Marketers 'hamstrung by poor data'

Some 80% of consumer-facing companies are still using just basic demographics and purchase history to drive their marketing activity and are failing to get under the skin of their customers.
That is the key finding of a new study by Yesmail Interactive, carried out in conjunction with analytics firm Gleanster. It reveals marketers think they know their customers well, but they lack the deep data insights that enable them to send truly personalised, relevant campaigns.
The report, “Customer Lifecycle Engagement: Imperatives for Midsize-to-Large Companies,” quizzed 100 senior-level marketers with online and offline sales models in an attempt to gauge the state of customer engagement strategies across a range of business sectors.
According to the survey, marketers lack understanding when it comes to relationship-oriented customer data. Yet 88% of respondents still consider their customer engagement strategies – including knowing the optimal message, channel and time to send to each customer – to be effective. This suggests that marketers are limited by what they perceive to be successful legacy tactics.
When it comes to transactional data, 53% of marketers say they have an excellent understanding of customers’ purchase history, followed by 42% for basic demographic information such as gender and age.
However, fewer marketers have an excellent understanding of relationship data, including customers’ level of participation in social media (20%), channel preference (21% ) and household composition (27%).
Less than half of marketers quizzed use data from sources that provide better targeting, including web browsing history and online behavior (41%), social data (38%), and third-party behavioural and attitudinal data (36%).
When it comes to the top challenges that stand in the way of personalised customer communications, the respondents blamed limitations in marketing tools (42%), fragmented marketing systems (34%) and poor data quality (34%).
“Brands must build one-on-one relationships with their customers; but marketers don’t know how to get there,” said Ian Michiels, principal and managing director of Gleanster. “Companies need to start thinking in terms of the customer lifecycle and relying more on the data and insight that informs and develops the applicable lifecycle strategy. This insight lets companies truly know their customers based on relationship customer data rather than just transactional data.”