Dive Brief:

• In May, Econsultancy and Oracle Marketing Cloud conducted a survey asking senior marketers to report the benefits for using data management platforms.
• The most cited benefit was having a centralized control and standardization of existing first-party data.
• A strong majority (91%) of surveyed marketers said the biggest challenge in using data management platforms was legacy technology.

Dive Insight:

The Econsultancy and Oracle Marketing Cloud survey of senior marketers on using data management platforms (DMPs) points out the need to take full advantage of all that data being collected from campaigns and on prospects. The factor cited as the most beneficial was having a centralized control and standardization of existing first-party data cited by 95% of surveyed marketers as at least somewhat beneficial with 53% reporting it was a major benefit. Using current data for better email, web, social and content personalization was cited by 97% as at least somewhat beneficial, but trailed centralized control as a major benefit at 51%.

Three areas stood out as challenges to utilizing DMPs ranging from 91% to 88% reporting them as at least somewhat challenging: legacy technology, disparate data sets and lack of talent to support implementing DMP technology.

Different polling from April by the Direct Marketing Association and Winterberry Group found 32.5% of U.S. marketing professionals use DMPs to support data-driven marketing.