You need the right fuel to power optimum performance. It's true for the combustion engine. It’s true for athletes competing at the highest level. And it’s true for your marketing technology.
We asked business leaders whose martech investments are delivering above and beyond their expectations to explain the secrets of their success. One of their most common answers? They’ve created a strong foundation of clean, connected data.
What’s more, business leaders who aren’t seeing the returns they anticipated from their martech are more likely to blame incomplete, inconsistent, and siloed data than any other factor.
This research, commissioned by Acxiom and conducted by Insight Avenue, captures the experiences and aspirations of 150 senior leaders including CMOs, CTOs, and CIOs. All work for large U.S. organizations that use or plan to use Adobe CX Enterprise.
Download: Is martech meeting its value promises?
As well as revealing a strong data foundation to be one of the two leading drivers of martech success, our study shines a light on prevailing data strategy in these bellwether enterprises.
First-party data: An underutilized resource
Business leaders are well aware that they’ve got a precious source of competitive advantage, quietly and constantly accumulating in their CRM systems, analytics tools, and customer data platforms (CDPs). Almost all – a whopping 99% – say first-party data will determine which brands win on customer experience.
But the vast majority of our respondents consider activating first-party data to be a work in progress. A hefty 85% say most brands aren’t fully utilizing the data they already have. A significant proportion, meanwhile, say they aren’t using first-party customer data in their own martech ecosystems:
- Only 58% are using first-party behavioral data
- Only 55% are using first-party customer data
Third-party data: Missing from most martech ecosystems
Whether it’s sourced from retail media networks, walled-garden tech platforms, or trusted providers, demographic and psychographic insight can help businesses make the most of their martech capabilities – for example, by harnessing lookalike audiences to drive better customer acquisition.
But relatively few brands are integrating third-party data into their martech ecosystem. Less than half use third-party demographic data, and just one in 10 (9%) use third-party audience data.
Digital identity solutions: A key technology
Brands may be sleeping on the opportunities presented by third-party data, but they’re awake to the power of third-party data management and identity solutions to connect their in-house data sources.
Almost two-thirds (63%) of businesses say they’re already using digital identity solutions, and nearly half are using identity matching to link customer data across systems, even if the implementation of full-fledged CDPs remains relatively rare. An overwhelming 90% believe identity resolution will become essential to the delivery of personalized experiences.
We wanted to develop a more detailed picture of how businesses are using (or planning to use) third-party identity and data in their marketing strategy, so we asked them to share their use cases. The most popular are customer acquisition and audience targeting or segmentation.
Some more advanced third-party identity and data use cases – such as measurement and attribution, and enriching first-party data for insight – remain relatively underexplored. Together, such opportunities represent a huge, untapped source of martech ROI.
Getting your data foundation in place
How can your organization create the strong data foundation martech needs to deliver maximum ROI?
For Virgin Media, the first step was to connect multiple, disparate databases. For Lulu Guinness, it was to cleanse customer data and enrich it with third-party insights, to better understand and segment the brand’s customer base.
If you’re unsure where to start, . Acxiom is a platinum Adobe solutions and technology partner with a dedicated Adobe Practice – and Adobe’s suite is one of the leading martech platforms we help our clients implement, integrate, manage, and optimize.
A huge opportunity. And a time-sensitive one.
Business leaders understand that data is crucial to martech ROI. Unified, enriched data helps accelerate value. Siloed, poor-quality data slams on the brakes.
But few organizations are making the most of first- and third-party sources. The result is a huge opportunity for brands to build competitive advantage by stepping up their martech data strategy.
Those that do will also gain a head start in the race to implement AI-driven marketing solutions and journeys; 87% of business leaders believe AI in marketing simply won’t succeed without strong data quality and integration.
You’ll find many more insights in our full report, Is Martech Meeting its Value Promises? Download your copy now to discover:
- The other top drivers of martech value
- Which martech use cases are the most popular
- Where martech is failing to deliver, and why
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