 2016 by using Autopilot connected to Salesforce to automate the follow up, qualification, and routing of new web and content leads.

The second most valuable use of marketing automation was for enticing satisfied one-time buyers to purchase again (23%). For example, popular B2C services like the flower delivery service BloomThat tailors their new user experience based on the number of times their customers have purchased.

Other successful nurturing approaches to acquire and onboard new users included:

• Triggering a cadence of helpful content designed to help users reach “Aha!” moments
• Personalizing content based on past behavior (in-app, web-based, or purchase)
• Crafting a compelling multi-channel experience (email, in-app, SMS, web) and focusing on vertical or functional use cases (industry, need, department)

When asked to rank their top-performing automation journeys, marketers said generating new leads by emailing purchased lists, automating sales outreach, nurturing warm leads, onboarding new users and reactivating cold leads were most effective.

Nearly everyone was personalizing

Eighty-one percent of marketers in this study used data to personalize their marketing and were 54% more likely to say it resulted in a better customer experience.

Most used basic contact details or firmographic data, like name, company, or industry, to segment and personalize their newsletters or promotions for better results.

Rich personalization was still in its infancy, with only a third of marketers using online behaviorial data, integrated CRM data like lead status’ or sales-entered data (19%), or in-app usage (13%) to deliver more granular, relevant experiences and content.

So what were the benefits of this more personalized marketing?

Not surprisingly, the more personalized the marketing, the better the customer experience they delivered: 83% of those using in-app data and 79% of those using online behaviorial data believed that personalization improved the experience, compared to 54% of those who did not.

Wrapping it all up

High-performing marketers are attaining 80% or more of their lead or performance goals this year and are growing revenue by 58% faster on average. This is consistent regardless of their company size or business focus, with high performers outperforming their peers by as much as 122% in enterprise and 74% in B2C-facing companies.

Their intense focus on mapping the customer journey, investing in brand, and utilizing marketing automation to stay in touch more regularly and across multiple channels is paving the way.

For marketers, the winds of opportunity are blowing in 2017. While the relationship between online brand and customer experience has always been mutually reinforcing, never has the latter been so publicly visible and instantly impactful. If you create an authentic and memorable online customer experience, you can expect to reap the benefits of shares, shoutouts, and no-cost growth.

Interested in learning more? Download the full report and share your feedback and thoughts in the comments section below.

Originally published at blog.autopilothq.com on November 17, 2016.