Most marketers collect some form of data throughout the duration of a campaign or client work, but do they actually use it? The answer is a resounding “yes” after looking at a report from data management platform provider BlueKai, which shows that a whopping 91% of respondents agreed the use of data plays a prominent role in segmentation and targeting strategies.
What’s more? Marketers aren’t just using data—they’re shifting their budgets in order to make a bigger investment in data-driven marketing efforts to the tune of a 227% increase so far this year.
Since the survey shows that marketers are making a significantly larger investment in data, how exactly are they using this information to refine their strategies? A number of marketing areas are influenced by data collection and analysis, including email delivery (72%), retargeting (60%), display targeting (51%), creative optimization (49%) and site customization (41%).
And in case you’re curious, first-party data that’s collected from direct contact with customers (think forms and website traffic, to name two examples) is what’s most often used to make marketing decisions. Marketers do use third-party data, too, but to a lesser degree. That’s not terribly surprising—after all, don’t you want to get information directly from your customers so that you can refine and optimize your campaigns and strategies to better serve them?
We’re happy to see survey results like this. We’ve long preached the importance not just of collecting data, but also analyzing and using it—and this report shows that’s happening throughout the marketing industry. What’s even more interesting is that BlueKai reports that one-third of respondents said that data influences 75% to 100% of their digital marketing budget—and that’s a number we’d expect to increase in the next couple of years.
How does your own experience compare to these survey findings? Have you allocated more of your budget to invest in collecting and analyzing data?
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Shelly Kramer is the founder and CEO of V3 Broadsuite (V3B), Senior Analyst and one of the founding partners at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked with some of the world’s largest brands to lead them into the digital space, embrace disruption and the reality of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of Digital Transformation. As a brand strategist, she has decades of experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, and driving strategy and growth for B2B brands across multiple verticals.
