We all know about the high cost of acquisition compared with retention costs.
Yet it seems that only about half of all senior marketing people know who their most loyal customers are and how best to reach out to them.
This is one of the more surprising findings of a new study carried out jointly by Acxiom and Loyalty 360 in the US. Entitled, Making Every Interaction Count: How Customer Intelligence Drives Customer Loyalty, the report was released on 26 March 2012.
The survey respondents said the biggest impediments to collecting customer insight are budget limitations (52.2%), lack of IT support (48.9%) and lack of the right tools (47.8%).
Maybe part of the problem is that the very concept of loyalty is so vague. Is loyalty defined by the number of products a customer buys or the frequency of purchase? Does it mean that a customer interacts with your brand on social media? Where does advocacy fit into the picture?
Other findings included:
- 85% of marketing execs in the survey said they have some type of customer retention strategy in place, but only one-half say those strategies are working.
- 60% said they devote less than 20% of their marketing budgets to customer retention.
Given the high cost of acquisition it makes you wonder why identifying loyal customers – and improving the customer experience for them – is not higher on the list of marketing priorities.
