Huge Disconnect between what Marketers need from their Data and what they are Getting [INSIGHT & REPORT]
November 19, 2013
Data is the lifeblood of marketing, yet marketers are extremely frustrated with their business information. There is a growing disconnect between what marketers want and need from their data and what they are actually getting, according to a new report by Domo, a cloud-based venture helping CEOs and other executives transform the way they manage business and get more value from existing investments in business data.
Domo surveyed 301 marketers (including managers, directors and senior executives) across a range of industries and found that 87 percent rely on data to do their job well, yet only 45 percent believe they have sufficient access to the data they need to function effectively. These results are keeping with an earlier study conducted by Domo that found that 70 percent of CEOs and business leaders across all functions still lack real-time access to their most important information.
In this most recent survey, 83 percent of respondents stress the importance of real-time marketing data, but only 37 percent say they can actually access the data they need in real-time. This is an extremely worrying trend as marketing continues to increase its reliance on technology. In fact, marketing departments will soon spend more money on IT than the CIO, according to reports from technology research firm, Gartner.
Marketers understand that the ability to extract value from data is critical to achieving competitive advantage. But that is getting more difficult as the mountains of data they must constantly mine—from social media and mobile content to CRM and business reports—grow bigger every day.
In the survey, 66 percent of marketers report that they feel overwhelmed by the volume of data they have to handle. What’s more, 59 percent of marketers are frustrated by how long it takes to receive reports, and 50 percent of marketers state that the marketing reports they receive lack key information.
The majority of marketers rely on some form of analytics to help them make sense of their data, but for the most part these analytics tools are falling short. Some 68 percent of marketers use web analytics, but 39 percent evaluate their web analytics once a month or less. Additionally, 83 percent of marketers have email marketing tools, but only 9 percent evaluate email marketing data daily.
“Business runs on reliable data, but if executives are only analyzing their data once a month, it’s impossible to make timely decisions and uncover the insights they need to compete in today’s hyper-competitive environment,” said Josh James, founder and CEO of Domo. “Every second counts in the digital world, and that’s true whether you’re the CEO, CFO, COO, CMO or CIO.”
Increasingly, marketers understand the need to bring all their data together in one central location. Eighty-nine percent say it is important to see marketing data from all their disparate sources in a single dashboard, yet only 19 percent report they have that ability today.
Marketers also realize that good data isn’t just critical to the business, it’s vital to their personal success. Fifty-four percent of respondents say they are compensated by marketing ROI, yet most of them cannot quantify the effectiveness of their various marketing campaigns. For instance, only 37 percent of marketers know the ROI of their social media initiatives, while just 51 percent can measure the ROI of their search engine optimization campaigns.
James added, “It’s inexcusable that the vast majority of business executives are being held back because they can’t get access to timely, relevant data.”
To download report CLICK HERE.