Does anyone still remember “traditional” marketing? Sure, the days of billboards and postcards in the mail are definitely not over. But for more than a decade, digital has been the first thing that comes to mind when talking about marketing. Institutional perspectives on data harmonization and data management. Digital marketing has always been a powerful force for businesses because of data. This was lacking when it came to understanding how many people viewed a print ad and took action. We now have a more complete picture of the customer experience, allowing for more targeted and dynamic marketing campaigns.
In this day and age, you really can’t separate good marketing from good data. In fact:
- Best-in-class marketers are 56% more likely to use data and analytics platforms
- Businesses that unify data to develop strategy have seen up to 60% more profits than companies that simply sell products without direction.
We know we have access to data. But as we found in a survey on the state of martech in the industry, agencies struggle to use that data. Marketing teams need a unified, holistic view of the customer experience. That might mean using a revenue growth platform with CRM and reporting capabilities. Or finding a way to bring together data from a variety of marketing tools into one usable dashboard.
To understand how agencies are responding to the challenge, we teamed up with Ascend2 , a leader in research-based marketing, to survey a group of marketing professionals who provide agency services to better understand how they are adapting to today’s massive influx of data to meet client demands.
This research was done with you in mind! Download the report to work it into your own marketing strategy. Or cut out the charts and write about them in your blog or post them on social media. Read on for some of the highlights.
The Challenges of Data Management in Digital Marketing
We found that marketers across all industries agree that data is key to marketing success. But a major challenge is turning those numbers into actionable results. As a landslide, 97% of respondents agree that unified and well-managed data helps achieve strategic goals.
Survey results show that marketers’ top goal for data unification is improving customer engagement and experience. A close second is better alignment between sales and marketing teams. Professionals know that all KPIs start with customer experience. Looking to increase sales, boost referrals, and attract more qualified leads? Then a targeted and helpful customer experience is the starting point. That’s where data comes into play.
For marketers, the numbers are less about how successful a campaign was in generating revenue and more about how effective it was in persuading customers to take a desired action. The final numbers, such as revenue, clicks, and form fills, are the business metrics that help decision makers understand progress.
All the other subtle numbers, like engagement with social posts, visits to landing pages, and clicks in emails, are signals to marketers about how to improve copy, images, and even the time between emails. These are the critical details that allow marketing teams to do their jobs effectively. That’s where a unified data management strategy helps. So what’s holding teams back?
Struggles and obstacles
While this has become a growing issue for organizations, many have not been successful in their efforts to unify their data. For some, data management has become a major issue that has actually slowed down company growth. Without the ability to analyze the results, these companies have a hard time optimizing their marketing campaigns.
When developing a strategy to consolidate data, some of the biggest challenges are managing data quality (36%) and making unified data actionable (30%). Both of these issues can be addressed by a revenue growth platform that has all the features of a CRM alongside a key marketing automation tool .
When asked which organizations believe their biggest challenge is integration strategy, a surprising 40% believe maintaining data hong kong telegram data quality will be the biggest issue. Understandably, each SaaS has its own nuances when it comes to collecting data. When migrating to a new system or transferring data, there is always the worry that some elements won’t transfer over. When interviewing potential tools, it’s important to ask about the data points that are important to your business to ensure the tool can actually meet your needs.
Managing data quality becomes easier when all data is held in a single-source CRM that can serve as the primary record holder. Then, it becomes how to create muxemail popups to grow your subscriber list easier to turn raw data into insights through a tool that can aggregate the numbers into a single view of each part of a campaign (such as email, social, and sales touchpoints) to create actionable reports.
The right partner is important
When using multiple tools and touchpoints for customer management, it can get really confusing for marketers to sort, organize, and make sense c phone number of all the data on the back end. While businesses realize that developing a strategy to start unifying digital is an important next step, almost 75% of businesses believe it’s a somewhat or extremely complex process. This can be very daunting for businesses. Especially when sales are the priority, slowing down marketing to organize data never seems to be at the top of the list.
However, making time to streamline and strategize using the right tools is an important investment in business growth. The first step is to research the right partners for your needs.
Of course, it’s a good idea to prioritize your needs when researching any CRM or marketing automation tool, but it’s also important to make sure the tool can grow with your business. In the report, we aligned the essential elements of unified data that marketers told us they had the biggest challenges. Looking at this overlap provides insight into where agencies can start prioritizing tasks. Download the report to see it.
Key points
Time and again (or should we say survey after survey), we’ve found a few things to hold true for digital marketers trying to stay ahead of the competition: Data is increasingly important To be able to do this work, complex marketing stacks leave a lot of unusable data behind, and marketers with unified data capabilities are able to stay competitive.
87% of respondents agree that data unification is becoming increasingly effective in helping achieve strategic goals. So, here’s a list of the most important things to look for when looking for tools to help them achieve those goals:
- 44% Usability and ease of use
- 42% Integration with existing technologies
- 40% Data visualization and reporting
Download the report to see the full breakdown of the capabilities marketers are looking for. The top 3 showcase all of the main issues we hear from digital teams time and time again, which are across teams, maintaining the integrity of data, and ultimately being able to turn those numbers into actionable results.
Summarize
A system that is easy to use will make support from other departments a breeze. No one wants to learn a new overly complicated tool when they already have 1500 other tasks to manage. Ease of use and having a good support team should be top of mind.
When it comes to worrying about maintaining data integrity with any tool you plan to keep, it’s imperative to ensure that the new tool not only integrates but also passes through all the data points your business requires.
Of course, the most important part when researching a good revenue growth platform partner is reporting. After all, it’s work getting the data aligned , and you want to make sure it’s also usable. Make sure the people who will be aggregating, analyzing, and reporting on the data are present to provide feedback on what’s needed to align with business KPIs.
Taking the time now to prepare for future goals could be the smartest long-term investment your business makes this year. Book a Demo to see how a system like SharpSpring can help you reach your goals!
