It’s frustrating when a customer exhibits purchase intent but doesn’t buy because of friction in the customer journey. It’s worse when a store manager or contact center agent is unaware of a digital promotion. Nearly 40% of CMOs say that a lack of consistent customer experience (CX) prevents greater online sales revenue.

Empowered customers now hold all the power, and marketers must meet their expectations for contextually relevant, personalized experiences. On top of these customer expectations, the landscape for enterprise marketing technology (EMT) has changed. Customer obsession is now an enterprisewide imperative, and marketing must align with sales, service, and commerce to deliver better experiences.

B2C marketers play a special role in CX initiatives. Their proximity to customers enables them to connect the dots between business strategy and CX. But this requires more than lip service. Meeting customer needs at each touchpoint requires coordinated orchestration of both EMT and CX capabilities. Marketers must consider EMT solutions that go beyond cloud-based, self-service marketing automation to address CX requirements.

The time for standalone marketing ecosystems has passed. Cross-role collaboration to deliver consistent, immersive CX is crucial to business success. Marketers must align their EMT investments with the firm’s larger business-technology environment to create customer-led and insights-driven CX ecosystems.

Some brands have already taken steps to align marketing and CX to meet evolving customer expectations. ScottishPower, for example, scrapped its legacy systems in favor of a real-time interaction management strategy. It decreased its overall churn rate by 31% and increased customer satisfaction by 10 percentage points.

If you want to explore marketing alignment with CX, we invite you to attend Forrester’s CX Europe 2018 Forum in London on November 13–14. Feel free to request a one-to-one meeting with me, send me an email, or set up an inquiry.