Catching up to what, you may ask.

They are realizing that strategically driven direct marketers had it right all along. It's not just about demand generation, positioning or branding as important as these all are. But that these were never the goal of marketing, but rather strategies to achieving the ultimate goal -- ROI.

For decades agencies and their clients thought that if they focused on demand generation, that sales would automatically follow. In the background, direct marketers were seen as second class citizens who were concerned only about short term sales. Except perhaps for a few such as David Ogilvy who undertood better the value of the direct marketing discipline. Rodney Dangerfield reflected the reality of the direct marketer's plight when he said, "I don't get no respect"!

But lo and behold came the digital age, where the customer rules. And every marketing expenditure must be measured based on its ability to yield profitable revenue within a financially acceptable timeframe.

Instead of soft quantification for millions of dollars spent on awareness advertising, CMOs must now give hard justification for their budgets.

Those days of anecdotal evidence are gone forever. And CMOs everywhere are still adjusting to a world direct marketers have championed for decades.

In what I consider to be the best research on this subject, IBM conducted a study in 2011 that aimed for 1,000 participants. In this Global Chief Marketing Officer Study, more than 1,700 CMOs from 64 countries spoke face to face with IBM Interviewers for an hour. Here is a brief analysis of the results as I see it.

Determining ROI the number 1 issue facing CMOs today

"Most CMOs are struggling in one vital respect — return on investment (ROI). Our research shows the measures used to evaluate marketing are changing. Nearly two-thirds of CMOs think return on marketing investment will be the primary measure of their effectiveness by 2015. But proving that value is difficult. Even among the most successful enterprises, half of all CMOs feel insufficiently prepared to provide hard numbers".

Let's be honest. In the past, most CMOs were not required to provide hard evidence that their strategies were working in the form of monthly or weekly ROI reports. But with increasing pressures brought on by the global economy, an increasing flood of competitors facilitated by digital media and a slow growth economy, organizations are keeping a tighter rein on their marketing expenses.

CMOs must now focus on deeper knowledge of customer behavior and not just markets

Many direct marketers become frustrated with agency educated CMOs who rely on market reports rather than a deep understanding of the behaviors exhibited by their own customers.

"One reason most organizations struggle to get the customer insights they need is that they still focus on understanding markets rather than individuals. At least 80 percent of CMOs rely on traditional sources of information such as market research and competitive benchmarking to make strategic decisions. Similarly, more than 60 percent rely on sales, campaign analysis and the like."

In the new world, CMOs must get a better handle on where buyers look for information, move from channel to channel and ultimately reach the buying decision.

It is no longer enough to know how segments make the purchase decision, but how each individual customer makes a purchase. This knowledge forms the foundation of the CRM strategy by customizing the message, selecting the preferred channel for repurchase and other steps each customer uses to purchase your product instead of a competitor's.

CMOs finally understand the need to marry up with IT

If you have read other posts on this blog, you know that direct marketers consider the relational customer database as the core of any significant marketing program.

Without it, any analysis of ROI tied to specific channels or testing are impossible. In fact, the ROI analysis relies wholly on the quality and quantity of the CMOs understanding of individual customers.

"The data explosion tops the list of headaches. More than 70 percent of the CMOs who think it's important say they aren't fully prepared to deal with its impact".

As one CMO stated: "I don't see how we can go forward without embedding IT into marketing."

Gearing up the staff to handle the analysis needed to run a state-of-the-art marketing team

Marketing demands more now than just great creative concepts and flawless media execution. More than ever, customer insight comes more from understanding behavior than primary research.

As direct marketers have said for some time, what customers do and what they say often prove to be dramatically different.

In the new world, data driven marketing makes companies more competitive. It also makes customer driven CMOs invaluable to the company because they understand customers better than any one else in the organization.

Pertinent and accurate knowledge of customer behavior requires a different skill set from the traditional marketing group.

Now marketing teams need analysts and digital experts who possess marketing know-how.

CMOs grapple with this question. What is best? Marketers who have an understanding of digital or digital technicians who have some knowledge of marketing.

My contention is that you should be open to both options.

"Likewise, nearly two-thirds believe they will need to change the mix of skills within the marketing function and enhance its analytics capabilities. A telecommunications CMO in China summed up the general view when he noted, "Re-thinking our skills mix within the marketing function and aligning with IT are priorities for us."

The bottom line

CMOs must move from soft results analysis to hard ROI evaluation criteria as quickly as possible. They must also find a way to shore up their own skills in database marketing, analytics and CRM. Then integrate these concepts into the company's DNA starting with the CEO and then moving over to IT and operations for proper tracking and corporate wide implementation.

Lately I’ve read reports that celebrate the fact that CMO tenures are increasing to a little better than two years (as if 28 months was something to brag about). The question is why?

One report suggests that the CMOs are “increasing their alignment with their C-suite peers,“ hence the increase in tenure. That is balderdash!

The more likely scenario: the economy is improving and CMOs are getting a reprieve.

I think external factors and the companies themselves affect CMO tenures more than the CMOs.

This leads me to the conclusion that CMOs must strive to ally themselves with great marketing companies if they want to improve their tenures well beyond where it is now. What do I mean by that?

Great marketing companies‘ cultures support the hypothesis that marketing success is a corporate venture rather than a solo role carried by the CMO. Only then is true CMO success achievable.

The Apples of the world are rare. It is clear that every one in the organization is there to serve the customer from CEO, Tim Cook all the way down the line. And their sales results and customer service ratings clearly reflect this as one of Apple’s prime missions.

As a marketer, I long for more opportunities to associate myself with such forward looking enterprises. And truly successful CMOS go to great lengths to find them and work for them.

The CEO and all company leaders in such organizations understand what Peter Drucker said long ago: “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business."

The bottom line: no CMO can succeed in his mission until it becomes everybody’s mission in the company he works for.

If you can only see one step ahead or backward, then you will loose.

Most of you probably remember the old Star Trek television series in the late 60s. The genius, Mr. Spark, used to play three-dimensional chess. Here he was, a genius who trained his mind to think beyond single board chess. He visualized complex chess moves on a single board made many times more complex as each move impacted two other chess boards simultaneously.

If Spark could only anticipate an oponent's move on a single board, then he would loose the game.

In the same way, today's marketer must move beyond two-dimensional thinking and look at the interconnectivity of all marketing initiatives.

The graphic below symbolizes marketing as a whole. For simplicity, the visual displays only a few marketing activities and how they interconnect to form the whole as a three-dimensional pyramid.

Let's think about how these few activities interrelate.

For example, the graphic shows CRM as a key activity. But CRM requires a robust database that automates all prospect and customer contacts such as email, direct mail, phone follow up and so forth. So an incomplete or inaccurate database adversely affects the results of CRM.

At the same time, a decentralized tracking system that fails to record all customer and lead activity on the database emasculates back end marketing evaluation and CRM initiatives.

And breakthrough creative work dies because a decentralized tracking system fails to identify the cost per lead, cost per sales or cost per customer numbers that identify great or failed creative executions.

Even a strong database with good tracking looses steam if the lists are not cleaned prior to mailings for list enhancement, outbound telemarketing, email or direct mail activities.

My take. Marketing requires a fluid mind that understands the interrelationships between marketing activities and how even one weak link will kill the most brilliant of marketing programs.

Another take. Having worked with hundreds of marketers and marketing planners over the years, I have come to the conclusion that creativity and three-dimensional thinking separates strategists from tacticians. No amount of education or training creates a strategist. You either have the gift or you don't.

Limited space constrained the list to four areas. So please add your comments once you have read this post to add your own.

1. Don't send sales messages, sell benefits. Otherwise your email becomes spam to the recipient. It also diminishes your brand.

If you're looking at a new product or service, what appeals to you more? "Our software leads the industry, so you should consider our product." Or "Our software does not require a manual to use, cuts 50% off of the time you normally spend on administrative duties and provides templates for nearly every letter, email or contract you will need in your business."

Or better yet, create three emails featuring each one of the above benefits using testimonials and other evidence that support your message.

Keep the message focused on solving a prospect's or customer's problem. Some call this consultative selling.

2. Control your email volume. Use a CRM system to make sure you balance the frequency and content of all of your emails sent to each prospect and customer.

Build your reputation with your recipient by helping them with useful information even if feels like you are taking time away from selling. In fact, by helping your contacts you are demonstrating that you care about them and understand that you make money only when you solve their problem.

Make sure you have a compelling reason to contact the prospect. That is, do not send an email when the only apparent winner is the company rather than the recipient.

Here are a few turn offs.

- Duplicate emails.

- Emails that come out of the blue from individuals or companies the recipient never heard of.

- Emails offering products and services that the recipient has no proven interest in

- Emails from companies where the recipient made an inquiry or a purchase 2 plus years ago.

- Emails that proclaim something is free when it isn't. In my book, even leaving that impression is a lie and brands the organization as hucksterish.

- Emails that makes the same offer repeatedly believing that email volume will somehow win the day. In the process, you just burned your bridge with the abused email recipient.

We used to say that in telesales, smaller is better. This means that more carefully culled prospect lists that are pre-qualified are more cost effective than bombarding the entire market with ineffective calls to poor prospects. In the same way -- for email less is better. Make every email you send count.

Email messaging is inexpensive, but the toll on your long term effectiveness can cost you a bundle in lost sales if you abuse your email privileges. Don't use a scorched earth policy on your prospects. You will loose in the long run.

3. Know your value proposition. In other words, answer the recipient's obvious question about why he has a problem and how your product or service will solve it. Not only that, demonstrate how you can solve his problem better than your competitors.

Of all the weakness in email (and all advertising for that matter), the lack of clarity on the company's value proposition kills sales. A powerful value proposition represents your elevator speech. It's focused, clear and addresses your most powerful selling weapon.

Here are a few examples listed in Tim Berry's post entitled: "An effective marketing strategy requires focus."

- Michelin Tires: Offers safety-conscious parents greater security in tires, at a price premium.

- McDonald’s Restaurants: Offers convenience-oriented eaters fast meals at competitive prices.

- QuickBooks: Offers user friendly, dynamic accounting software at an affordable price point for small businesses.

4. Include a call to action. Most emailers are getting good at this. But please give your prospects a reason to call, click on your landing page or respond to your email. Direct marketers call this "the offer."

Other than the demand for your product value proposition and the quality of your list, the most important predictor to response is the offer.

As examples, here are a few weak offers.

- To find out more, click here

- Call us for more information

- Please complete your profile

- See us at a store near you

Strong offers.

- Click here for a free demo and a 90 day free trial if you respond by February the 21st.

- Register for the DMA Fall conference by August 1 and get a $500 discount

- Get landscaping design for $300 (a $1,200 value) if you set it up prior to the planting season by March the 15th

There are numerous other issues we could talk about to strengthen your email program. But if I leave you with nothing else, please treat your email program as a gift from your prospect that you should never take for granted. Carefully evaluate each email to make sure your prospects and customers are interested in the subject and will respect you more each time they receive one of your helpful and pertinent emails. If you do, then you will see your open rates improve and your bottom line grow.

In a recent post at Customer Intelligence Blog, Tony Coretto writes the headline: "IBM Study Reveals CMOs Unprepared for "Data Explosion".

As businesses become more sophisticated in capturing data on every facet of the customer interaction, they’ve accumulated an enormous treasure-trove of information. However, as this study reveals, in most cases they don’t know what to do with it!

Heck. I'd be happy if retailers and other large businesses even bothered to maintain a customer database and used the tracking capabilities offered by their present POS vendors.

Why do so many companies lag behind the technology, tracking and data gathering process? And even if they do stay on top of the technology, they have failed to develop the talent and resources needed to turn analysis into action!

In my view, the future belongs to marketers who master the dashboard and know what to look for when analyzing the available data. These same marketers also know how to work closely with the CIO and CEO to break down the silos that make data gathering and its translation into action possible.

We must become ruthless in our zeal to help our clients and the companies we work for break away from making decisions based on what was done in the past. Great marketing decisions are founded on customer buying behavior.

But I think the real reason more companies have not grasped the power of customer intelligence to treat customers like, well... customers resides squarely in the hands of the CEO. Without a great CEO, a potentially great marketer stands little chance of making great contributions to the company.

The business vision should not revolve around operations, money management, acquisition, or European expansion. As important as all of these things are, they pale in comparison to the importance of creating many happy customers.

As the late Peter Drucker said:

...the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.

Agreeing to the principle that understanding the problem is the first step to solving it does not work -- unless we realize that it applies to every problem.

Here's a good example of what I mean.

A leading competitor and founder of the idea that a lot of people want cash now for their settlements was no longer number one in the market. J.G. Wentworth was taking over the market from my prospective client. They brought me in saying that their direct mail was no longer generating sufficient leads to keep up with their younger competitor companies and wondered how I might help.

We went through my questions and theirs trying to nail down what needed to be done to compete with their direct mail program.

They showed me their direct mail packages, list selection criteria, results over the last few years and readily answered my questions. They also listed their foremost competitors.

I went back to the office and contemplated what we should do to reverse the tide.

Their in house direct mail was weak and the results reflected it. They believed this was their biggest problem and that correcting it would get them back on course.

Unfortunately, the client failed to look at the big picture of what was happening. Their competitors were taking their business away with multi channel strategies such as DRTV, direct mail, digital and every known medium was explored and used heavily.

So I returned proposing a full solution including testing other channels -- especially DRTV -- as well as bringing additional talent to bear on their direct mail program.

They decided instead to hire a freelance copywriter to work with their in-house copywriter to improve the creative product. Never mind that the freelancer was not even a direct response specialist.

But I mentioned that this did not scratch the surface of what needed to be done to increase their growth and slow down their competitors as needed to recapture their lost market share.

This prospective client responded by saying that no, they knew what the problem was and countermanded my recommendation for testing DRTV. They had tried it several years ago and they could not make the numbers work.

This event happened three years ago and J.G. Wentworth's DRTV program has grown unabated.

I never was able to help my prospective client compete with J.G. Wentworth. Why? They had the money, the infrastructure and everything else except an open mind.

They failed to look at the big picture and made the false assumption that J.G. Wentworth did not know what they were doing.

The take away here is to never make the assumption that you have the problem nailed down without an objective and knowledgeable outside voice chiming in. Spend money and thought on what the problem is and season it with a heavy dose of objectivity and humility.

To begin with, as a direct marketing consultant I face client skepticism about marketing almost every day.

Many companies have spent a lot of advertising dollars that did not yield the revenue they needed or expected. So they draw conclusions about what caused the failure.

Some will never touch Pay Per Click with Google again because it didn't work. Or direct mail doesn't work. Or we tried outbound telemarketing three years ago and we found that it just cannot deliver the ROI we need.

More often than not, the marketers they hired did not know how to develop the value proposition, lacked objectivity or knowledge to create multi media strategies, or they simply planned and implemented the test incorrectly.

The bottom line -- marketers come with varied backgrounds and poor training. So that skepticism is valid.

In turn, I do not readily believe what clients tell me about the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives. Nine times out of ten, they either did not track the response correctly (or at all) or structure the effort as a test from which an analyst could draw reliable conclusions.

But to be truthful, marketing as practiced by most practitioners lacks discipline. So our reputation is well earned.

The process for achieving success in direct marketing is well documented. But few marketers and clients understand the considerable contributions the direct marketing strategy as a whole will bring to their business.

And unfortunately, the shrinking pool of expertise in this area makes my job more difficult because of the resulting skepticism brought about by inexperienced marketers and the growing number of new media platitudes that are propagating unchecked in the trade press and blogesphere.

A March, 2011, Advertising Age addressed one of the primary reasons why expertise and passion for marketing may be in decline.

The article, "Left to Fend for Themselves, Employees Feel No Loyalty to Agencies," the author reports on a speech given by global CEO Andrew Bennett of Havas' Arnold Worldwide.

Why is this an important issue?

For one, the advertising industry remains a primary breeding ground for CMOs and other marketers. And secondly, the article begs for a reason why this is so.

Note this from the article:

As for training, employees said they generally had to essentially train themselves, or figure out many aspects of their jobs on their own. According to the survey, there was a large disconnect between what employees and managers are saying in terms of training: 90% of employees said they learned by figuring out problems on their own. Conversely, 25% of execs said employees figured out their own issues. "The average Starbucks barista gets more training than the average communications employee."

Lack of training is the symptom and not the reason for the dearth of marketing talent. This lack of talent development comes from a focus on short term profits that favors shareholders rather than employees and clients. Furthermore, this trend exists throughout the whole of American industry and not just with agencies.

Most interesting, however, were comments from readers reacting to the article.

Training your people is not an elective, Business is getting harder, clients are becoming more senior, and agency people are more unprepared than ever before to address increasngly complex marketing challenges. ROBERT SOLOMON NEW YORK, NY

Agency staff are getting younger, less seasoned, and are virtually untrained. Some manage to find their way, others don't." Jamie Harding Birmingham, AL

The publicly held holding company model essentially destroyed the large agencies they hold. In order to constantly increase earnings per share, and satisfy large clients desire to hold down costs, the holding companies must reduce cost of goods sold (talent) to increase margins. The holding companies are trying to "save their way into growth" and this has never worked in the past. CHARLES LARSON INDIANAPOLIS, IN

So how do we overcome Corporate America's Skepticism about advertising and marketing?

Like most big problems, it begins and ends with stronger leaders and better trained employees. Those who benefited from mentors, company training and strategic vision need to hand their knowledge down to the next generation. Those endowed with a passion for marketing excellence need to continue to grow and share that growth with others at every opportunity.

Fortunately, many of you are teaching in universities, training corporate staffs and mentoring future leaders. We need you more than ever.