New Gartner report rethinks the marketer’s to-do list

According to a recent Gartner report, CMOs have a new priority at the top of their to-do lists—and it isn’t to order more custom flash drives and beer koozies.

The State of Marketing Budget and Strategy 2022, Gartner’s annual survey of enterprise CMOs, indicates that marketing brass are shifting most of their attention to “Customer Acquisition, Retention and Engagement.” As users grow more impatient and wary of fraud, meeting all three of these needs requires an airtight, yet seamless approach to security. It also requires a combined effort from marketing and security teams.

Though still below pre-COVID-19 levels, marketing budgets are, on average, 9.5% higher than last year. Here is why spending on the right security solution is central to attracting, engaging, and keeping users around.

In the beginning…

All customer journeys start with identity, and optimizing the customer experience (CX) starts with account creation.

This means taking a good, hard look at outdated account signup measures such as email verification. At Deduce, we’ve talked to companies signing up millions of new users every month that have churned 10 percent of these accounts because of email verification issues. Further damage awaits downstream, negatively impacting lifetime customer value and brand reputation.

To neutralize fraud—including synthetic fraud—while maintaining an easy-breezy signup process, deploy an antifraud solution that provides real-time trust signals at the account creation stage. For regulated industries, these trust signals can also reduce the cost of customer onboarding.

A churning sensation

Remember those trust signals from two sentences ago? They not only fastrack signup, but alleviate another major customer pain point: false positives.

Once customers are acquired and have created their account, getting blindsided by a false positive upon logging in will often trigger a DEFCON-1 churn reaction. Security solutions bereft of real-time identity data that rely exclusively on behavioral biometrics and device fingerprinting will generate more false positives and smack users with a multi-factor authentication (MFA) alert.

Many users don’t think MFA is worth the increased security. They don’t have time for clicking CAPTCHA squares of traffic lights or authenticating via one-time passcode. And, thanks to SIM swapping, SMS codes aren’t 100-percent secure, let alone user-friendly, anyway.

A delicate balance

If CMOs wish to treat users to a Ritz-Carlton-esque app experience, they’ll need a security solution that’s rock-solid yet frictionless.

Fortunately, Deduce lies at the intersection of CX and security. With a real-time identity network comprising 500 million anonymized user profiles, 150,000+ websites and apps, and over 1.4 billion daily activities, Deduce uses real-time identity intelligence to ensure a user is legit during account creation and beyond, greatly decreasing the likelihood of a false positive MFA trigger. Spoof-proof trust signals—geolocation, new device, time of day, etc.—promise a smooth verification process throughout the customer journey.

The trusted user experience needn’t be a slog. Safe can also mean seamless, and vice versa.

Looking for a CX-traordinary security solution? Try Deduce for free today.