Report: Executive Marketers to Invest 376% More in Analytics in Next Three Years

Executive marketers are already seeing the benefits of utilizing analytics, and new research shows that CMOs intend to invest more in data in the coming years.

The executive summary of the “CMO Survey 2017” from Deloitte, Duke Fuqua School of Business and American Marketing Association reports that within the next three years, marketers intend to spend 376 percent more on analytics to improve customer experience.

At the moment, marketing leaders appear to be struggling with the analytics tools they have at their disposal. About 32.2 percent claim they have a lack of adequate analytics tools and processes for measuring their success. Nearly 10 percent believe that their current analytics tools are overly complex.

These obstacles may be preventing marketers from using analytics on a regular basis. More than two-thirds (68.4 percent) of respondents claimed that they do not use analytics data to help them make everyday business decisions. About 30 percent of B2B marketers of products and services say they are using analytics data regularly.

The biannual survey included responses from over 2,800 marketing leaders across diverse industries (B2B and B2C). The vast majority (nearly 95 percent) of participants were VP level or above.

Marketers Lacking Access to Customer Data

Previous research indicates that marketers have long used data and analytics to gain a better understanding of their customers. However, it has not always delivered a significant ROI.

The CMO Council published the “Customer Experience Dynamics” report earlier this year to gauge how much marketers know about their target audience and the customer experience. About 20 percent of respondents stated that they needed more actionable insights from data and analytics in order to improve customer experience.

One reason for this may be because customer insights and data are trapped in other silos. Nearly 38 percent of marketers said that their data is “limited” to their own functional silos and is not analyzed in real-time.