Only One in Five Middle-East Marketers Personalize for a Segment of One, Finds a New Manthan Survey

New Insights from “State of Customer Marketing Maturity 2020” study for the Middle-East

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-personalization initiatives are picking up, with 19% of marketers reporting they personalize 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 realized a “Golden” customer record
• Use of AI for predicting customer behavior 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

According to the survey, most firms don’t classify themselves as leaders in customer marketing, despite 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 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.

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“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 prioritize investments based on their objectives of customer acquisition, conversion, cross-sell or customer retention”, said Ehtesham Mohammed, SVP – EMEA at Manthan.

Manthan recently announced strategic alliance with RichRelevance, a market leading personalization 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 Personalization powered by advanced data science and algorithms.

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