A survey carried out among marketing professionals at the European Unica customer conference showed that at 70% of respondents viewed relevance, and 68% cited timeliness, as the most important challenges facing them in the expanding multi-channel marketing environment.
The difficulty of managing cross-channel communications was a close third, with 65% citing it as a issue, particularly in terms of synchronization with other channels. There was an acknowledgement that marketers will have to get to grips with cross channel marketing as they expect the requirement to grow.
Marketers are using an average of five channels: direct mail, email, call centers, the internet, and local sales operations. This number is expected to expand, with 100% of respondents saying they plan to start using SMS and MMS within the next two years. They said they also plan to increase their use of email, the internet, and inbound call centers.
The challenging marketing environment is driving adoption of more sophisticated marketing techniques. Already 97% of respondents said they are using predictive modeling. The next step up is to make use of real-time marketing and marketing resource management.
However, from Unica’s perspective, the future looks rosy because 98% said they would start to use marketing resource management within the next two years, and 100% said real-time marketing would be in place within the same timescale.
