Report: Real-Time Analytics Becoming More Critical to Marketing

Marketers are already delivering customer interactions across various touchpoints in real-time, and they expect “real-time customer analytics” to play an important role in marketing going forward.

SAS, Intel, and Accenture recently teamed up with the Harvard Business Review to conduct the “Real-Time Analytics: The Key to Unlocking Customer Insights and Driving the Customer Experience” report. Statistics showed that 60 percent of marketers already believe that they it’s “extremely important” to have the ability to delivery real-time customer interactions across touchpoints and devices today. Within the next two years, 79 percent said they envision it being “extremely important.”

“The early adopters are already reaping positive results,” wrote the authors of the report. “Survey respondents who rate their real-time customer analytics practices as very effective are more likely to have seen increases in customer retention and loyalty, revenue growth, customer lifetime value, profitability, and speed to market than their peers whose practices are not very effective.”

About 16 percent of respondents who deliver real-time customer interactions across their touchpoints said they are “very effective.”

Marketers and the Continued Connection to Customers

Staying in the loop with customers and prospects through a number of different touchpoints is nothing new to marketers, according to previous research.

ProsperWorks published “The State of Customer Management in the Relationship Era” report and discovered that about half of marketers use at least eight different channels to build lasting relationships with both future and current customers.

Most respondents (94 percent) claim they leverage email with potential and current customers. Ninety-five percent use email to further build existing customer relationships.