Managing Customer Experiences vs Managing Campaigns

Are you keeping up with the pace of change in CXM?

In today’s world of customer-centric marketing, buzzwords abound: customer journey orchestration, personalised marketing, experience-led growth, and experience management, just to name a few. But let’s not get caught up in the terminology. What really matters is how you bring these concepts to life.

That’s exactly what we’re unpacking in this guide.

The Changing Landscape of Marketing

Marketing campaigns have long been a cornerstone of business growth. But in recent years, experience management has taken centre stage as the go-to strategy for enhancing customer-brand relationships. It’s all about delivering relevant, personalised, and high-quality experiences throughout the entire customer journey.

Experience management isn’t just a passing trend—it’s a response to what modern consumers expect and reward. And it’s become a must-have for staying competitive.

• Loyal customers generate 2.5x more revenue than new customers on average.
• A 5% increase in loyalty can boost profits by 25% to 95%.
• 32% of loyal customers will abandon a brand they love after a single bad experience.

Customer Experience Management (CXM) is important for many businesses operating in the B2B or B2C space. Acting as a vital lever for growth, CXM allows businesses to fulfil the needs of their customers at every stage of the journey, from pre to post-purchase. Effectively harnessing the power of CXM allows businesses to reap various rewards, including those outlined below.

Campaigns vs. Experiences: What’s the Difference?

Campaign management revolves around planning and executing marketing initiatives, typically focused on specific products or events, to achieve short-term goals.

Experience management, on the other hand, is about orchestrating personalised experiences that enhance every interaction across the customer journey.

These definitions, though simplified, illustrate that shifting from campaign management to experience management isn’t just about tweaking your tactics—it’s about adopting a whole new mindset.

• Product-led organisations manage campaigns.
• Customer-centric organisations manage experiences.

In our experience, it’s often the marketing team that leads the charge toward customer-centricity within a company.

Campaign Management in Action

Campaign management is all about broadcasting marketing messages. Whether the tactics are broad or highly targeted, they typically reflect an inside-out perspective. Campaigns still have their place—like during major announcements or when building broad awareness—but they struggle to keep pace with the demands of modern CXM.

• Brand-centric: Focused on promoting the brand or its products/services
• Batch-oriented: Planned and executed on set schedules.
• Segment-driven: Targeting pre-defined customer segments based on historical data.
• Linear and discrete: Following a funnel based on buyer phases and product lifecycles.
• Channel-specific: Tailoring messaging and creative to each communication channel.

Experience Management in Action

Experience management is about aligning product, brand, service, and channel experiences to create cohesive customer journeys that foster brand loyalty. It’s about meeting customers where they are and using each interaction to enhance the next one.

• Customer-centric: Placing individuals at the centre of marketing strategies.
• Always on: Engaging in real-time based on customer-initiated events.
• Segments of one: Offering personalised experiences tailored to each customer using sophisticated workflows.
• Persona and goal-focused: Aligning strategies with the goals and needs of audience personas.
• Omnichannel: Ensuring consistency and continuity so customers experience a seamless journey.

	Managing Campaigns	Managing Experiences
Data usage	Relies on historical data for segmentation	Uses real-time data (and advanced tech like AI) to personalise experiences
Effectiveness	Effective for short-term goals and promotions	Contributes to long-term customer loyalty and sustainable business growth
Engagement strategy	Inflexible, pre-planned strategy	Highly flexible, adapting in real-time to customer actions and preferences
Focus	Product or event-focused	Customer-focused
Messaging methods	Broadcasting to a broad audience	Engaging with individuals
Outcomes and metrics	Campaign-specific metrics	Measured by long-term satisfaction, loyalty, lifetime value, and brand-specific engagement metrics

	Managing Campaigns	Managing Experiences
Focus	Product or event-focused	Customer-focused
Messaging methods	Broadcasting to a broad audience	Engaging with individuals
Engagement strategy	Inflexible, pre-planned strategy	Highly flexible, adapting in real-time to customer actions and preferences
Data usage	Relies on historical data for segmentation	Uses real-time data (and advanced tech like AI) to personalise experiences
Outcomes and metrics	Campaign-specific metrics	Measured by long-term satisfaction, loyalty, lifetime value, and brand-specific engagement metrics
Effectiveness	Effective for short-term goals and promotions	Contributes to long-term customer loyalty and sustainable business growth

 

These principles apply to both B2C and B2B contexts. While customer journeys may differ, the need for a human-centric approach remains constant. Companies that shift from aggressive product marketing to value-added, seamless customer experiences are the ones that will thrive.

Building the Capacity to Manage Experiences: Practical Steps

Experience management is about aligning product, brand, service, and channel experiences to create cohesive customer journeys that foster brand loyalty. It’s about meeting customers where they are and using each interaction to enhance the next one.

1. 1. Set and Share a Clear Vision
   

Customer centricity is a game-changer, but it needs to align with your business objectives.

• Clarify how an experience-led approach will drive long-term growth.
• Define the necessary changes for customers and why they matter.
• Communicate the importance clearly to key stakeholders and secure buy-in from leadership.
  

This often requires tweaking marketing KPIs. While revenue remains important, experience-led organisations look at customer lifetime value holistically.

2. 2. Embed Customer Experience in Your Culture
   

CXM isn’t just a department’s responsibility—it’s everyone’s job. Here’s what that looks like:

• Replace sales commissions with CLV target bonuses.
• Align individual job performance with broader business goals.
• Create cross-functional customer success targets.
• Share data freely between teams.
• Reward CXM leadership.
• Aligning sales and marketing is a good start. Once those teams are synced on customer lifecycle priorities, bring operational and post-sales service departments into the fold.

A customer-centric culture not only drives better outcomes but also boosts employee engagement by giving their work purpose.

3. 3. Re-engineer Your Organisation

To truly focus on customer satisfaction and retention, you may need to rethink your team structures and processes.

• Redesign process flows with customer experience as the core focus.
• Eliminate roadblocks and information silos.
• Translate organisational goals into customer-centric targets.
• Assess your customer intelligence and CXM capabilities.
  

Some businesses try to shortcut this by relying on martech to solve silo issues—but that’s not the answer.

4. 4. Enable Success with Technology

Experience-led organisations have a complete picture of the customer journey. They know where customers come from, how they interact with the brand, and what keeps them around.

• Review how you collect and manage customer data.
• Map customer journeys and identify gaps.
• Connect platforms, whether through API integrations or new bridging systems.
• Experiment with automations like offer decisioning or dynamic content.
• Scale these automations across all channels.

Often, the best martech solution is the one you already have. Auditing existing platforms can be more cost-effective than investing in new ones. However, there are valid reasons to consider a unified data platform, such as a Customer Data Platform (CDP), which builds real-time customer profiles to help orchestrate complex journeys.

5. 5.Measure, Optimise, Predict, and Pinpoint

Measuring the success of customer experiences is more complex than tracking campaigns, but it’s far more valuable in the long run.

• Compare different attribution models to see what’s working.
• Trace customer experience KPIs to broader organisational outcomes.
• Transition to centralised, progressive, and shared customer profiles.
• Maintain high data quality and reliability.

The next frontier is using predictive analytics to enhance customer experiences earlier in the journey, driving long-term growth through deeper relationships.

Real-Life Success Stories: Start Small, Scale Fast

Transitioning from product-led to experience-led doesn’t have to mean a massive overhaul. Let’s look at two real-life examples that show how ambition and a customer-centric approach can deliver outstanding results.

Giffgaff: A New Approach to Welcoming Members

Sim-only telco giffgaff significantly boosted retention by overhauling its welcome programme, adding an estimated 17,000 subscribers annually. While it might sound like a simple tweak, the real magic happened behind the scenes: understanding customer behaviour, defining custom journeys, setting up automations, and refining processes.

Hachette: Personalised Content at Scale

Hachette’s newsletter subscribers now receive content that’s much more in tune with their interests, thanks to a deep dive into the company’s data. This ongoing project has shifted Hachette from broad, product-led batch emails to highly segmented, personalised communication, catering to a 150k-strong subscriber base.

Evolving to Experience Management

CXM is moving at lightning speed. The shift from traditional campaign management to a customer-centric, experience-led approach is essential for brands that want to stay ahead. But it’s more than just new strategies or technologies. It’s about crafting a journey where every interaction counts, every moment matters, and every customer feels valued. It’s about fostering long-term relationships, creating personalised experiences, and looking beyond one-time transactions. Making this shift might require a complete rethink, but it’s worth it.

Some changes can happen quickly, while others might need more time or a more significant transformation. We’ve just scratched the surface in this guide to give you an idea of what the shift means for your business.

Get in touch

If you’re ready to dive deeper into experience management or want tailored advice on how to mature your CXM strategies, let’s chat. We’re here to help you navigate the journey with confidence and success.