The average amount of marketing dollars spent on customer data and analytics has nearly doubled over the past two years—yet according to new research from Infogroup,over two-thirds of sales and marketing pros still claim that they experience challenges in all four stages of the data process: collecting the right types of data, compiling and organizing collected data, analyzing data and finding meaningful insights, and turning data insights into effective activation.
The study, Marketers Need to Confront the Inconvenient Truth of Data Pollution, conducted by Forrester Consulting, found that that two years ago, participants’ data and analytics programs accounted for an average of 9 percent of their overall marketing budgets. Today, that number has risen to 16 percent, and it is expected to rise to 22 percent within the next two years. However, 90 percent have had marketing campaigns negatively affected by poor or polluted data in the past two years, leading them to see decreases in both revenue and customer engagement.
The study uncovered the top five elements of data pollution:
- Poor data quality, which can create data contamination and consistency issues
- Inadequate data fluency, that largely stems from lack of the right internal resources and technology
- Ineffective data management, which may come from unconnected sources throughout the marketing ecosystem
- Inaccurate data, that goes hand in hand with poor data quality
- An ineffective data culture, trying to change the current organization into a data driven one
“Companies understand the importance of data and are investing accordingly,” said Infogroup Chairman and CEO Michael Iaccarino, in a news release. “But firms are struggling to sift good data from bad and meaningful insights from white noise. Whether it’s gathering data, analyzing it, or acting on its insights, companies need to address these challenges if they want to thrive in the Age of Data.”
Download the full report here.
The study took place in April 2019, surveyed 300 customer data/analytics decision makers in the U.S. respondents.
