Customer acquisition success still hinges on data quality

Marketers’ unshakable confidence in their customer acquisition strategies has been reinforced by new figures which reveal more with nine in ten have a positive outlook on meeting or exceeding their goals over the next year, but data quality remains the biggest bugbear in conducting successful campaigns.

So says a new report from Stirista, which also shows the vast majority (81%) have seen revenue growth over the past two years.

However, marketers are resting on their laurels, with nearly three-quarters (70%) saying they will make changes to budget distributions across channels in the next two years, and most (85%) saying the importance of digital marketing will increase even more, the highest of any channel.

Meanwhile, data quality/availability and measuring performance and attribution are among the biggest factors impacting marketers’ customer acquisition success at 57% and 40% respectively, but they are also the most challenging to get right. Surprisingly, tracking shifting channel behaviours and results was the least challenging at 26%.

B2C companies with a mature customer acquisition strategy are using more channels, and more effectively. Email, social media, and digital advertising are the most effective ways to acquire more customers, and organizations are putting a lot of effort and budget into these channels. In the coming years, they also plan to invest more in mobile and video (OTT).

Nearly half (49%) of marketers include four or more channels in their customer acquisition strategies, and nearly one-third (31%) report using five channels or more.

The most successful customer acquisition strategies are significantly more likely to include digital advertising and mobile. Additionally, highly mature customer acquisition strategies are more likely to include video in their channel mix than those with low or moderate maturity, the report claims.

B2C marketers are most likely to fully outsource partner programmes, video, traditional, and affiliate channels while keeping social media, email, and digital advertising in-house. However, highly mature customer acquisition strategies are more likely to fully outsource all channels except for digital advertising.

Meanwhile, B2C marketers rank the maturity of their customer acquisition technologies as moderate to high. Those with high maturity are more likely to point to data quality and workflow efficiency as a contributor to success than marketers with less mature technologies.

Even so, marketers who report high maturity in their customer acquisition strategies feel significantly more challenged by determining shifting channel behaviours and/or results, while marketers with low or moderate levels of customer acquisition maturity are still struggling with measuring performance and attribution.

Stirista founder and CEO Ajay Gupta said: “The creation of new data and technology, as well as new regulations and policies around its use, are keeping savvy marketers on their toes. B2C marketers must be informed of the latest trends as well as how they are being used and to what degree of effectiveness.”