Keeping customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones but only 26% of marketers are ‘very committed’ to relationship marketing and 20% don’t invest in relationship marketing at all.

Six in 10 marketers agree that retaining customers costs less than acquiring new ones but 51% said their main focus is on acquisition, the second annual Cross-Channel Marketing Report found.

Just 34% of marketers said their main focus was retention, according to the Responsys and Econsultancy study.

Paul Cross, Responsys Asia Pacific president, said:“The mass marketing era is fading. Marketers who fail to transform their strategies and build long-term loyalty with customers risk getting left behind by their more savvy and nimbler competitors.”

Thirty-eight per cent of marketers said a lack of knowledge was preventing them investing in retention and 24% said they did not have enough resources.

Only a third (34%) described their digital efforts as ‘very integrated’ with their wider marketing mix and only 15% said their mobile marketing was ‘very integrated’.

“We’re now moving into a new era of orchestration, where the overall customer experience needs to be seen as a set of combined interactions across all touch points,” Cross added.

“To remain relevant and continue to drive results marketers need to put the customer at the heart of all activity.”