Interview
The Gist
- Customer importance. A growing emphasis on customer marketing can close the gap between C-suite expectations and marketing performance.
- Data imperative. Leveraging customer data is essential for optimizing marketing strategies and gaining meaningful business insights.
- Strategy tension. The balance between performance marketing and customer marketing remains a contentious issue for gaining C-suite support.
In an age where customer data is more accessible than ever, leveraging it for marketing optimization is a complex yet vital task. Navigating this intricate maze involves challenges in technology, strategy and, perhaps most importantly, communication — particularly with the C-suite executives who often underestimate the value of customer marketing.
To shed light on these multifaceted challenges, we spoke with Stuart Russell, the chief strategy officer of Planning-inc, a first-party data agency. Stuart is also a regular contributor to CMSWire and leads the agency's strategic growth initiatives.
You can check out Stuart's columns on his CMSWire profile page, including the one discussed here, "Capturing Loyalty: The Science of Customer Retention Marketing Reporting."
Dom Nicastro: Hey, everybody, Dom Nicastro CMSWire managing editor here with our latest CMSWire contributor interview. We're gonna have Stuart Russell on. He leads Planning-inc’s strategic growth initiatives as chief strategy officer. Stuart, how's it going?
Stuart Russell: Very good. Thank you. Good to see you. Thanks for having me.
Navigating the Maze of Customer Marketing and Data Optimization
Nicastro: Yeah. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being a CMSWire contributor. That's great. We're going to talk a lot about customer marketing today. That's the subject of your article that runs today on CMSWire.com. But first, we got to get to know the man behind the scenes, Stuart Russell, tell me about your role and your company.
Russell: Thank you. Well, so as chief strategy officer, I work with all our clients, helping them use their customer data to drive great initiatives. And my role is in Planning-inc, and we are a first party data agency. So we work with our clients to help them get full value out of all the customer data that they’ve built up. And we do that with a range of technology solutions and marketing services. But at the core of what we do is helping clients find new and innovative ways to better connect their customer data, and that drives marketing optimization, business optimization and customer insight. And increasingly, it's the fundamental pillar for AI enablement. So planning as we do work across B2C, B2B, great clients, great space.
Nicastro: And my principles of detection for me, tell me that you're not based in the US, is that true?
Russell: No, no, we're London based, and I myself live in Bath in the UK.
Related Article: Brand Advocacy: The Strategic Importance of Customer Marketing
Why Only 25% of Leaders Value Customer Marketing
Nicastro: All right, sweet. Well, thanks for joining us from across the pond today. CMSWire, based in San Francisco, I'm actually in New England, Southern New Hampshire. So waving hello from across the pond. All right, so Stuart, the topic of the article is you know about customer marketing. And you reported in this story that 25% of senior customer marketers felt that senior leadership, like only 25%, I should say valued customer marketing. So let's first talk about the big picture of customer marketing, what it is, and then why aren't more senior leaders kind of getting on board? And what can marketers do about that?
Russell: Yeah, so customer marketing covers a fairly broad area, and different businesses will call their team slightly different things. And that'd be pure customer marketing, customer experience management. There's the CRM side of things, when in B2C businesses, as well as might have a different level to the B2B world. But ultimately, the roles are all very similar. They're there to retain the customers that have been on boarded by performance marketing and brand, they're there to drive long term value.
And the data drive great customer experience, and data is obviously incredibly important for that role. And the reporting side of things and how they shown to the C-suite, their performance and their activities is increasingly important as well. The stat around how customer marketers feel about senior leadership is very interesting. And again, it comes out of some research that we ran a few months ago. And I think it kind of points to a slight disconnect between how customer marketing are performing and how they're ultimately reporting to the C-suite. And I think that's where there's this, this tension is emerging.
Related Article: Why Marketing Leaders Need to Harness the Power of AI Now
Performance vs. Customer Marketing: The Struggle for C-Suite Approval
Nicastro: Yeah, and traditionally, the performance marketing has kind of taken a more prominent seat, it you know, at the table for senior leaders, you know, over customer marketing, so you have those two dynamics kind of competing with each other in a sense. So, you know, what can we do? What can marketers do about that perceived value that performance marketing is more important to business growth over customer marketing?
Russell: Yeah, I mean, there are always been businesses that are incredibly customer focused, of course, and customer centric. And customer first is one of the big buzzphrases buzzing around us at the moment. But undoubtedly, the budgets have really sapped with performance and brand, you know, and I think there's been, for C-suite a very tangible outcome, we put this amount of money in and we get this out. But it's changing slightly, you know, in very volatile trading conditions, where cost of acquisitions are increasing in many sectors, there's more and more pressure and more importance being put on the customer marketing teams, to do more with the customers that are being acquired through performance channels.
And so what those marketers are needing to do, they're kind of caught between a much more important role, but then needing to get the ear of the C-suite more effectively. And to do that we believe they need to evolve how they're reporting on their performance. And that's moving from quite basic metrics. Well, which a lot of businesses have kind of moved to have drawn on and relied on for quite some time and reporting.
In the lexicon language that the C-suite truly understands, and much more commercial focus much more incremental revenue based conversation. And that's something that we in many businesses in our space are helping brands try and do more of.
Related Article: Customer-Centric Marketing Strategy: A Leader's Inside Look
Bridging the Gap: C-Suite and Marketing Speak Different Languages
Nicastro: I'm convinced that the C-suite are like aliens, you know, so everyone's always coming up with ways to communicate with them. You know, like, Well, how should we talk to them? How should we speak their language? And it's true, it's absolutely true. But I'm just wondering, like, when's the C-suite gonna do its part it kinda learn about the language. And we always have to explain it to them.
Russell: Yeah, they, you know, the time starved individuals who need spoon feeding some ways, but I think, in many places, our part of the marketing world hasn't helped itself, we've been become quite channel focused in a certainly in the transformation to the digital world over the last 10, 15 years or so. And I always think the marketers, in some ways, have almost forgotten some of the best practice that is ultimately a part of the world of direct mail. And as we've moved more and more into rely on email marketing, push marketing, audience targeting on site, paid media, paid social targeting, many of the adopted and accepted rules from at the end world needs to be brought forward.
But instead, what's been happening is we've been talking about open rates and clicks and engagement, and the C-suite doesn't care about that they want to see revenue, and what are you doing for profit and margin. And I think that's where marketers need to start remembering those old school tactics and those old school abilities and really scale them up and just realize them in the world that we're operating in now. And, you know, I think there's probably three main areas really, there's helping C-suite understand the incremental revenue that they're driving. So that's drawing on the old world at the end of target versus control, holding customers back showing what the true impact is of performance.
There's the ability to report on things like profit and margin. So as we're retaining customers and driving, repeat purchase, are we doing that in a way that makes commercial sense of the business? So being able to report on that is actually crucial when budgets are super tight and marked down and promotions band needs to be managed effectively. And then thirdly, there's looking at the long term impact of customer marketing programs, not just looking at the short term sales cycle of a report on an email campaign, for example, it's what is what is the overall effect of our email program on positive customer behaviors. And all of that requires, you know, significant investment, but then this vicious circle, because we're not getting the ear of the C-suite, we're not getting the budget necessarily. So we need to change that status quo somehow.
Balancing Short-Term Targets and Long-Term Marketing Goals
Nicastro: Yeah, it's the age old challenge of the short term sales, you know, hitting your quarterly targets, which is what the executives like and then the long term impact on a marketing program like give this a little time, give us some patience. And you know, what's what's happening over the six months span the year long span a couple of years, so.
Russell: Exactly. Exactly.
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Nicastro: Great advice here from Stuart Russell, great column, we thank you for being a CMSWire contributor. He's part of Planning-inc. And he's a CMSWire contributor who writes regularly for us. Stuart, great advice in here. Thanks for sharing that with our marketing audience and CMSWire.com.
Russell: Thank you for having me.
Nicastro: Have a good one.
