The Agitator and colleagues like Ken Burnett have been writing heaps about customer/donor experience, hoping to establish that how nonprofits engage with their donors is as important to their fundraising success as it is to corporations engaging customers effectively for business success. See here, including the footnote, for the sordid history.

I don’t know if we’re succeeding in making that point, but we’re going to persist … as with today’s post.

Digital Trends Report 2015, a report from Consultancy and Adobe, provides a look at corporate marketers’ intentions in the digital arena going forward.

Now, it’s not surprising that marketers are working hard to integrate digital tools/media into their marketing strategies …

But what caught my intention is the emphasis this cross-section of over 6,000 marketers worldwide placed on using digital tools to improve their customer experience. Indeed, improving customer experience is the #1 marketing objective in today’s business environment …

Here’s what the report observes:

“It is no secret that customer experience has emerged as a key priority for many organizations over the last few years. The emphasis on CX coincides with rising consumer expectations, which has led brands to focus on customer satisfaction or even delight at every touch point in an attempt to foster loyalty.”

And:

“The challenges of creating a great customer experience extend from the tactical to the strategic, from remaking processes to encouraging innovation and from building new skills to integrating an array of technologies.

Simply put, customer experience isn’t simple.

For many organizations, the goal of turning customer experience (CX) into a competitive advantage means recreating themselves. That’s because the customer’s experience is the result of every part of the company working together, or failing to.”

I urge you to read Chapters 3 & 4 of the report, dealing with customer experience, in particular.

Where is your marketing strategy by comparison? How well integrated is digital media with the rest of your communications tools and program? And what importance is your nonprofit giving to understanding and improving its ‘donor experience’?

Tom