Survey: 45% of Marketers Now Have a Unified Data Strategy in Place

It can be challenging to confidently make marketing decisions, but new research shows that more marketers are creating strategies to relieve their pressure.

Ascend2 recently conducted the “Using Data to Make Better Marketing Decisions Survey,” and statistics showed that the majority of marketers (45%) now have a unified marketing data strategy in place. About 32% stated that they do not have a strategy, but there is one planned for development in the near future.

By generating a data strategy, most respondents (46%) said that they hope to boost customer loyalty. About 45% would like to increase conversion rates, while 42% want to optimize the buyer journey. Nearly 35% claimed that they want to boost content engagement.

Thus far, 63% of marketers who have a data strategy in place said that they have been at least “somewhat successful.” Thirty-one percent of the best-in-class marketers who responded to the survey said that they have been “very successful.”

Finding Benefits in Flawed Marketing Data

Today, marketers have a wide array of data at their fingertips, but this does not always translate into strategic benefits, according to previous research.

Experian published its “2020 Global Data Management Research” report, and statistics suggested that just 51% of marketers consider the current state of their CRM data to be clean, and say they can fully leverage it. Approximately 28% of current customer/prospect data is suspected to be inaccurate in some way.

“That level of inaccuracy affects the organization in a broad number of ways,” wrote the authors of the report. “Organizations see traditional issues like wasted resources and an inability to rely on analytics. However, it also affects the organization in terms of its key initiatives. Poor data negatively impacts the customer experience and the success of new data-driven programs.”