Aberdeen report: Small, mid-market enterprises leading the way in return on marketing investment

A new benchmark study from Aberdeen Group has confirmed what savvy marketers have known all along: using technology to create processes around customer interactions is critical to creating a customer-centric organisation and deriving better returns from marketing investments.

The study, titled "Automating Leads to Sales - Improve Return on Marketing Campaigns", states that small (SME) and mid-market (MME) enterprises are exceeding average performers in all metrics benchmarked.

A new Webinar from an IT service management and CRM market leader FrontRange Solutions, one of the sponsors of the study conducted by Aberdeen analysts, highlights how CRM users can improve returns on marketing campaigns and shorten the sales cycle.

According to the study, best-in-class companies consistently demonstrate proficiency in multiple marketing capabilities, which has a positive impact on performance. The top performers use technology to track customer behaviour, perform customer profitability modelling, maintain centralised knowledge and data management systems, and create real-time decision support. They are also using business intelligence tools integrated with marketing and customer data with higher frequency than benchmarked groups.

"The findings of this study are consistent with what we have observed in the field," said Michael McCloskey, FrontRange Solutions CEO. "In fact, many large enterprises are now looking at the technologies, processes and best practices used by small and mid-size organisations for ideas on how to improve their own delivery of customer service. There is no question that the more you can integrate the various pieces of data around the enterprise using technologies, the more visibility you'll gain into what the customer wants from you, and the greater your return on your marketing investment will be."

Among the findings from the study are:

* Fifty percent of SME and MME enterprises lead in capturing 70% of current customer profiles.
* Fifty-five percent have centralised customer knowledge and data management processes in place.
* Customer data is used to perform customer profitability modelling at rates significantly above average (41% versus 33%).

In addition, Aberdeen says leaders leverage customer analytics, multi-channel interaction applications, business processes, and technology infrastructure across brands and product lines. It is this 360-degree view that allows them to do better than 15% annual improvement in return on marketing investment, gross revenues, and customer retention rates.

"Companies serious about building a customer-centric marketing organisation will need to rethink how they create processes around customer interactions and how they invest in technologies that support advanced, rule-based communications," said Alan Hubbard, Senior Vice-President of Customer Management Technology Group at Aberdeen Group, in a written statement. "Our research demonstrates that small and mid-market enterprises are investing and deploying technologies, capabilities, and processes that facilitate closed-loop marketing processes at rates higher than the industry average."