60% of Marketers Only ‘Somewhat Successful’ at Data Unification and Management

Despite having a wide array of data at their fingertips, new research indicates that marketers are still not widely successful at leveraging this insight to achieve their top objectives.

Ascend2 published the results of its “Data Unification Management Survey,” and statistics showed that most marketers (60%) are still only “somewhat successful” in terms of unifying and managing their data to achieve strategic goals. About 35% of the best-in-class marketers are “very successful,” while 5% of respondents said they were “unsuccessful” altogether.

The majority of marketers (35%) cite their biggest challenge as having to maintain data quality. This was followed by cross-department cooperation (32%), finding an appropriate data management solution (27%), and storing and managing data (26%).

Overall, most respondents (46%) want to improve customer engagement through their data unification and management strategy.

Finding Satisfaction with Marketing Data

As more details begin to highlight marketers’ struggle to leverage data, previous research suggests that B2B marketers, in particular, are also not entirely satisfied with its return-on-investment.

Salesforce conducted the seventh edition of its “State of Marketing” report, and statistics indicated that only 33% of B2B marketers are “completely satisfied” with their ability to generate relevant experiences with customer data. Only 42% are satisfied with their data’s quality/hygiene, and just 40% are satisfied with its completeness.

On average, B2B marketers have 12 sources of data they can tap into at any given time. By 2022, this number is expected to increase to 15.