Teradata recently published a global Data-driven Marketing Survey, showing marketers an overview of the current state of data driven marketing, the challenges of it, the right technology to make it work and how to gain a competitive advantage. The importance of data is apparent in all forms of marketing, but especially apparent in programmatic marketing where nanoseconds count and can have a huge impact on success.

It comes as no surprise that there is a lot of data out there, the survey found that one of the biggest challenges for marketers today is gaining insight and deriving meaning from the massive amount of data available. The most common forms of data marketers are collecting are: demographic data, customer satisfaction data and digital marketing interaction data (ex. display ads, search, web browsing etc.). One of the keys to understanding data and making it actionable in the programmatic marketing world is obtaining a complete and clear picture of your audience’s behavior and actions online – what sites are they visiting? What brought them to your site? What are they viewing online? What are they reading? What are they searching for? What products are they buying?

Challenges Marketers Face with Data

One of the main challenges commonly faced is a lack of process around using the data at hand for smart decisions. In addition, many marketers have a difficult time linking data back to marketing to determine ROI.

This explosion of data comes with a need for analytical minds in marketing departments to complement the creative talent to make full use of the data and glean meaningful insights from it. “Data scientists” is a term being tossed around more and more and it will have significant impact on the future. The survey found that an average of 30% of companies with $100m to $10.1b in revenue already have a data scientist on staff.

Multi-channel Influence

It is no secret that there are many channels today’s customer uses – with these channels comes a large amount of data – and with it – the ability to learn about a customer across all channels and connect the dots is a fresh possibility, and an exciting one. Adding newly found digital data with offline data is one of the most up and coming trends in marketing today.

What Does Data do For You?

Ultimately the goal of better insights gleaned from data is to elicit an effective consumer response. Better information means increased relevancy and personalization when marketing to audiences. The crucial components of the right message at the right time given to the right person creates beautiful synergy. Doing so across multiple channels is an even bigger opportunity. The ultimate process of data-driven marketing to be able to leverage data in real time to create and deliver relevant interactions for customers, then to be able to effectively analyze data and use it to its full potential to inform decisions, optimize all marketing initiatives, and prove the value of your marketing.

So, how important is personalization to marketers? The survey found that on average 59% of those in all verticals believe personalization is a high priority, but as you can see in the chart below, certain industries gave personalization an even higher value.

The ultimate challenge today is proving that marketing works – using data to prove marketing’s effectiveness is a key benefit. But in order to use data to this end marketers must be able to overcome the challenges, perceived or real, to make the most of it.

At Simpli.fi, we discuss unstructured data and the value of data a lot – we write about it, we talk about it – we like data. So, the findings of this survey seem to reinforce the value of data in marketing. We agree, when it comes to programmatic marketing the value of real time data that has actionable insights is unmatched. That’s why we utilize our own data in real time to deliver the most relevant and timely interactions to your most meaningful customers. Unstructured data is analyzed and used to inform campaign decisions and optimizations for campaigns that simply perform and allow you to learn about your audience. Contact us to learn more about how we use data in our programmatic marketing platform.