Merkle Unveils 2022 Imperatives to Address Customer Experience in a New Age

Annual guide offers insights into three essential areas including consumer data, measurement, and long-term loyalty.

[the_ad_placement id="news-banner-top"]

COLUMBIA, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Merkle (www.merkleinc.com), a leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company, has unveiled its 2022 Customer Experience Imperatives. The executive guide is designed to help brands identify the key strategic considerations that will shape the year ahead and provide business leaders with actionable insights to create competitive advantage through marketing. This year, the Imperatives explore three themes, including data, measurement, and commerce’s impact on loyalty, and discuss how brands can approach each of these to stay ahead of the curve within their industries.

“At Merkle, we are dedicated to helping brand leaders understand the role customer experience plays in driving their business forward. In the coming year, establishing deeper and more rewarding relationships with its customers will be a necessity for any business to achieve its goals,” said Michael Komasinski, global chief executive officer at Merkle/CXM. “The 2022 Customer Experience Imperatives push brand leaders to think differently about their business approach. Through a strong customer experience strategy built around data, measurement, and loyalty, brands can take steps to maximize the depth of their customer relationships and, as a result, advance their business to new levels.”

For more than a decade, the Customer Experience Imperatives have provided business leaders with insight into what outputs and metrics matter most as organizations continue to build out their capabilities and data platforms. The key themes outlined in the 2022 Imperatives, which are critical to helping marketers maximize customer experience and loyalty, are:

  1. Expand the Vision for Customer Data – Data is the core asset underpinning the way brands connect with their customers. It’s time to think about data differently; it’s imperative to ditch the strategy of collecting vast amounts of product- and purchase cycle-related data. Approaching data through a customer experience mindset will encourage a different type of collection, interpretation, and activation. To make customer experiences more valuable, brands should practice funnel fluidity, activate media communications, expand content strategies beyond the website ecosystem, and implement new technologies for customer experiences.
  2. Use Measurement as a Catalyst for Change – In a fiercely competitive customer experience economy, adjusting a measurement framework from focusing on what can be measured to what should be measured can make a world of difference. An effective measurement framework gauges all departments’ activities in relation to their impact on the business.
  3. Deliver Commerce Experiences to Drive Next-Generation Loyalty – The first 20+ years of the world’s digital transformation have largely been focused on convenience: harnessing technology to make everyday tasks faster, easier, more intuitive, more personalized. While these principles are fair, there is a shift occurring within the industry – focusing more on relationship building. The industry is entering a new age of loyalty that is about more than just points and rewards. It’s about longer-term affinity, advocacy.

“Consumer sentiment has changed significantly over the past year,” said Erin Hutchinson, global chief marketing & communications officer, Merkle/CXM. “Brands are looking for new ways to reach their audiences and to give them an experience that matters to them. By approaching data activation through a customer experience mindset, measuring activities’ impact on business outcomes, and prioritizing customer loyalty, brands can engage with their audiences better than ever before.”

The 2022 Imperatives are available in a downloadable ebook and are supported by a webinar series. Visit here to download and register.

About Merkle

Merkle is a leading data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company that specializes in the delivery of unique, personalized customer experiences across platforms and devices. For more than 30 years, Fortune 1000 companies and leading nonprofit organizations have partnered with Merkle to maximize the value of their customer portfolios. The company’s heritage in data, technology, and analytics forms the foundation for its unmatched skills in understanding consumer insights that drive hyper-personalized marketing strategies. Its combined strengths in performance media, customer experience, customer relationship management, loyalty, and enterprise marketing technology drive improved marketing results and competitive advantage. With more than 14,000 employees, Merkle is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, with 50+ additional offices throughout the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Merkle is a dentsu company. For more information, contact Merkle at 1-877-9-Merkle or visit www.merkleinc.com.

Contacts

Kite Hill PR for Merkle
Bridget Callahan
bridget@kitehillpr.com

Author Information

As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.

She brings more than 20 years of experience in technology research and marketing; prior to her current role, she was a Research Analyst at Omdia, authoring market and ecosystem reports on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and User Interface technologies. Sherril was previously Manager of Market Research at Intrado Life and Safety, providing competitive analysis and intelligence, business development support, and analyst relations.

Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.

SHARE:

[the_ad_placement id="news-sidebar-ad"]

Latest Insights:

Key Announcements Center on watsonx.orchestrate, watsonx.data, and Granite 4.0, as IBM Aims to Make AI Agents and Unstructured Data Pivotal for Enterprise Transformation
Nick Patience and Brad Shimmin, analysts at Futurum, share insights on IBM Think 2025, where IBM showcased advancements in its watsonx platform, focusing on IBM Agentic AI, unstructured data, and hybrid cloud to drive enterprise value.
New Tools Streamline ERP Tasks, Add Carbon Tracking, and Enhance Predictive Business Insights
Keith Kirkpatrick, Research Director at Futurum, provides his perspective on the news from Epicor Insights 2025, including agentic AI to streamline ERP workflows, carbon tracking in Kinetic, and expansion of predictive insights with Grow AI.
Transformation Initiatives Drive Profitability as Company Posts Revenue Growth
Fernando Montenegro, VP and Practice Lead at Futurum, reviews Kyndryl's Q4 FY2025 earnings. Key highlights: Constant-currency growth, notable rise in pretax income, how 'three-A' initiatives drive results, and strategic tailwinds.

Latest Research:

In our latest Research Brief, Hammerspace Tier 0: Unlocking Greater Efficiency in GPU-Driven Computing, The Futurum Group explores how organizations can overcome latency and storage inefficiencies by unlocking stranded NVMe capacity within GPU servers.
In our latest market brief, Enhancing Cyber-Resilience: A Multi-Layered Approach to Data Infrastructure, Protection, and Security, The Futurum Group, in partnership with Lenovo, explores how organizations can design resilient systems that reduce downtime, safeguard critical data, and empower lean IT teams to act swiftly in crisis moments.
In our latest Research Brief, Secure Data Infrastructure in a Post-Quantum Cryptographic World, created in partnership with NetApp, The Futurum Group explores the quantum cybersecurity threat and offers a roadmap to protect enterprise infrastructure through Post-Quantum Cryptography, crypto-agility, and proactive data security strategies.