Personalized Customer Experience Tops Data-Driven B2B Marketing Objectives

As B2B marketers continue to collect more data, they are beginning to more closely define goals for the information at their fingertips. The “Data-Driven Marketing Trends Survey” report from Ascend2 has found that 60 percent of marketers consider personalizing the customer experience to be their top data-driven marketing objective. Other goals include measuring data-driven marketing ROI (51 percent), targeting individual market segments (50 percent), and acquiring new customers (41 percent).

With more information at their disposal, 90 percent of B2B marketers say they’ve been successful at achieving their top goals. However, there are still obstacles facing marketers utilizing data. Improving data quality (59 percent), integrating data across all platforms (51 percent) and raising the level of data analytical skills (38 percent) are the top challenges for B2B marketers.

Despite the hurdles, B2B marketers remain fairly confident in the potential of data use, according to budget-related statistics. The report found that 67 percent of companies intend to spend more in data-driven marketing in the coming months. Just 3 percent said they may decrease their budget.

Marketers See Positive Results from Data Usage

Statistics indicate that marketers are beginning to see a positive ROI from their data-related investments. A study published by Infogroup Media Solutions earlier in 2015 found that 47 percent of marketers were seeing a return on their investment in data-driven marketing efforts.

At the time, 62 percent stated that they were spending money on data marketing, which includes using customer data and outside data trends. More than half of the respondents said they expected to see a return on their investment for the first time in 2015.