Data-driven marketing may sound like the latest buzzword, but it’s a lot more than that. In fact, data-driven marketing has become the default marketing method as technology and consumer trends accelerate in that direction. It has become the expectation on both the consumer and enterprise side of the equation.
In this infographic created using data from GlobalDMA and the Winterberry Group, thousands of marketing professionals were surveyed to get their take on data-based marketing. 77% of them are confident in the data-driven approach, and 74% of those expect to see data-driven marketing budgets increase over the coming year.
It makes sense – having data behind your marketing efforts gives you real insights, and pro marketers know it. 49% of them believe that the reason for the expansion in data driven marketing is that data allows them to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing investments; 33% believe it is because it allows them to gain more insight into their customers; 24% believe that the growing availability of data on their target audience is one of the biggest drivers of increases to data marketing; and 20% believe that a need to align with digital consumer preferences is the biggest driver of the trend. But the number one response is that the need to be more customer-centric drives data-based marketing, a belief held by 53% of professional marketers.
Primarily, these data-driven efforts are being focused in a few key areas:
- 69% of marketers believe that targeting of offers, messages and content is the main focus;
- 52% believe that data-driven strategy or product development are the primary focus;
- 49% responded that customer experience optimization is where most efforts are being directed;
- 44% believed that audience analytics and measurement was the top focus, with a similar number suggesting that it was instead predictive analysis.
This data is being put to use across every platform, but consumer engagement comes more naturally and more easily in certain arenas, which may explain why the most popular channel for engagement is the website (66%), followed by mobile apps (58%), call centers (51%), social media (49%), and finally in-store engagement (37%) and catalog and direct mail (37%) still hanging on.
