Digital Marketers Need More Centralized IT
Big Plans
80% of digital marketers anticipate running cross-channel campaigns in 2014, and 60% of digital marketers intend to integrate within no less than four separate channels in 2014.
Top Channels for Digital Marketers
E-mail: 99%, Social media: 98%, The web: 96%
Top Social Networks for Digital Marketing
Facebook: 93%, Twitter: 88%, Pinterest: 64%, YouTube: 50%, Instagram: 39%
Primary Offender
39% of digital marketers say their company’s current tech is the top barrier to cross-channel marketing—the top barrier listed.
Other Major Barriers to Cross-Channel Marketing
Organizational structure: 38%, Budget: 38%, Lack of single customer view: 33%, Lack of customer-behavior understanding: 30%
Piecemeal Process
Only 28% of marketers work on teams that are fully integrated, and most work on teams that are organized by channel or are only somewhat integrated.
Top Business Challenges for Marketing Leaders
Collecting and managing structured and unstructured data: 61%, Having the right systems to effectively create and manage customer interactions: 48%, Tracing and measuring the effectiveness of integrated campaigns: 44%
Causes of Poor Data Quality
Human error: 59%, Lack of communication among departments: 31%, Inadequate data strategy: 24%
Siloed Structures
Only 30% of digital marketers say their data is managed centrally by a single director. The majority say that, while some centralization exists, many departments adopt their own strategy.
Far-Flung Information
Only one-fifth say they have the ability to link offline data, such as phone numbers and addresses, with online identities very well, and 14% don’t link these two data sets at all.
