Business Gain From How You Retain is a new thought leadership initiative being untaken by the CMO Council in partnership with CSC, IBM Software and D&B.

This Authority Leadership™ program embraces leading business schools, subject matter experts and solution providers in identifying what deepens, solidifies and perpetuates customer relationships. Specifically, the campaign looks at ways to improve the return on customer equity and lifetime value by making customer insight, understanding and intimacy a hallmark of the organization. This important CMO initiative also audits and assess the degree to which major brands are unifying and centralizing customer data, undertaking effective marketing analytics, embracing advanced segmentation strategies, and empowering the frontline to act on customer profiling and behavioral knowledge.

The program will evaluate marketing's growing role in seeking to anticipate and predict customer wants, needs and requirements across the lifecycle, based on the utilization of growing sources and volumes of data (transactional, behavioral, directional) generated from both inside and outside the enterprise. The program will also determine where and how relationships survive and thrive by companies maintaining continuous, individualized contact and personalized communication with priority customer segments. In addition, the level of collaboration and alignment between marketing, IT groups and siloed data stakeholders across the enterprise will be assessed.

Market sectors targeted include cable, wireless and satellite; Internet services and content; retail; financial services; health care; travel, hospitality and lodging; consumer electronics; media and entertainment; foodservice; as well as pharmaceuticals.