62% of Marketers are Now Making Customer Retention a Top Priority for 2020

Customer retention hasn’t always been a top priority for marketers, but new research shows that they are now leaning more toward this digital marketing goal over customer acquisition.

Brightback recently published its “State of Customer Retention” survey results for 2020, and statistics showed that for the majority of marketers (62%), customer retention is a higher priority vs. customer acquisition. About 31% said that they are prioritized at the same level, and just 7% stated that customer retention is a lower priority than customer acquisition.

That being said, there are still many challenges associated with customer retention that marketers are facing today. The majority (34%) said that a lack of cohesive approaches to engage customers across departments was their biggest challenge. This is followed by a lack of ability to automate tailored or customized outreach at the right time (31%) and a lack of predictive methods to identify who will cancel in the future (31%).

Customer Acquisition as a Priority for Marketers

Ahead of 2020, previous research showed that marketers were more concerned with customer acquisition.

Ascend2 conducted the “2020 Digital Marketing Plans Survey,” and data indicated that 49% of marketers wanted to boost customer acquisition in the New Year. Most respondents (54%) wanted to increase the amount of sales generated, while 43% were concerned with increasing customer engagement.

In 2019, approximately 39% of the best-in-class marketers who responded to the survey said that they had been “very successful” at reaching their top goals.