Study: Half of Marketers Don’t Trust Their Own Data
Nearly half of marketers have doubts about the reliability and accuracy of their digital data, despite spending thousands per month on their technology stacks.
That’s according to a new study by Forrester and Zeta Global, which found that data challenges increase as more solutions get added to a company’s tech stack.
Although 85% of companies have more than 10 technologies in their stack, 50% believe their technology doesn’t work. Forrester’s analysis was based on a survey of hundreds of U.S. marketers responsible for customer experience tools. It found that data challenges only get worse when marketers add more solutions to their stacks.
The “best of breed” trend, in which CIOs and system integrators look for the best individual solutions for each specific need, rather than using a single platform that serves multiple functions, is actually increasing complexities for many brand marketers.
Eighty-four percent of companies in Forrester’s analysis said they use 11 or more solutions that impact customer experience, with more than one-third of those solutions storing and processing at least nine diverse types of customer data.
According to Zeta Chief Technology Officer and Head of Product Christian Monberg, this fragmented approach actually impedes marketers’ ability to create targeted, personalized experiences and often drives up operating expenses.
““As marketing becomes more complex, many companies are failing to keep up with modern expectations of customer experience and losing revenue as a result,” Monberg says.
Just half of the marketers surveyed by Forrester said they are confident in their data, including quality, security, reliability, and activation. Fifty-nine percent of marketers that rely on poorly- integrated environments said they experience delays in launching campaigns, and 55% said those delays have resulted in lost revenue.
Searching for Better Solutions
Forrester and Zeta’s new research paints an interesting picture of the current state of martech, especially when placed alongside other recent surveys. According to a report by Ascend2, the majority of marketers (71%) are leveraging less than 50% of their martech stack capabilities. While 29% of those marketers surveyed by Ascend2 cited integrating tools as a challenge impacting their ability to take advantage of marketing technology, issues like cost and a lack of training appeared higher up on the list.
Forrester researchers found that while “out of the box” integrations can provide a solid foundation for a company’s tech stack, the most successful marketers are those that also recognize the importance of customizing existing integrations.
Seventy-four percent of the marketers surveyed cited “providing insights” as their top technology buying requirement. However, delivering insights was also listed as marketers’ top challenge overall. Forrester analysts suggest the lack of integration between siloed platforms is largely to blame for creating those data activation problems.
“The Zeta Marketing Platform has been designed for marketers’ needs with the unique flexibility to wrap around and augment the brand’s tech stack, providing speed to intelligence, deeper analytics, and activation to deliver greater return on investment,” Monberg said. “We developed a single solution that consolidates multiple separate point solutions to resolve these issues and create practical and proven integration.”
