Only 37% of Marketers Know Customer Channel Preferences: Study

A new study has found that even though most marketers are executing multi-channel campaigns, less than half have know which channels their customers actually prefer.

The study, conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of ExactTarget also reinforced the obvious, that if marketers understand customers’ preferences they are going to get better results. But only 32% of the marketers surveyed reported knowing how customers behaved across channels and only 37% even knew what channels their customers preferred to use.

“The bottom line is that in an industry where new digital communications make it easier to send a variety of messages, it’s imperative that marketers not only send the right message, to the right person, at the right time, but that they use the right channel as well,” said Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget’s director of research and strategy, in a release.

The study found that:

80% of marketers claim customer preference is a key factor but only 12% ask customers their preferred frequency for email messages.

47% of marketers do not take any actions based on customer preferences.

27% of marketers measure whether efforts in one channel boost results in another.