Dive Brief:
- Ascend2’s latest research on data-driven marketing found that 70% of respondents report personalization is their key goal for using data.
- 81% believe the success of their data-driven marketing is above average compared to their competitors.
- About half of respondents said integrating data across platforms is the greatest barrier to success.
Dive Insight:
Personalization is one of the main benefits of data-driven marketing. The more third and (more importantly) first party data marketers collect on prospects and customers alike, the more segmentation and personalization they can impose on databases.
Other data goals uncovered by the research include acquiring new customers (43%); measuring ROI (40%); and targeting (39%).
“Personalizing the customer experience is a top priority for 70% of data-driven marketing strategies. Personalization of email messages, landing pages, contact data segmentation are the top tactics used to meet this goal,” Todd Lebo, partner and CMO, Ascend2, told Marketing Dive.
Although the overwhelming majority of marketers describe their data marketing as above average, only 37% say they are “very successful” at this key aspect of digital marketing.
Challenging this view is a previous report from the CMO Council that found that only 30% of marketers felt they were handling data well.
"This is a cry for help from the marketing community. This is the future of marketing and the future is now. More marketers are searching our education to better train existing staff and DMA hears from hiring managers that more and more their target hire is a data scientist and not a marketer," Neil O'Keefe, SVP of CRM and member engagement at the DMA, told Marketing Dive.
But Ascend2’s research also uncovered barriers to data-driven marketing success. “The most significant barriers to achieving data-driven marketing success for about half of all companies are integrating data across platforms and enriching data quality and completeness," Lebo said. "Marketers must put data silos in their rearview mirror if they want to compete today’s marketplace.”
