A company’s customer experience is not owned by any single department. Today, customers expect a personalized experience whether they are talking to customer service, sales, marketing, or finance. Enabling every employee to meet this expectation will require nearly all companies to change how they do business and their underlying technology.

Based on Bluewolf’s 3rd annual State of Salesforce report, marketing departments are leading these changes for many companies. Below are three areas of investment that are enabling marketers to deliver a personalized customer experience:

Integrate Tools and Data

Most marketing departments juggle a collection of disparate tools and data. Those that have invested in integrating at least Salesforce and their marketing automation tools report greater insight into customer activity, improved cross-department collaboration, and see more innovation potential with Salesforce.

• 83% of marketers say integrating Salesforce and marketing automation increases innovation potential, according to Bluewolf. Tweet this.   

Invest in Data Quality

Now more than ever, marketing must take ownership of their data. But without an alignment with sales and IT, marketing’s effort to achieve clean data will go to waste. Over the next year, an organizational focus on data will separate the average marketer from those leading digital transformation within their companies. Outside of marketing automation, the largest portion of marketers budgets are allocated towards data quality tools, with a substantial focus on data cleansing AppExchange solutions.

• 48% of marketers are not confident in the accuracy of their data and 70% of marketers are turning to the AppExchange for data cleansing tools, according to Bluewolf. Tweet this.

Embrace Analytics

As marketers focus more on customer retention, their investment in engagement and measurement tools, including analytics, has increased. Leading marketers are investing in analytics to deepen the relationship with their customers. While marketers rank their maturity of analytics as advanced, the majority are using analytics tools outside of Salesforce. This is limiting marketers from gaining a single view of the customer; in fact 63% of marketers do not have a single Salesforce dashboard. As data becomes a primary focus for marketing, it will become essential to unify data and tools into one system to compile a single view of the customer across sales, service and marketing.

• 93% of marketers are invested in BI and analytics tools but 56% of these tools live outside of Salesforce, via Bluewolf. Tweet this.

Want to learn about other key investments marketers are making? Read the third annual State of Salesforce report, which outlines how the best companies are using Salesforce. Based on global data collected in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management, this annual review distills insight from more than one thousand salesforce.com customers. Additionally, benchmark yourself against the aggregate responses to instantly receive a personalized report of findings.

About the Author

Cassie Hrushesky is the Product Marketing Manager for Bluewolf's Digital Marketing Service and Customer Service Practice. Follow Cassie on Twitter @cmnh10.

To learn more about how you can implement the new Salesforce Analytics Cloud, visit salesforce.com, or download the free e-book.