Annual guide offers insights into three essential areas including consumer data, measurement, and long-term loyalty.

Merkle, a leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company, has unveiled its 2022 Customer Experience Imperatives. The executive guide is designed to help brands identify the key strategic considerations that will shape the year ahead and provide business leaders with actionable insights to create competitive advantage through marketing. This year, the Imperatives explore three themes, including data, measurement, and commerce’s impact on loyalty, and discuss how brands can approach each of these to stay ahead of the curve within their industries.

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“At Merkle, we are dedicated to helping brand leaders understand the role customer experience plays in driving their business forward. In the coming year, establishing deeper and more rewarding relationships with its customers will be a necessity for any business to achieve its goals,” said Michael Komasinski, global chief executive officer at Merkle/CXM. “The 2022 Customer Experience Imperatives push brand leaders to think differently about their business approach. Through a strong customer experience strategy built around data, measurement, and loyalty, brands can take steps to maximize the depth of their customer relationships and, as a result, advance their business to new levels.”

For more than a decade, the Customer Experience Imperatives have provided business leaders with insight into what outputs and metrics matter most as organizations continue to build out their capabilities and data platforms. The key themes outlined in the 2022 Imperatives, which are critical to helping marketers maximize customer experience and loyalty, are:

1. Expand the Vision for Customer Data – Data is the core asset underpinning the way brands connect with their customers. It’s time to think about data differently; it’s imperative to ditch the strategy of collecting vast amounts of product- and purchase cycle-related data. Approaching data through a customer experience mindset will encourage a different type of collection, interpretation, and activation. To make customer experiences more valuable, brands should practice funnel fluidity, activate media communications, expand content strategies beyond the website ecosystem, and implement new technologies for customer experiences.
2. Use Measurement as a Catalyst for Change – In a fiercely competitive customer experience economy, adjusting a measurement framework from focusing on what can be measured to what should be measured can make a world of difference. An effective measurement framework gauges all departments’ activities in relation to their impact on the business.
3. Deliver Commerce Experiences to Drive Next-Generation Loyalty – The first 20+ years of the world’s digital transformation have largely been focused on convenience: harnessing technology to make everyday tasks faster, easier, more intuitive, more personalized. While these principles are fair, there is a shift occurring within the industry – focusing more on relationship building. The industry is entering a new age of loyalty that is about more than just points and rewards. It’s about longer-term affinity, advocacy.

“Consumer sentiment has changed significantly over the past year,” said Erin Hutchinson, global chief marketing & communications officer, Merkle/CXM. “Brands are looking for new ways to reach their audiences and to give them an experience that matters to them. By approaching data activation through a customer experience mindset, measuring activities’ impact on business outcomes, and prioritizing customer loyalty, brands can engage with their audiences better than ever before.”

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