The State of Customer Engagement 2020

Customer engagement as a concept has been around for more than a decade. It encapsulates the change in marketing philosophy brought about by three effects of digital media: the rise of marketing automation, the move from one-to-many broadcast marketing to one-to-one conversational commerce, and the proliferation of transactional, programmatic messaging.

This research, based on a survey of just under 700 marketers, found that many organisations struggle to translate the idea of customer engagement into reality in both digital and physical environments, a challenge often exacerbated by the burden of legacy processes and systems. It requires significant organisational change to put the customer at the heart of the organisation, underpinned by investment in marketing technology.

The report, published by London Research in partnership with dotdigital, aims to cast the spotlight on the channels and technologies used by companies for customer engagement, the opportunities for both B2B and B2C marketers to raise their game at a strategic and tactical level, and the differences in attitudes and approaches by geography.

The key findings within this report include:

• While businesses have made some progress in the field of customer engagement, there remains much work to do. Siloed organisational structures and unconnected legacy software systems remain the most significant barriers.
• Despite the rise of automation, the ability to build intelligent automation programmes in response to customer behaviour is not yet on the agenda for many companies surveyed.
• Personalisation, channel integration, marketing automation and AI are expected to be the key trends in customer engagement over the next five years.

Download the report now to learn more.

Delve deeper into the findings and join the discussion, register for the webinar here.