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Manthan, the leading customer marketing and experience solutions provider, released findings from its ‘State of Customer Marketing Maturity in Middle-East Report 2020’, that presents how B2C enterprises in the region assess themselves on critical marketing parameters.

Key Findings:

• Hyper-personalisation initiatives are picking up, with 19% of marketers reporting they personalise for a segment of one
• Customer data usage is still basic, with 57% of marketers working with demographics data only. Leaders (5%), however, have successfully realised a “Golden” customer record
• Use of AI for predicting customer behaviour is at a nascent stage, with 10% indicating they can predict what customer will buy next, who is likely to churn
• Customer segmentation still relies on broad demographics (43%), while another 43% use RFM models

Download the detailed report.

According to the survey, most firms don’t classify themselves as leaders in customer marketing, despite the widespread usage of data management and marketing automation systems. Discussions revealed the lack of executive mandate as one of the reasons for this disconnect.

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The participants invited were from various B2C verticals, including food & grocery, fashion & apparel, restaurants, airlines, and other retail conglomerate businesses, and were drawn from across the Middle East. A range of functions were included: e-commerce, digital, customer engagement, CRM, analytics, marketing and communications.

The discussions clearly show the desire to deliver seamless customer experiences, with a few in the region having made investments in technologies such as Customer Data Platform, analytics and marketing automation solutions.

“We need to balance the long-term vision of building a customer-centric business with the daily rush of achieving sales numbers. These two should be seen as complementary objectives, and requires the right data and technology strategy, along with executive mandate”, said a respondent from a large retailer.

“It’s heartening to find that the marketing community is increasingly aware of the potential of great customer experiences. This study was aimed to understand the current gaps, and provide a framework that helps businesses prioritise investments based on their objectives of customer acquisition, conversion, cross-sell or customer retention”, said Ehtesham Mohammed, SVP – EMEA at Manthan.

Also read: Know Your Customers’ Preference, and Connect with Them as Individuals

Manthan recently announced a strategic alliance with RichRelevance, a market-leading personalisation platform to deliver an end-to-end Algorithmic Customer Experience. This solution combines a Customer Data Platform, Retail Marketing and Merchandising solution, and Real-time Personalisation powered by advanced data science and algorithms.

About Manthan

Manthan is a leading cloud analytics company pioneering applications for consumer-facing businesses. Manthan excels in the application of decision sciences and AI; its suite of products has been recognised for enabling the shortest path to profit. Manthan’s products use machine intelligence to process decision contexts and respond automatically with actions. Headquartered in Bangalore with offices in Santa Clara, London, Dubai, Mexico City, Singapore and Manila, Manthan’s footprint spans 22 countries.