PatronManager

I think it’s a good idea for arts marketers to pay a lot of attention to what the chief marketing officers (CMOs) that run corporate America are thinking, as a way to benchmark their own thoughts.

I’m not saying that marketing the arts is the same as marketing Pepsi, but I think understanding what they are thinking can be a valuable data point.  That’s why last week’s article about customer data in E-marketer was so interesting.

The article focused on a study of CMOs worldwide, and this first graph tells a big story:

That social media is at the top is no surprise. But that their interest on analytics and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is nearly as high is a surprise.  Clearly the concept that your customer data is the raw material from which you should derive targeted marketing efforts is now paramount:

 In fact, 61% of CMOs said they used customer data for segmentation and targeting, highlighting the desire to better understand and message their current and potential clients.

The idea of centralizing your data and segmenting it continued in another graph that showed marketing priorities for 2011.

And finally, CMOs are thinking about the adoption of new digital tools to enable them to do these things, and their over-riding concerns are all about what we would call the “patron experience,” subscription renewals, and the reduction of churn.

As you begin to think about your top priorities for the technology that you will use to run your organization in the future, I think the corporate market has got it right. We’re moving into a new era where technology isn’t about transactions anymore. “Can this system do X or Y?” is a given. Rather, today technology is all about answering the question, “Can my system(s) help me target my customers better, improve my service to them, and consequently make them more loyal?”

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