In today’s world, traditional and digital marketing has undergone a significant change. The e-commerce and retail sectors have undergone a radical transformation, characterized by fierce competition. Additionally, social media platforms have also evolved, altering the way consumers interact with brands. Cookies, which were previously used to track user behavior, are losing effectiveness. Despite an increase in revenue, many businesses collapse due to rising acquisition costs and uncontrollable loss of customers. Trying to achieve company goals using traditional procurement methods is like trying to win a Formula 1 race with a family car. Even if you put in long hours and undergo extensive training, you won’t stand a chance.
In this context, becoming a customer-centric company is no longer just a desirable characteristic, but a necessity. In today’s article, we’ll explore how integration between marketing and CX initiatives can help you achieve true customer centricity and guide consumers toward customer success. We’ll look at the “why” behind this initiative, the steps to achieve effective alignment, and look at a case study of one of the most notable initiatives in modern marketing. Let’s get started!
Why should we integrate CX and Marketing?
The shift in e-commerce requires businesses to align their marketing strategies and customer experience efforts to create a seamless, personalized experience at every touchpoint. This doesn’t mean you should neglect fundamentals like the 4Ps (product, price, place, promotion) or the 4Cs (customer needs, customer cost, convenience, communication), but their effectiveness depends on alignment with each stage of the journey. the client’s.
To maximize profitability, you must recognize that marketing and customer experience can no longer function independently. Instead, they must work hand in hand, understanding that the customer journey spans from pre- and post-purchase experiences to the moment after using the product. The marketing department plays a vital role in attracting and engaging customers before they make a purchase.
The Pre-Purchase Stage
When it comes to the acquisition stage, marketing must leverage data-driven insights and segmentation strategies to deliver personalized messages and relevant content to different target audiences. This targeted approach ensures that prospects resonate with the acquisition methods and are more likely to make a purchase and trust the brand. Customer-centric marketing strategies, such as personalized recommendations, tailored promotions, and seamless omnichannel experiences, help create a positive pre-purchase experience.
However, marketing needs data from the CX department to achieve this detailed communication aimed at different customer profiles. Knowledge generated from surveys, comments or reviews is what guides acquisition and even retargeting strategies.
The Post-Purchase Stage
The task does not end when the customer clicks the “Complete Purchase” button. In the post-purchase stage, the CX department will be in charge of ensuring that customers have a smooth and satisfactory experience. This includes efficient order processing, fast and accurate shipping, easy returns and exchanges, and proactive customer support. Marketing can support the post-purchase experience by delivering relevant and valuable communications, such as order confirmations, shipping updates, and personalized recommendations based on the customer’s purchase history. At the same time, the CX department is responsible for collecting and analyzing customer feedback through various channels (surveys, reviews, interviews, etc.).
After analyzing the feedback, the CX team translates it into actionable insights for the marketing team, generating improvement initiatives based on customer feedback. Both departments can work together to implement improvements and review strategies to address pain points, ensuring that customer expectations are consistently met and exceeded. This collaboration and alignment between teams is based on:
- Share information about customers.
- Allow the creation of targeted marketing campaigns.
- Create personalized nutrition experiences.
However, cross-departmental collaboration can be challenging due to the different KPIs and objectives of each team. The marketing team is concerned with acquiring new customers, while the CX team focuses on what happens after the purchase. Bringing these two departments together and getting them to work together will require patience, commitment and hard work. And, above all, a common goal. In our case, the common goal should be to adopt the customer lifecycle (CLV) metric as a fundamental metric. However, moving to CLV as a primary metric is an ongoing process that requires a company-wide change.
To help companies embark on this journey and get everyone on board, we have developed the Customer Value Optimization (CVO) Methodology.
How to Achieve Alignment between CX and Marketing
By following the CVO approach to achieving perfect alignment, you can focus on the following processes:
- Continuously monitor relevant metrics and key KPIs to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and satisfaction levels.
- Identify and prioritize initiatives that align with delivering an exceptional customer experience and maximizing customer value.
- Use RFM analysis to categorize customers based on their purchasing behavior, enabling targeted and personalized marketing efforts.
- Conduct qualitative research methods, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), online surveys, and Jobs to be Done interviews, to gain deeper insights into customer needs, expectations, and pain points.
- Validate the knowledge obtained through qualitative research through statistically significant quantitative studies.
- Analyze customer purchasing patterns to identify trends and preferences, allowing for better segmentation and personalized marketing strategies.
- Develop detailed profiles of ideal customers to guide marketing efforts, ensuring messages and campaigns reach the target audience.
- Map the entire customer journey, including touchpoints, pain points, and opportunities for improvement. This helps identify areas where marketing can improve the customer experience.
- Address areas of improvement, such as optimizing customer service, eliminating friction in the purchasing process, and continually improving products based on customer feedback.
- Develop strategies to retain customers by providing continuous value, personalized experiences and loyalty programs.
- Use the knowledge collected to design and implement initiatives aimed at customer acquisition, incorporation, prevention, referrals, loyalty and reactivation.
These steps can become a practical framework for marketing and CX to align their efforts and goals effectively.
How Marketing Contributes to a Successful Customer Experience
The role of marketing is not limited to spending a budget. There is so much more they can contribute to the success of a customer experience. Marketing can be instrumental in delivering a successful customer experience through various strategies and the use of different metrics at each stage of the customer journey. Below are some examples of how marketing contributes to each stage of the customer journey:
Growth and Knowledge
At this stage, the focus is on attracting and engaging potential customers. Marketing teams implement SEO, SEM, social media marketing (SMM) or advertising technology strategies to increase brand visibility and generate awareness. Practically implementing pre-purchase techniques ensures that prospects have a positive first impression of the brand and that their future relationship starts off on the best possible note.
Education and Participation
Once customers are aware of the brand, marketing efforts shift toward educating them and keeping them engaged. From the customer’s perspective, this stage is about having access to relevant and valuable content and recommendations. Engaging experiences, even before making a purchase, help improve the customer journey.
Conversion and Monetization
To move from the interest stage to desire and action, marketing teams must work closely with the customer relationship management (CRM) department to obtain relevant information and materials. By combining insights derived from customer data with acquisition tactics, marketing and CX can deliver a seamless and personalized shopping experience, eliminating any points of friction in the process.
Post-Conversion
While the CX team takes care of post-purchase initiatives, marketing can still contribute by ensuring a smooth transition from sales to customer service, providing ongoing support and assistance. At the same time, marketing teams can also help build a positive brand reputation and create customer loyalty with their retention strategies.
As you can see, marketing can act as the perfect ally for the CX department, contributing to a consistent, relevant and personalized customer journey. Marketing teams help attract and engage customers, foster relationships, drive conversions, provide post-conversion support, and continually optimize efforts to meet and exceed customer expectations. This symbiotic relationship goes further.
Exploring the Relationship between Marketing and CX
How do we evaluate whether the relationship between Marketing and CX is healthy or toxic? A positive sign is when marketing succeeds in establishing the foundation for a positive customer experience. This involves conveying the right messages, promoting quality products, and providing ongoing support throughout the customer lifecycle.
The CVO Methodology is based on three pillars: what you say (marketing), what you sell (product) and what you do (customer experience). While the product pillar is a topic for another day, the “saying” and “doing” illustrate the relationship between marketing and CX.
What You Say (Marketing, Pre and Post-Purchase)
Marketing is in control here, as it is responsible for shaping customer perceptions through communication. This task involves creating compelling messages that resonate with the target audience at different stages of the customer journey. Pre-purchase marketing focuses on attracting and engaging potential customers, while post-purchase marketing ensures ongoing communication and support. Consistency and relevance in messaging across all touchpoints helps build trust, manage expectations, and deliver a positive customer experience.
What You Do (Supporting the Customer Journey over Time)
Actions speak louder than words. The way a company behaves and supports customers throughout their journey greatly influences the customer experience. This includes customer service, responsiveness, problem resolution, and ongoing support. Marketing can contribute to the customer experience by ensuring seamless, consistent and responsive touchpoints. At the same time, both marketing and CX must work together to identify pain points in customer profiles or friction points in the customer journey, and then work on their solution.
Leveraging Customer Data to Improve Marketing and Customer Experience
So if most insights come from the customer experience department, how can a marketer use this insight? How can using customer data help? Here are some ideas you can take advantage of to get the most out of collaborating with the CX department:
Analyze purchasing habits: Analyzing purchasing habits provides information that you have never considered before. For example, you can identify high-quality products that generate repeat purchases. On the other hand, you can identify problematic products (that cause customer loss) and eliminate them from your acquisition campaigns.
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Analyzing CLV highlights your most valuable customers and helps you understand their preferences. With this information, you can implement data-driven marketing initiatives.
- RFM Segmentation: RFM segmentation is another fantastic technique for identifying your best customers. However, it goes one step further, showing who is about to quit or is consuming resources without generating income. You can be more tactical with your retention campaigns by leveraging RFM segmentation to target relevant retention, prevention, or loyalty campaigns. This helps you prevent customer churn, increase loyalty, and generate more referrals.
- Acquisition campaigns: Use data from your best customers to generate more effective acquisition audiences. If you’re going to invest in acquisition anyway, you can at least attract the best possible customers, right?
As you can see, seamless data flow between CRM and marketing systems is essential to ensure effective collaboration between the two departments. If you need help with this, check out Omniconvert’s Revelation capabilities to interpret large amounts of data and facilitate personalized marketing campaigns.
Building Customer Trust and Loyalty: Keeping Promises through Unified Strategies
Trust is a complex topic. It is difficult to win and easy to lose. And, as social media and instant communication become the norm, breaking the trust of a valued customer can ruin your business. Sometimes it only takes one tweet to ruin a brand’s reputation. As was the case with Fyre Festival, a single viral tweet canceled months of hard work and squandered an overbudgeted event.
To avoid this, we must develop unified strategies that align pre- and post-purchase experiences to ensure we deliver on our promises and exceed customer expectations. This involves putting a focus on maintaining consistency between the customer experience and the brand image. While it may be tempting for creative advertising teams to position a brand using hype or unrealistic promises, when the experience doesn’t match the brand image, things can go wrong. You will lose customers and what is worse, they will leave quite dissatisfied.
To avoid this problem, it is important to maintain alignment between the CX and the brand, ensuring that the activities of both remain in tune. This will maintain the synergy necessary to deliver a consistent and satisfying customer experience. A common mistake is when creative advertising teams position a brand using hype or unrealistic promises. When the experience doesn’t match the brand image, things can go wrong. You will lose customers and what is worse, they will leave quite dissatisfied.
Key Metrics to Evaluate the Impact of the Integration between Marketing and CX
In addition to Net Promoter Score (NPS), there are many other metrics that can help you track your progress toward marketing and CX alignment. Let’s look at some of them:
- Purchase Frequency: Purchase frequency is crucial to evaluate the impact of the integration between marketing and CX, since it indicates the degree of customer commitment and loyalty towards the brand. The greater the purchase frequency, the greater the connection and a more positive customer experience.
- Repeat Purchase Rate: This metric directly reflects customer satisfaction with the products purchased. The higher the repeat purchase rate, the more loyal the customer is and the more often they choose your brand for their replacement needs.
- Customer Retention Rate: Retention highlights the effectiveness of marketing and CX strategies in keeping customers engaged. This rate shows how successful customer relationship management is and reveals its positive impact on brand growth.
- Customer Relationship Duration: This metric refers to the length of time a customer remains engaged with your brand or continues purchasing. You can use it to evaluate the long-term impact of integrated marketing and CX efforts. In the long term, optimizing this metric will drive revenue growth and maximize the value of customer relationships.
- Customer Lifetime Value: CLV measures the total value that a customer brings to a business throughout their entire relationship. It is perhaps the most telling metric, as a higher CLV means you are more profitable. Focusing on CLV means focusing on nurturing and retaining high-value customers, resulting in sustainable growth.
Whether you choose one metric, all of the above, or a combination of them, always keep the customer in mind. It’s easy to get lost in the numbers and do anything to increase rates, but people are not robots; you must be empathetic and humane in all your endeavors.
Examples of Integrated Marketing and CX Strategies
Let’s move on to the fun part: examples of how integrated marketing and CX strategies can revolutionize the way companies interact with customers.
Let’s talk about creating customer journey maps. When a brand focuses on the customer journey map, it creates the feeling of embarking on an exciting adventure where the company truly understands the customer’s journey.
Mapping the customer journey involves visualizing each stage and touchpoint, allowing marketing and CX strategies to align their efforts to deliver experiences that perfectly match customer needs and preferences. Customer journey mapping is about being in tune with customers’ desires, seamlessly guiding them toward their goals, and building meaningful connections.
Social media is another example of how companies interact with customers. Integrated strategies go one step further with listening and social participation. Imagine a brand that actively monitors conversations, responds to queries, and addresses customer feedback on social media. By truly listening and engaging, businesses can improve their brand reputation, build loyalty, and create a genuine connection with customers. It’s like having a friendly conversation with a brand that really cares about your opinions and needs.
However, there is one example that stands out…
Case Study: Always uses Integrated Marketing
A great example of Marketing and CX alignment in action is Always’s “Like a Girl” campaign. The CX department (with the help of external contractors) provided exciting information about the challenges girls face during puberty and adolescence. The marketing team (also with the help of external contractors) designed a creative campaign to empower girls and represent the future of the brand. The hidden objective of the campaign was to demonstrate the brand’s purpose and support girls’ confidence during this crucial phase.
The team launched an integrated marketing campaign that included television, print and social media channels. The center of the campaign was a video created by documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield, which saw notable results, as reported by D&AD. The video reached more than 85 million views on YouTube, reaching audiences in more than 150 countries. Before watching the video, only 19% of young people aged 16 to 24 perceived the phrase “like a girl” positively. However, after watching the video, 76% no longer viewed the phrase negatively. Additionally, two out of three men who watched the video said they would think twice before using “like a girl” as an insult.
There is much more to tell about this campaign, as it required the hard work of multiple departments with different ideas and perspectives. However, it beautifully illustrates how much awareness a brand can gain by integrating customer experience strategies into its marketing initiatives, taking into account the real and obvious customer pain points.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we have discovered the enormous potential of the “union” between marketing and customer experience. In today’s customer-centric landscape, combining these two powerful forces will unlock endless possibilities and create extraordinary customer experiences. Alignment between marketing and CX is based on understanding and meeting customers’ emotional and rational needs throughout their journey. Marketing and customer experience can no longer exist separately, but must work together to deliver a seamless experience across all touchpoints.
If you would like to align your marketing with your customer experience, please feel free to contact us to discuss your needs. Combining CX and marketing is essential to achieving business success and building strong customer relationships. Take advantage of the technology available and follow the steps and strategies we have presented to obtain an exceptional customer experience and differentiate yourself from the competition. Don’t forget that customer trust and loyalty are essential, so you must keep your promises and offer consistent and satisfying experiences in each interaction. It’s time to integrate marketing and customer experience and take your business to the next level!
