Feature
Wait, what? Only about one out of four marketers describe marketing and IT as strategic partners.
We thought we were in the "Marketing and IT, Sitting in a Tree..." era? All we seem to hear is how marketing and IT must work together, break down silos and even report to one another.
What happened to all that? But the statistics are hard to deny. A full 74 percent of marketers dismisses the wishful thinking about marketers and techies living happily together, according to the Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey 2013.
So what to do? Teradata thinks it can help.
The analytic data platforms, marketing applications and services company in partnership with Forbes Insights today released a new research study for CMOs and other senior marketing decision makers worldwide titled, “Breaking Down Marketing Silos: The Key to Consistently Achieving Customer Satisfaction and Improving Your Bottom Line.”
Silos Stink
To help it form its guidance, Teradata interviewed CMOs from a cross-section of organizations including Citrix, Conversant, HubSpot, Juniper Networks and the Wi-Fi Alliance.
But back to those 74 percent. How can it be with so many analysts/marketers/IT folks saying marketing and IT must work together?
"Consider the silo between sales and marketing: we’ve been addressing those for years," Christy Uher Ferguson, director of applications communications strategy at Teradata, told CMSWire. "I think we’ll see the alignment between marketing and IT move much swifter than it has taken to achieve alignment between sales and marketing. Marketers literally won’t be successful without the technology requirements that a partnership with IT brings."
Silos are killers, Uher Ferguson said. According to the global survey, 65 percent of marketers say silos within their department obscure a view of campaigns and initiatives. And, only 18 percent have a single view of their customer interactions.
"This is simple," Uher Ferguson said. "If a marketer doesn’t have a holistic view of the customer, doesn’t understand their preferences, doesn’t know their engagement habits, the customer experience suffers. So with 74 percent saying also that they don’t have a strategic partnership with IT just yet that just amplifies the issues above."
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The solution? That's on marketers. They need to first address those silos.
"And through that process of redefining marketing, literally by breaking down those marketing silos, greater cross-departmental collaboration will start to emerge because ultimately it’s the entire company’s data that can be brought to bear to understand the customer better," she said. "The data, indeed this task, doesn’t just belong to marketing alone."
CMO-CIO Structure Matter?
The CMO and CIO must enter the equation here, too. So much is bandied about these two execs when it comes to digital marketing success. Does reporting structure matter here?
"What I would advocate has less to do with matters of organizational reporting," Uher Ferguson said, "and more to do with establishing a 'data culture' where the enterprise overall is focused on the customer."
Each and every marketer should be aligned around the customer experience that you want your brand to deliver, she said.
"In fact," Uher Ferguson added, "each department should have an 'outside-in' customer focus, meaning they 'see' the customer, know what experience they want to deliver to the customer, and work backward into their organization to shape behaviors that help deliver the desired customer experience."
