Premium loyalty provider Clarus Commerce was named in the November 2020 Gartner Marketing Technology Vendor Guide.

According to the report, “Loyalty marketing is used to increase wallet share and retention among existing customers as well as attract new customers. Common loyalty marketing platforms support programs that help drive retention and acquisition of customers such as loyalty cards, membership rewards, discount clubs, advocacy, promotions/offers, referrals, and other tactics. These platforms may also enable general-purpose personalization through the construction of a unified customer profile and drive decisioning capabilities around targeted offers. Managed services play a significant role in large enterprises for technology deployment as well as ongoing loyalty operations such as program management and execution.”

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It also states that, “65% of respondents to Gartner’s 2020 CMO Spend Survey report being involved in the marketing technology (martech) selection process. CMOs feel pressure to advance their team’s martech maturity, but marketers report their organizations only use, on average, 57% of their martech stack’s available capabilities.”

“Organizations have overlapping solutions or tools not being used to their full potential”, the report says.

“The martech vendor landscape is highly fragmented,” the report states. “Many vendors offer overlapping solutions, contributing to marketer confusion over where and when to best obtain core functionality through the addition of dedicated tools.”

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The report gives recommendations that “as a CMO responsible for emerging trends and technology:

• Audit your existing martech assets and capabilities against your business goals. Identify gaps and areas of overlap and develop a strategy to acquire and integrate solutions calibrated against goals.
• Hire or assign a marketing technology leader to own the martech vision and roadmap, evaluate solutions, and partner with other areas of the business.
• Lean on martech providers for ongoing training, support, and strategic services. Regularly re-engage with vendors and other relevant partners to ensure new people on your team can quickly ramp up and deliver results with martech tools.
• Factor in existing vendor relationships, resource availability, flexibility requirements, and IT collaboration to determine whether you should take a best-of-breed or integrated suite approach to acquiring (and using) martech.

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