Just 49% of company executives agree that they know who their most loyal customers are, and the best way to reach out to them and get them to engage with their brand, finds Acxiom and Loyalty 360 [download page] in survey results released in March 2012. In fact, just 10% of respondents strongly agreed with the statement, while about one-third were neutral and roughly 1 in 5 disagreed. And while the vast majority (84.5%) use customer retention marketing strategies, slightly less than half believe these strategies are working.
Retention Strategies Get Low Budget Allocation

Although most respondents are using customer retention strategies, they are not devoting much of their budgets towards them. In fact, 6 in 10 respondents reported allocating 20% or less of their budgets to these strategies, while just 16% said they devote more than half of their marketing dollars. On a more encouraging note, 57.4% of respondents plan to increase their budgets for marketing retention over the next 2 years.
RFM Most Popular Metric

Data from “Making Every Interaction Count” indicates that recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) is the most popular metric used, at 64.1% of respondents, followed by customer lifetime value (51.1%). Roughly one-third use net promoter score and willingness to refer to gauge loyalty, while about 5% admit they do not measure customer retention at all.