IT, Marketing Relationship Will Mean Huge Results, Gartner Says

Huge returns in getting marketing, IT on same page.
Huge returns in getting marketing, IT on same page.

Marketing has become an area of intense technology investment along with the rise of digital marketing. Tech research firm Gartner has found that many large companies have literally dozens of applications just to support their marketing operations.

Managing this portfolio and generating customer value from these technologies requires a more integrated and consolidated approach, but not at the expense of marketing's ability to innovate, Gartner concludes.

An integrated marketing management approach may be valuable to many organizations. Gartner has also made several predictions about how the marketing technology investments may evolve in the coming years:

By 2018, CIOs who build strong relationships with CMOs will drive a 25 percent improvement in return on marketing technology investment.

"To generate greater business value, IT leaders need to work more closely with marketing to determine where IT leads versus where marketing leads and how both can work more effectively together," said Kimberly Collins, research vice president at Gartner.

By 2018, B2B sellers that incorporate personalization into digital commerce will realize revenue increases up to 15 percent.

Personalization enhances the relationship between a buyer and seller, making the buyer feel recognized, appreciated, respected and efficient. Today's consumers expect recognition, to be valued and to have a personalized experience; they have little tolerance for inefficiency. These expectations will be even higher for business buyers who typically have longer-standing relationships with their suppliers and spend higher amounts with them. Personalization also enables sellers to remain competitive and drive customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy as well as increase profitability. Consumers who have personalized experiences spend more.

Through 2018, voice of the customer (VoC) initiatives that don't share data across the enterprise will compromise customer satisfaction and loyalty measures by 30 percent.

VoC solutions collect, analyze and act upon the vast array of customer feedback sources that are potentially available, ranging from surveying to social media to speech analytics. It is an increasingly popular area of focus due to the business value that is obtained from acting upon the derived insights. However, VoC's ownership is currently inconsistent with different constituents who are taking responsibility within different organizations.