Merkle Q3 2020 Customer Engagement Report Explores Gaps in the Delivery of Full Customer Experiences

Report highlights aspects including the scalability of the modern marketing technology platform and real-time versus relevant-time experiences

Merkle, a leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company, released its Q3 2020 Customer Engagement Report. The report explores the modern marketing technology platform, how it is implemented, and how marketers feel their platforms deliver engaging customer experiences. Merkle’s research also explores the balance of real-time versus relevant-time activations of data.

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According to the report, marketers are generally happy with their current platforms and latest purchases, but many may not be using them to their full potential. Seventy-eight percent of marketers say their current platforms are delivering the expected ROI, but 68 percent state they need to build custom platforms to implement their marketing strategies. The top two reasons respondents prefer custom-built platforms versus off-the-shelf platforms are scalability across the organization and more robust features and offerings. This reveals where marketers may be seeing gaps or inefficiencies in their ability to deliver the full customer experience.

Most marketers realize the significance of real-time data, with 90 percent stating it is important. However, fewer put it into practice, with only 25 percent having a distributed streaming platform leveraged throughout the enterprise. This demonstrates how marketers struggle with the orchestration of data in real time to deliver the customer experience. Additionally, 89 percent of marketers say their current marketing technology enables omni-channel experiences and 88 percent say their most recent technology purchases have met their needs.

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“Marketers are buying marketing technology tools that replace or expand existing technology to upgrade their ability to serve the true customer experience,” said Craig Dempster, global CEO at Merkle. “As consumers become increasingly digital and demand timelier and more relevant brand interactions, the need for modern marketing technology powered by first-party data has grown. This new wave acknowledges that customer experiences are happening in real time and that the modern platform involves multiple technologies to fully produce this experience.”

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