NPS, footfall, martech: 5 killer stats to start your week

1. Just 10% of brands in the UK excel at customer experience

Only 10% of brands in the UK have a net promoter score (NPS) of 40 or more, with logistics, energy and water emerging as the worst sectors for delivering on customer satisfaction.

Insurer NFU Mutual (70) is the company with the highest NPS in the UK. This is followed by First Direct (63), Volvo (49), Netflix (49) and Amazon (44).

By industry, the tech sector has the strongest overall NPS (36), followed by automotive (31) and media (25). Conversely, logistics is the worst-performing sector with an NPS of -13, followed by energy (-10) and water (-8).

Source: Bain & Company

2. Retail footfall falls 10% in seven years

Retail footfall has dropped by 10% over the last seven years as weak consumer spending and a shift to online hit shopper numbers.

Retail footfall declined by 1.7% year on year in September and by 1.6% over the past three months.

High street footfall was down 1.8%, while shopping centre footfall declined 2.5%. Retail parks saw a slight increase of 0.1% year on year.

Heavy rain in the last week of the month hit footfall hard, with levels “reasonably positive” at just a 0.7% decline before the weather hit.

“Given the monumental changes that have occurred in our retail trading landscape over the past decade, it is unsurprising that the long-term footfall trend is a downward one,” says Springboard marketing and insights director, Diane Wehrle.

“However, with 80% of spend remaining in-store there is still much for bricks and mortar stores to play for in Q4 of 2019, which of course includes the all-important festive trading period.”

Source: Springboard and the BRC

3. Marketing technology market now worth more than $120bn

The global marketing technology market grew 22% last year and is now worth an estimated $121.5bn.

Almost half (43%) expect their martech budgets to increase over the next 12 months, with just 4% expecting to see a decrease. On average, brands in North America and the UK spend 26% of their marketing budgets on martech, compared to 23% last year.

More than three-quarters of brands use martech to assist with email and social media, and two-thirds use it for content, CRM and analytics. But just 24% of global marketers, and 27% in the UK, think they have all the martech tools they need.

Source: WARC

4. Netflix the most positively talked about brand among millennials

Netflix is the most positively talked about brand among millennials, with a score of 80.2 and a lead of 7.3 points.

Airbnb takes second position with 72.9 points, fast food giant McDonald’s takes third place (72.5) and social networking platform Instagram takes fourth (72.4).

The top 10 list is dominated by tech companies and companies that would have previously be considered as ‘disrupters’ such as Monzo, on 71.9 points, and Spotify on 70.5. Ikea and Primark are the only two retailers to make the top 10, which also includes Apple and the iPhone.

In terms of the biggest improvers, Amazon Prime Video tops the list with an increase of 10.4, followed by Häagen-Dazs, which saw its score rise 7.5 points, Marmite and Adidas (6.0), and Vans (5.9%).

The rankings assess positive word of mouth – whether someone has talked about a brand with friends and family in the past two weeks.

Source: YouGov BrandIndex

5. Marketers identify customer experience as most important to their success

Marketers believe customer experience is most important for business success, with 84% of 500 marketers questioned in a survey identifying it. A further 81% believe customer experience is a key driver of marketing success.

For business success, customer experience was followed by strategy and planning and brand management on 79%, and data and analytics on 76%. For marketing success, strategy and brand management, and user experience came next on 78%.

More than half (52%) identify artificial intelligence (AI) as the technology that will most influence the marketing function in the next five years. This is ahead of mobile apps (38%), voice assistants (36%) and immersive technologies (32%).

Source: The Economist Group