Data-Driven Marketing Survey - Whom did we ask?

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Executive Summary

A Teradata eCircle study has found that, on average, more than seven different channels are being employed by marketers at any given time. The study also underlined the shift to digital with marketers planning to increase their spending in digital channels within the next 12 months, especially social media (78.9%), mobile marketing (78.6%) and online display advertising (69.6%).

At the same time, the tough economic climate is putting marketers under severe pressure to directly increase the revenue of the overall business and to justify their success by applying strict return on investment (ROI) measures. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of survey respondents claim the short-term orientation of their marketing departments (27%), a lack of convenient measures (23%) and administrative workload (18%) as their biggest obstacles to success.

Yet despite these demands and difficulties, almost half of the surveyed marketing departments spend less than 5% to improve their marketing with technology. The industries making the greatest investments are Information, Telecommunication and IT companies, which invest almost 19% of their marketing budget to improve their marketing infrastructure, followed by Retail (17%) and Finance (13%).

The survey also found that 33% of marketers use Campaign Management technology to monitor their activity, while 17% use a Marketing Resource Management solution. Tellingly, just one in ten of those questioned are currently using both sets of tools.

However, this group of advanced users of marketing software felt consistently better prepared to analyse different sources of data. Marketers who have built out their capability to make their decisions based on data are more than twice as satisfied with the success of their marketing programs than other marketers. This shows that effective data analytics is the key ingredient for success in today’s multi-channel, digital world.

Teradata eCircle’s “Data-Driven Marketing Survey 2013, Europe” is based on a marketing survey of more than 1,100 marketing personnel from nine major industries across 19 European countries, including the UK, France, Germany and Russia.

An explosion of possibilities

As part of its commitment to understand the rapid evolution of marketing that is sweeping across all industries today, Teradata eCircle asked more than 1,100 marketers from 19 different European countries about their biggest challenges and which marketing technologies they are spending their money on to master these

The Data-Driven Marketing Survey was conducted in early 2013 in partnership with the Technical University of Munich and the University of Applied Management. The industries covered by the survey range from Retail to Manufacturing, Transport to Finance, Publishing to Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

The findings of the survey confirm what most of us have already probably deduced from our own experience: that the growing prominence of digital channels has transformed the world of marketing in recent years and the pace of change shows no signs of slowing.

What is new though is that marketers across Europe are embracing marketing technology as the solution to keep up with the changes.

Findings show that the ICT, Retail and Finance industries in particular have invested heavily in equipping their marketing teams with the right tools. The survey revealed that three challenges are especially preying on the minds of marketers in 2013:

• The diversity of channels to be managed: more than 50% of survey respondents are using seven or more channels to reach their customers. Yet 70% still use classical channels such as print advertising. Also, achieving consistency across all these channels is imperative.
• The need for data analytics: analysing and extracting insights from ‘Big Data’.
• The pressure to justify spending on marketing: the top three most difficult challenges for marketers are pressure to increase revenue, measuring the success of marketing activities, and validating the effectiveness of marketing by applying ROI measures.

Under pressure: The big challenges of Big Data

Marketers say that one of the biggest barriers to successful, sustainable campaigning is the huge pressure for short term results, which affects 27%.

At the same time, there’s all too often a lack of convenient measures that enable them to demonstrate how effective their activities are at generating ROI (23%).

There are further frustrations. Some 18% of respondents pointed to the sheer administrative workload that marketers face in this increasingly complex environment.

These practical difficulties within their marketing departments certainly do not help marketing heads to address the pressures being placed upon them by the wider business organisation.

Principally, marketing departments are coming under intense pressure to help the business increase revenue and to measure and validate the success of all marketing activities.

In short, marketers must show a good ROI on their marketing activities, but many organisations seem to struggle with this in the more complex marketing ecosystem they need to deal with today.

Adding to the pressure is the need to achieve consistency across all the different marketing channels now available, as well as dealing with the deluge of data coming back from the channels.

While marketers have access to huge volumes of data, they are looking for new ways to make sense of ‘Big Data’ particularly preparing, aggregating and analysing data.

Investment in technology: who’s in front and who’s behind

Clearly, marketers are feeling the pressure of the growing complexity and competitive demands of today’s business environment. The survey reveals that marketers are investing mainly in online technologies to help them meet these challenges.

When it comes to investing, the study reveals almost half of the survey respondents are spending only up to 5% of the marketing budget on marketing technology. On average, marketers spend 11.7% of their marketing budget on marketing technology.

With regard to which industries are spending the most, the survey shows that of the top five industries investing the most in marketing technology, ICT companies (19.1%), and Retail organisations (16.8%) are the top spenders on marketing technology, while Services spend the least at 11.4%.

Furthermore, these investments span the whole range of marketing activities with a current focus on digital solutions. Web analytics, email technology, search engine optimisation (SEO) and social media management are at the top end of the spectrum of solutions currently employed.

Not surprisingly, marketers expect their investments to achieve a great deal, including:

• Campaign analysis
• Personalised campaigns
• Accurate segmentation
• Integrate marketing activities
• Automate marketing activities
• Gain campaign overviews

As well as helping to manage marketing operations including the setting up of workflows, and using one system to manage all budgeting and to review and approve activities.

Marketers are going to invest most into web analytics, social media and SEO within the next 12 months. Additionally they are also going to spend money on email technology, Bid Management software and Mobile Marketing technology within the next 12 months.

Gaining the advantage with marketing technology

Despite the investment in marketing technology that companies are making, many marketers are failing to use specialist and professional Marketing Resource Management solutions and Campaign Management solutions that provide an integrated and efficient way to achieve all of their goals.

Integrated marketing software solutions fall broadly into two types – Campaign Management and Marketing Resource Management (MRM). While 33% of marketers already use campaign management technology, only 17% use a marketing resource management solution. Only one in ten of the marketers questioned said they use both.

So, some companies are already feeling the benefits, but others have yet to take advantage of what’s on offer.

Multi-channel campaign management systems enable companies to define, orchestrate and communicate offers to customer segments across a multi-channel environment, using any or all channels, including direct mail, call centres, websites, email, social networks or their own communities centred on microsites, for example.

As we have seen, today’s marketers are looking for concrete return on their investments, and that applies to software tools as much as anything else. The top three reasons for marketers to consider a Campaign Management solution are to drive revenue (55.7%), build relationships with their customers (28.6%) and improve the customer experience (24.3%).

Marketing Resource Management software automates typical marketing activities, such as planning, budgeting and spend management, workflow and project management, event management and brand management.

Austerity is forcing many organisations across Europe to look at doing more with less. At the same time, the demands on marketing departments to keep up with the plethora of existing and emerging digital channels are growing. It’s not going to be possible to expand in line with demand, so greater efficiency is the only solution.

For organisations looking at Marketing Resource Management, improving efficiency and getting to market faster were among the top motivators as cited by 48.2% of respondents.

More than a third of marketers are looking to support more marketing activities with the same resources (35.7%), while having access to a single, coherent view of all their marketing activities is highly relevant for more than one in five (20.8%).

Meeting the multi-channel challenge

Marketers today are working in an environment in which channels are proliferating at an accelerating pace. On average, marketers in Europe juggle more than seven different channels – from social media to print and from internet searches to TV. These include digital channels such as email (used by almost 85%) and classic channels such as print and mailings (used by more than 75%).

More than a quarter of marketers are even working to co-ordinate the customer experience across more than ten channels.

The top seven channels attracting the most investment are:

• Social media
• Mobile advertising
• Online display advertising
• Search engine optimisation
• Email marketing
• Company website
• SMS messaging

As we have seen, marketers expect to meet specific goals from their marketing. Digital channels very often provide the means to achieve these aims.

For example, the flexibility and speed of deployment of digital helps to improve efficiency, go-to-market more quickly and enable marketing to use the same resources to support multiple channels.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that business investment in digital is ahead of investment in the more ‘traditional’ channels, such as in call centres, point-ofsale campaigns and events. The overwhelming majority of marketers (78.9%) plan to increase spending on social media, with almost as many expecting to invest more in mobile marketing (78.6%). Online advertising is the target for extra investment for 69.6% of marketers.

Supporting all these channels takes work. And, as the number of channels continues to balloon, more than one in five respondents state that the burden of administration gets heavier and heavier.

Those marketers that have already adopted Campaign Management solutions believe they are better prepared to achieve consistency across channels compared to marketers without Campaign Management. Marketers that use Campaign Management to help them communicate across 12 channels experience up to 13% fewer issues with channel consistency.

Dealing with the data deluge

The explosion of digital channels is creating a deluge of data that marketers are struggling to manage and make sense of.

Marketers collect increasing amounts of data about their customers, with 83.7% of marketers collecting demographic data, 67.3% collecting web browsing data and 65.9% collecting customer service data. Still, the Teradata eCircle survey shows that they’re keen to collect even more, with psychographic data, customer satisfaction data and customer engagement data topping the wish list.

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Those marketers who have already adopted Campaign Management solutions or a Marketing Resource Management solution report that they’re more satisfied with their marketing success. Furthermore they are better prepared to face their challenges. Marketers already using Campaign Management also feel they are able to analyse data more efficiently (for example, on average they are 11% more efficient when analysing psychographic data than people not using Campaign Management). That’s largely because campaign management technology paves the way for improved data analytics.

As indicated by the survey results, the deployment and use of integrated marketing technology can help marketers to not only deal more effectively with the demands of multi-channel marketing, but to provide a solid basis for making tactical and strategic marketing decisions that lead to greater success.

The big picture: how technology allows companies to become data-drive

The Data-Driven Marketing Survey shows that marketing technology provides important tools to help marketers achieve consistent results across multiple channels. This is increasingly important as the number of possible channels continues to grow, especially in the digital domain.

At the same time, marketing technology provides the tools to engage more effectively with customers. It enables marketers to gather and analyse data in order to build a firm foundation for making marketing decisions.

In other words, marketing technology cuts through the data to reveal the big picture. Any organisation that wants to improve the effectiveness of its marketing in today’s multi-channel environment and be able to objectively measure the results of its campaigns will find that Campaign Management and Marketing Resource Management solutions are indispensable.