As marketers continue to explore new ways to not only reach consumers, but connect with them in a personal way, marketing channels that employ CRM – the popular buzz word to describe customer relationship – are becoming increasingly vital to the marketing arsenal. The current CMO Council’s 2008 Marketing Outlook study still finds that only two of the top five solution investments for the year are CRM tools and customer analytics.

In introducing the study, The Power of Personalization, Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director, CMO Council writes that “…marketers are still missing the mark on how to leverage and utilize data, and because of this they are unable to realize the full potential of personalization tools, services and solutions.”

The new emphasis and importance of individualized lifecycle marketing techniques is escalating, says the report, as companies see the impact, differentiation, loyalty and word-of-mouth results of customized communication.

Quoting from current research, the following statistics are said to support the move to the impact of personal communications :

* The Winterberry Group said that spending on direct-mail advertising (an integral part of personalized communication applications) shows no sign of abating; investments by marketers totaled $58.4 billion in 2007, and that figure is expected to increase to more than $70 billion by 2011

* The EmailInsider reports that more than $3 billion was spent in the U.S. alone on e-mail marketing

* The Power of Personalization finds that 56 percent of marketers believe personal communications out-performs traditional mass market delivery. Digital, database-driven channels (email, web, contact centers) reportedly offer the most upside potential for engaging in customized communications

* Improving customer retention and loyalty is the primary driver of personalization strategies; while there is high-perceived value of customized communications, usage is still very low despite many years of experience.

* Over 56 percent of marketers believe personalized communications out-perform traditional massmarket delivery; digital, database-driven channels (email, Web, contact centers) reportedly offer the most upside potential for engaging in customized communications