B2C brands are putting a priority on finding new customers, according to new figures in Moengage’s The State of Cross-Channel Marketing 2024.
57%, in fact, said it was a top objective for 2024, followed by 44.9% who said increasing customer engagement or loyalty, and 40.8% who said retaining current customers.
“Though these figures indicate that marketers are somewhat aware of the long-term advantages of focusing on retention, the majority still prioritize customer acquisition as their primary goal,” the study says. “This is because most marketers aren’t able to retain their existing customers properly due to ineffective personalization caused by issues such as data silos, lack of real-time analytics, and improper tooling and methods.”
Because customer acquisition can be “anywhere between 5 to 25 times more expensive,” the study says, customer retention has more potential for ROI. “Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25-95%,” the study says.
Email is still the most popular engagement channel for 89.6% of B2C marketers, followed by social media (80.3%), desktop website (67.1%), and mobile website (65%). On average, these marketers use at least five channels in their customer engagement strategies, but for more than three-quarters (75.6%), email remains the most effective for engagement.
“At the same time, it is important to note that digital channels like mobile app, SMS, and mobile push notifications are gaining popularity,” the study found. “While numerous studies have shown a positive correlation between these channels and their ROI, their potential is yet to be explored fully. This means that in the coming months, marketers who do not consider these channels as a part of their cross-channel marketing strategy will lose out on first-mover advantage.”
(Source: Moengage)
The study found the impact of AI over the last year has made it “important” or “very important” to more than 66.61% of marketers, with content generating and selecting, subject lines and targeting, and customer chatbots being the top uses in cross-channel marketing.
“Marketers who are not leveraging AI are losing out as AI has the potential to analyze vast amounts of data and deliver relevant, timely, and engaging experiences that resonate with each customer,” the study says.
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