Why Marketing Should Own Customer Loyalty

When I ask a room full of marketing professionals,

What is the role of marketing?

the typical responses are some variation of

“Getting customers into the sales funnel”.

When I then ask them

What role do they play in keeping these customers happy and loyal?

Most of the marketers indicate that it is not part of their role. When I then ask them –

Whose role is it?

I get varied responses –

Its the role of customer service or account management, sales  and not marketing.

What marketing teams don’t understand is that keeping customers happy and loyal should not only be the role of marketing, but should be a key focus area for marketing.

We all know that it is easier to sell to an existing, loyal customer than to convert a new prospect to a customer. Marketing spends a lot of money, time and effort to bring in new prospects into the sales funnel. By just spending a fraction of that time, effort and money, marketing can have an impact on customer loyalty.

By becoming custodians of customer loyalty, the marketing organisations will not only make their own jobs easier, but also get to know their customers better, which in turn leads to better insights about their customer behaviour, which then has an impact on new customer acquisitions.

Thus, just by taking ownership for customer loyalty, the effectiveness & efficiency of the entire marketing function goes into a positive feedback loop.

What do you think? Should marketing own “Customer Loyalty”?