Customers coming to your web and mobile properties are wanting a lot more from your company these days. In fact more and more, visitors are EXPECTING companies to use the data they collect to enhance their experience with the brands they are dealing with.  While customers are expecting this, companies have been slow to adapt.  However according to Forrester’s research shows that if companies do focus on improving the customer experience it can lift revenue significantly, in some cases companies saw a lift of $1 Billion in revenue by improving customer experience score by 10%.

It looks like 2017 is going to be the year of customer experience innovations.  According to Garter’s research 50% of product investment project will be redirected to customer experience innovation by 2017.  Along with that The Service Council’s (TSC) Service Transformation:  The Business Case reports that 60% of organizations see that customer service will be the top source of competitive differentiation in the next three years. So what does this mean to your and your team’s efforts to increase ROI?

It means, now, more than ever your companies investment not just in mapping a digital strategy (roadmap or journey) is crucial, but the investment in the digital marketing automation tools becomes imperative to understand what you are getting from the technology for the investment.  Maximizing the customer experience from your marketing tools now has to rise to the top if you want to acquire and keep your customers engaged and loyal. The tools you chose should no longer be siloed but rather work in conjunction to improve the customer experience.  From social, to email to landing on the webpage or mobile app, the data you collect can be utilized to enhance that customer’s experience and make it personalized – and that’s what the visitor expects.

Is your team planning for that yet?  Have you just started taking that journey?  Do you have the expertise on your team to weave all the data together?  Sure it’s great to have a social media team, an email team, a UX team, a paid ad team, but do they work together and even more to the point, do they have the capacity or tools to be able to work together?  This is where the world of online is going.  Whether it’s e-commerce, media, b2b or other segments of industry, the end goal is to improve ROI.  To improve ROI you have to now focus on improving that customer experience.  If you don’t have a plan for that for the next 1-3 years, you could find you need to be playing catch up and no one wants to be there.

What’s apparent more than ever that digital marketers need to focus on, is personalizing the customer experience and the tools that empower your team to do just that.  Customers expect it …. and now your C-Suite is likely expecting it too.