Integrating disparate customer communications silos is a major headache for CMOs, as highlighted by a recent survey of 50 CMOs by Marketing Magazine.
The article says: “Creating a truly integrated customer experience requires joined-up thinking across the business – and, although steps are being taken in this direction, in many companies this isn’t yet taking place. CMOs are facing the challenge of making departments communicate and collaborate with each other in ways which they aren’t used to. But for the customer’s experience to be truly personalised, from in-store to online purchasing, marketing, IT and sales teams all need to work together.”
So what are the big hurdles that have to be overcome? Undoubtedly one of the most significant is the fact that within a business the various departments/functions that are responsible for customer communications do not talk to one another because they do not have common language or data when it comes to the customer. This is because they are trying to achieve different things within the audience journey and therefore do not have a common point of reference.
And this is a problem that is causing tangible business pain. Take for example the results of a Forrester study that found that the disconnect between marketing and sales teams alone led to a 16% lower conversion rate. That same survey found that 60% of companies have silos between those two teams, a figure that would be far greater if it looked at the wider number of silos that exist across an organisation.
Logically, therefore, if those silos are going to be broken down then that common point of reference needs to be found. Our view is that this common point of reference comes from understanding the content the customer is consuming. Why? Because what you read says more about you than anything else and will allow each department to know when and why the customer has reached their stage of the journey if the data from earlier content consumption is passed on. This is why one of the major benefits that Odyssiant brings is the integration of customer communications silos.