One in five consumers switch brands, and seven in ten try new digital shopping channels (McKinsey). With the market becoming more complex and customers demanding a personalized experience, data-driven marketing is the only way forward. In an increasingly complex economy, marketers are more focused than ever on using data-driven insights to better understand their customers and boost their overall competitive advantage.
Here’s a look at 50 amazing statistics on the impact of how data can drive impact marketing success:
1. Using data-based insights to make better marketing decisions requires a comprehensive view of existing and incoming data. Nearly one-third (32%) of marketers surveyed by Ascend2 report that a strategy is planned to have unified marketing data and 45% are already operating with a strategy in place (Ascend2, 2021).
2. Increasing customer loyalty, increasing conversion rates and optimizing customer journey are top objectives according to 46%, 43% and 42% of those surveyed, respectively. (Ascend2, 2021).
3. More than half (56%) of consumers say they want news and media platforms to personalize the news and content they receive based on their interests, tastes and online activity. Gen Z (70%) and Millennials (71%) are most interested in seeing personalized content, while fewer Baby Boomers (37%) are interested. (Harris Poll and AdWeek, 2021)
4. Respondents from medium and large companies, as well as small companies (<$1M marketing budget), unanimously agreed that first-party data was most important to their organization’s addressable/digital media strategy (small: 85%; medium: 86%; large: 86%). For small and medium companies, 3rd-party data was the next-most important (50% and 59% respectively), whereas large companies differed and claimed that 2nd-party data (65%) was next-most important. (Nielsen, 2021)
5. The ability to gain a whole view of the customer depends in part on the integration of data from different sources. So which sources are being used to augment data-driven marketing? According to survey by Adobe, the top 3 ways marketers are adding value include the use of CRM data, real-time data from analytics, and by integrating analytics across channels. (Adobe/Marketing Charts)
6. In research by Ascend2 and Research Partners, the most important data-driven marketing objectives cited by marketing professionals include:
- basing more decisions on data analysis (51%)
- acquiring new customers (45%)
- integrating data across platforms (43%)
- and enriching data quality and completeness (37%)
7. 88% of marketers surveyed by Forbes use data obtained by third parties to enhance their understanding of each customer. (Forbes)
8. Marketers indicated that first-party data is not always the best quality or completely accurate. The share of respondents selecting “very difficult” or “extremely difficult” on a 5-point scale when asked about data quality and accuracy was particularly high among medium (43%) and large (41%) businesses. (Nielsen, 2021)
9. Companies who adopt data-driven marketing are more likely to have an advantage over the competition and increase profitability. In fact- they are six times more likely to be profitable year-over-year. (Forbes)
10. 64% of marketing executives “strongly agree” that data-driven marketing is crucial in the economy. (Forbes)
11. GlobalDMA found that 49% of marketers use data to enhance customer experience. (GlobalDMA)
13. According to CMO, 67% of marketers believe speed is one of the primary benefits of data-driven marketing, resulting in the ability to execute their campaigns quickly. (CMO Council)
14. 44% of marketers say that increasing revenue due to marketing is their top goal. (Ascend2)
15. Data has the potential to provide marketers with a wealth of meaningful information about prospects and customers – but only if that data is easily available and accessible. Half of the marketing, IT and martech professionals surveyed for a report from Merkle state that their organization’s data is not organized for easy consumption, making it the most common technical barrier to deriving meaningful insights. This was followed by limited storage availability (39%), slow data analytics processes (38%), not being able to understand what data is most important to decision-makers (38%), data integration difficulties (38%), and data stored in disparate systems (35%). (Merkle, 2021)
16. Customers expect companies to recognize and engage with them in real-time. Unfortunately, few marketers are able to act this quickly. In the study by CMO Council, 7% of survey respondents say they’re always able to deliver real-time, data-driven experiences across physical and digital touchpoints. And while 52% of respondents say they can deliver some of these experiences, they can only do so via marketing-owned (28%) or mainly digital channels (24%). (CMO Council)
17. Last year, more than 63% of marketers reported they have increased their spending on data-driven marketing, and around 20% of all marketing spend goes on data-driven advertising campaigns. (Digital Doughnut)
18. One-third of industry professionals highlight that the right technologies for data collection and analysis are essential for better understanding of customers. Currently, 44% of marketers say they have data management platforms, and 33% are planning to have one. (Digital Doughnut)
19. According to Sitecore, brands report harvesting an average of eight pieces of data, ranging from more transactional details to behavioral insights and trends. The most common types of customer data that respondents’ brands collect online are: Email address (89%), Name (84%), Telephone number (75%), Physical address (68%).
In their on-going quest to know customers better, some respondents’ brands are delving deeper: Through purchasing (47%), Browsing (31%), Histories down to devices used (30%), Social media habits (27%), Real-time geolocation (21%)
Many brand respondents in SiteCore’s survey report internal technical hurdles to becoming a data-driven organization including: 42% have a lack of integration between data collection apps, 20% do not have the technology to collect online customer data, 15% do not have the technology to store it.
20. Many marketers struggle with the amount of real-time insights they can access. Only the minority can react to online customer interactions immediately – 43% in the pre-purchase stage, 38% during purchase, and just 35% post-purchase. 31% lack the in-house skills to analyze the data, Just 12% have data at an individual customer level (vs. segment or demographic group), 65% of brand respondents’ organizations are using digital analytics software, with 30% only planning to adopt it. (SiteCore)
21. Data enables marketers to pinpoint the exact moment a message is most relevant to a consumer. People receive between 300 and 3000 marketing messages a day, but can only retain a maximum of three – if you’re not serving personalized content at the most relevant, receptive moment for that consumer, you’re wasting resources and losing opportunities.
22. In fact, 52% of consumers (and 65% of B2B buyers) say they’re likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t personalize communications to them. But brands can only personalize effectively if they know who their customers are – their information, behaviors and preferences. A CRM platform is critical in tracking and using this data. (Salesforce)
23. 57% of consumers are willing to share personal data in exchange for personalized offers or discounts. A similar proportion will share their data in exchange for product recommendations that meet their needs (52%) and personalized shopping experiences (53%). (Salesforce)
24. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of consumers say it’s acceptable for companies to send personalized offers and discounts based on items they’ve already purchased. (Salesforce)
25. 89.6 percent of survey panelists in research by MediaMath said that their practice of data-driven marketing and advertising was focused, at least in part, on the maintenance of customer and prospect databases—with those resources typically aimed at supporting better and more relevant offers and general customer communications. (MediaMath)
