Data-Driven Marketing Survey 2022: Only 2 in 5 organisations base marketing on data & insights

A brief overview of all figures can be viewed in the infographic at the bottom of this post.

Within 38% of organisations, data and insights are used by teams engaged in marketing-related activities. Availability and accessibility play an important role in this regard. In 82% of organisations, data and insights are available, but only 1 in 4 (23%) are both easily traceable and accessible to everyone within the organization.

Doubts surrounding data impact within local organisations

About 1 in 5 organisations is still searching for the right application and accessibility of data and the use of marketing technology. This group uses data only to a limited extent for insight into their customers. A total of 15% of organisations do not apply data and insights (42% are neutral, and 5% do not know) and doubt their impact, with 11% stating they see no added value in data-driven operations (and 5% do not know). These are usually smaller organisations (<25 employees). Organisations that do see the added value of data often already have the data and technology to take the necessary steps. This mainly concerns organisations with more than 25 employees; for example, the teams of these larger organisations use data and insights more often (47%) than smaller organisations (24%).

An important explanation for this lies in data availability: the smaller the organisation, the less marketing technology or platforms used (e.g. 65% compared to 92% of organisations with more than 10 employees). Moreover, small-scale companies (<25 employees) are less dependent on data, and less likely to focus on customer KPIs (3-3%), compared to large organisations (53%). Furthermore, they are less likely to have access to a complete overview of what marketing expenditure generates (24% compared to 34%). Challenges for them are mainly in the preconditions of data-driven operations, such as the availability and accessibility of data. In addition, budget (39%) and data quality (24%) also represent challenges for small-scale organisations.

Large organisations face mainly organisational challenges

For larger companies (>25 employees), demonstrating the added value of their product, service or service through data-driven operations is more often crucial (52% compared to 37% for smaller organisations). In addition to data quality (33%), their challenges lie predominantly in organisational aspects, such as creating a data-driven culture (26%), finding and retaining suitable experts (26%), and inter-departmental collaboration (25%).

Opportunities for collaboration between data and business teams

One striking aspect however, is that there is still a lot to be gained in terms of cooperation between the ‘business side’ and ‘data side’ within organisations. Employees who deal with data and insights, such as data analysts and developers, experience less close collaboration than people on the business side, such as marketers, product owners and managers. The two groups also assess their organisation’s data maturity differently. For example, data teams are more likely to believe that data and insights are available and easy to find, while this applies to a lesser extent to the business teams (75% compared to 54%). Also, 53% of data experts know that you can distinguish yourself as an organisation through the successful application of data, compared to 31% of business experts.

Added value of personalised customer contact acknowledged and increasingly implemented

On average, organisations use four marketing channels, with e-mail, their own website, social media and direct mail forming the most popular channels. The personalisation of communication is mainly done for the e-mail, direct mail, messaging, inbound telephony  and chatbot channels. In terms of personalisation, more than half (57%) say they are able to personalise the customer experience partly one-on-one and/or partly at segment level. A total of 18% indicate that they can seamlessly and fully personalise the customer experience one-on-one across different channels; moreover, 2 out of 3 organisations (63%) genuinely see the added value of personalized customer contact.

Research accountability

The DDMA Data-Driven Marketing Survey (DDMO) was conducted in collaboration with research agency GfK among 420 Dutch people working within the marketing sector, who were selected on the basis of the following question: “Are the activities you perform within your current position largely marketing-related?“. In addition, 72 respondents from DDMA members took part. The stated results are solely based on the study group (n=420), except where explicitly stated otherwise.

Nanda Appelman

Market Insights Specialist

Bob Younge

Contentspecialist