Report: Marketers Not Making the Most of Customer Data

Marketers are aware of the benefits of harvesting customer data, but new statistics suggest that they are still struggling to make the most of it.

Forbes Insights and Treasure Data recently conducted the “Data Versus Goliath: Customer Data Strategies to Disrupt the Disruptors” report and discovered that only 13 percent of companies express the highest level of confidence that they’ve taken the necessary steps to ensure they’re making the most of customer data.

“While upper management may have access to the tools and data needed to transform their operations, this is typically not shared across all levels of the enterprise,” note the researchers of the report.

Only one-in-five executives consider their companies to be leaders in customer data management, and just one-in-four executives say they are able to fully leverage data that is available to them.

B2B Marketers and the Difficulties of Leveraging Data

B2B marketers, in particular, have been struggling to utilize the data that is available to them, according to previous research.

Dun and Bradstreet recently commissioned a report by Forrester titled, “The B2B Data Activation Priority.” According to the study, just 50 percent of marketing and sales decisions are made using data. Additionally, 48 percent of B2B marketers said that they make decisions based on intuition or personal/company experience, rather than quantitative information and analysis.

Research shows, however, that marketers have an abundance of data at their fingertips. Eighty percent claim they struggle to manage the volume, variety and velocity of their data.