81% of Marketers Struggle to Create a Single View of the Customer

New research from Experian shows that marketers continue to struggle to create a single view of their ideal customer. In fact, the “2016 Digital Marketer Report” discovered that 81 percent of marketers face this challenge, with several obstacles inhibiting their efforts.

About 54 percent claimed that they are challenged by the technology they use to integrate customer data in real-time. Forty-nine percent said they don’t have the ability to integrate multiple data sources and technologies, and 48 percent stated that they cannot easily access data across their organization.

“As we know, data comes into companies from a wide variety of sources,” wrote the authors of the report. “At the core – that single view of the customer – lies a fount of knowledge, but getting there is no walk in the park. Our data shows that enterprise companies do not have the necessary technology assets in their toolkits.”

In an attempt to overcome these challenges, the report shows that 56 percent of C-level executives name integrating technology to automate, orchestrate and manage cross-channel customer interactions as a top priority.

A Look Back on the 2015 Digital Marketer Report

The same report published by Experian in 2015 indicated that 32 percent of marketers found a lack of a single customer view to be a top barrier in terms of cross-channel marketing.

At the time, 39 percent of top senior marketing leaders also claimed that profiling – understanding their customers – was one of their top challenges. A total of 89 percent of respondents stated that they face numerous obstacles in terms of creating a single customer view.