54% of Marketers Only ‘Somewhat Satisfied’ with Ability to Leverage Data

Despite the benefits and impact of leveraging customer data, new research suggests that marketers still aren’t entirely satisfied with their team’s ability to make effective decisions based on this information.

Ascend2 recently conducted the “Data-Driven Marketing” report, and statistics showed that marketers are finding customer data most useful for personalization (42%), email marketing (38%), and content marketing strategizing (36%). Furthermore, the majority of respondents (36%) stated that customer data is a driving factor in their marketing decision-making “most of the time.”

However, most marketers (54%) claimed that they are still only “somewhat satisfied” with their team’s ability to make effective decisions based on customer data. As they look to improve their data-driven strategies in the year ahead, most marketers (45%) intend on improving personalization. About 45% would like to improve data quality, while 38% want to utilize more of their available data.

Marketers Finding Success with Customer Data Platforms

Despite some of the challenges associated with leveraging data, previous research indicates that marketers are still seeing their customer data platforms (CDPs) meet their expectations.

Merkle published its “Customer Engagement Report,” and statistics indicated that 45% of marketers believe that their CDPs are “exceeding” their expectations. About 52% said that it was at least “meeting” their set expectations.

The majority of marketers (59%) stated that they primarily use their CDP for data consolidation, and 24% use it to collect data. About 11% utilize it for data enrichment, and 4% tap into it for data activation.