Divide Between Marketing Objectives and Data Infrastructure: Simon Data Report

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Ninety-five per cent of marketers have experienced negative business impacts because of the marketing and strategy challenges they face.

Enterprise Customer Data Platform (CDP) Simon Data released a report entitled When Data Drags You Down: Maximize Marketing Objectives With Modern Data Infrastructure. In the study conducted by Forrester Consulting, they examine the gap between marketing objectives and data infrastructure. 

Forrester conducted an online survey with 465 respondents responsible for marketing technology strategy to analyse how data usage syncs with marketing priorities. The research found that 90 per cent of marketers described that their strategy is aligned with the organization’s goals, while the same number reported challenges with delivering on those priorities.

Key highlights:

• 95 per cent of marketers have experienced negative business impacts because of the marketing and strategy challenges they face
• 39 per cent missed market opportunities 
• 38 per cent decreased customer satisfaction 
• 36 per cent missed strategic growth opportunities 
• 36 per cent increased costs 
• 35 per cent lowered engagement 

“This study demonstrates the disconnect between what marketers think their martech stacks can do versus the actual outcomes the tech delivers,” said Jason Davis, CEO and co-founder of Simon Data. “A majority of marketers view their capabilities as ‘advanced’ or better, but almost everyone in this same group cite limitations around achieving their objectives. When you dig into the issues, it all comes down to the data: data to coordinate channels, data to enable these capabilities, and data required to drive outcomes.”

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Here’s what we learned from the report; 

90 per cent of decision-makers experience strategic or technological challenges 

Organisations struggle to prove a return on marketing investment and fail to keep up with the rapid pace of interaction. They also struggle to translate customer insights into marketing outcomes and can’t coordinate messages across channels and screens. Strategic challenges around agility, measurement, and translating data into insights point to the need to define success metrics and streamline marketing and analytics processes. Technical challenges surrounding integration and duplication of vendors show that, while the effort is there, these disparate solutions have not been brought together effectively.  

Only 23% of respondents manage their marketing technology stack within the marketing team

Most businesses split responsibility between a mix of marketing, in-house IT, and out-sourced agencies and managed service providers. Marketers often lack control of marketing technology; this responsibility typically falls to parties outside of marketing. This creates higher costs, the potential to use the wrong data or tools, and gaps in understanding data and tech needs. Marketing priorities are often cross-functional, multi-disciplinary objectives and range from improving customer satisfaction to improving lead/opportunity quality. The perception gap between leaders and decision-makers persists with the former reporting a more positive view of collaboration effectiveness than the latter. 

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46 per cent of marketers report that their first action is ‘Collecting more data’ 

Respondents also cited some form of data integration as blockers; lack of data integration between marketing technologies and between data sources are marketers’ top two technical challenges. While the report agrees that more data can help marketers achieve marketing KPIs and company objectives, more data without a strong and modern data infrastructure will only compound marketers’ problems and further dampen results.