Marketing Governance

 TDC) has released the results of its pan-European marketing study, “The Data Driven Marketing Survey 2013, Europe”. The study reveals that a shift to digital channels and the increasing importance of data have led to a “class structure” in marketing technology investments among companies using these solutions. Telco and IT companies invest almost 20% of their marketing budget on improving their marketing infrastructure, whilst retail (17%) and finance (13%) are close followers. Overall, however, 50% of marketing departments across all industries surveyed spend less than 5% to improve their marketing with technology investments.

In creating the report, Teradata eCircle surveyed more than 1,100 marketing professionals ranging from CMOs and key decision makers to marketing managers and technology users, from 19 European countries and across nine major industries, to uncover the challenges and trends in data-driven marketing adoption by European businesses and how marketers use technology to master them.

The study shows that despite the current, uncertain economic climate, the shift to digital is significant. Marketers still plan to increase their spending in digital channels, especially in social media (79%), mobile marketing (79%) and online display advertising (70%) within the next 12 months. What’s more, the first seven channels marketers plan to invest in are digital, with call centers being the first non-digital investment priority in 8th place.

The research also highlighted marketers’ desire to embrace data, citing it as a key driver of marketing success, with data-driven marketers more than twice as satisfied with their marketing programs than their counterparts who are not basing their decisions on data.

With two-thirds of marketers claiming a lack of simple metrics and the short-term view of their marketing departments as their biggest obstacles to success, the findings provide an eye-opening insight into the struggles facing the modern multi-channel marketer. In fact, the single biggest challenge facing marketers in 2013 was revealed to be the pressure to increase revenue.

Out of the more than 50% of marketers utilizing seven or more channels, the research also found that only 33% currently have Campaign Management technology to monitor their activity, whilst a mere 17% use a Marketing Resource Management solution. Notably only 10% use both.

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VisionEdge Marketing (VEM), ITSMA, and Forrester, organizations committed to helping marketers improve their effectiveness, released the findings from their 2013 Marketing Performance Management (MPM) Survey. We made a call for that in of our previous blogs.

The 2013 MPM Survey captured input from more than 400 respondents, enabling ITSMA, Forrester, and VEM to expose valuable insights on the performance measurement and management challenges marketers face. The study, began by VEM initially, is now in its 12^th year.

Marketing Activity, Not Business Outcomes

The study reveals that few members of the C-Suite rely on marketing data to make decisions. Results show that only nine percent of CEOs and six percent of CFOs rely on marketing data to make decisions. The reason? Marketing dashboards report marketing activity rather than business outcomes. Marketers cling to metrics that measure and report marketing’s performance, continuously justifying marketing budgets and resource allocations when they should be showing how marketing moves the needle on topline growth or profitability.

“The data demonstrates how marketers rely too much on their CRM and marketing automation systems to produce dashboards or report on marketing results. These systems are fine for providing a view into marketing program activity and pipeline, but the research shows that most fail to produce the level of information and metrics that business executives want to see,” said Laura Ramos, Vice President, Principal Analyst serving CMOs at Forrester. Read More

Irv Shapiro. “I am fascinated by many of the results that reflect the innovation that is occurring in marketing measurement.”

So, what are the results?

A primary trend from the 2013 research is the level of support, and scrutiny, that marketers are receiving from their CEO’s around marketing measurement as a growth engine. Two thirds of CEO’s surveyed have significant influence in marketing decisions and half receive regular marketing measurements. In fact, one in ten CEO’s seek marketing measurements daily (9.2 percent) while one in five (19.7 percent) are receiving updates weekly.

How often marketing metrics are reported

 (graph by Ifbyphone 2013: State of Marketing Measurement Survey Report)

What is being measured?

Marketing teams are being asked to measure a wider range of marketing metrics with a greater focus on revenue and tracking of customer interactions from both offline and online sources. Tracking new customer sources is the highest rated marketing metric utilized (by 49 percent of all respondents), with measuring increases in sales/revenue across marketing channels a very close second (48 percent).

Given the dominance of the sales-related metrics already being measured by the marketing team, it is not unreasonable to conclude that marketing measurement innovation, which enables marketers to better track and monetize engagements with customers and sales prospects, will be a high priority in coming years.

Use of marketing metrics

 (graph by Ifbyphone 2013: State of Marketing Measurement Survey Report)

Marketing enjoys budget growth

Investment in an emerging generation of marketing measurement tools is needed to satisfy the CEO’s increasing demand for tracking data. In order to facilitate this, budget growth and additional marketing resources are being provided.

Possibly as a result of the increased focus from the CEO and the growing role marketing has as a growth engine, almost half of respondents (45 percent) reported an increase in their marketing budgets in the past year while only 12 percent are working with a tighter marketing budget.

Respondents were asked what their marketing personnel priorities would be for 2013/14 and a significant majority were focused on proactive and growth related strategies. Almost a third (32 percent) plan to add more full-time marketing resources, one in five respondents (19 percent) plan to invest in more contingent marketing workers, while one in 10 (10 percent) will hire a new marketing agency.

One in 10 respondents (10 percent) will also share resources with other departments, such as IT, reflecting the highly technical nature of twenty-first century marketing analytics. A much smaller percentage of respondents are planning to downsize their investment in marketing personnel in 2013/14.

The emergence of the Growth Hacker

In line with increasing marketing budgets, more marketing people are being hired. Growth hackers, marketers who combine marketing knowledge with a strong technical background to drive growth, are having an impact on improvements in marketing measurement. One quarter of respondents (25 percent) now have a Growth Hacker on their marketing team, the same percentage that have Product Managers.

Marketing teams with Growth Hackers are prioritizing investments in emerging marketing measurement technology, across both online and offline channels. Almost three quarters of marketing teams with a Growth Hacker engaged (72 percent) are experimenting with Voice-Based Marketing Automation (VBMA), 19 percent more than marketing teams generally. Meanwhile, 44 percent of marketing teams with Growth Hackers are using marketing automation software compared to only 26 percent of marketing teams generally.

Over a third of Growth Hacker-backed marketing teams (34 percent) are utilizing heat map tools compared with only 20 percent of the average marketing teams. Almost twice as many marketing teams with Growth Hackers (28 percent) are experimenting with emerging workflow automation tools, compared to 15 percent generally.

Across every category of marketing measurement technology, it is the Growth Hackers who are leading the charge in experimenting and innovating with emerging tools that will give them, their CEO, and their marketing colleagues the edge in tracking where the best results are being achieved for marketing investments.

See the complete survey at Ifbyphone.com

Adobe 2013 Digital Marketing Survey. The survey was published April 26th. Some 53 percent of the digital marketers surveyed from around the world say they devote less than 5 percent of their budget to optimization activities. Last year 48 percent of the marketers said this. Only 6 percent of respondents are allocating more than one-quarter of their budgets to these activities, relatively unchanged from last year’s 7 percent. And that is strange, because through optimization companies can reduce the costs of their marketing operations. By calculating the ROI for the optimization projects it can become apparent that the reason not to, is actually the reason to do it; saving budget.

Eye-openers

Adobe conducted this survey amongst 1800 marketers from around the World. “Some of the findings are eye-opening”, says John Cristofano, PR-Manager at  Adobe, “like data showing a majority of the companies surveyed spend 5 percent or less of their marketing budget on optimization activities. Five percent or less, even though it’s also clear from the data that companies investing more get more in return. For example, companies allocating more than 25 percent of marketing budgets to optimization are twice as likely to see high conversion rates.”

With these kinds of results, it’s only logical to ask why there are not more companies are investing in optimization. According to the survey there are two major challenges. Budget and resources are the two most important things, that hold marketers back says almost half of the respondents.

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Ever since 2001 VisionEdge Marketing is conducting a Marketing Performance Management survey to better understand how marketers are using marketing data, metrics, and analytics to inform marketing decisions, predict buyer behavior, improve marketing performance, and forecast trends. The new 2013 issue of the survey is online now.

Survey participants have found the results to be an excellent benchmarking tool. It  provides insight into how marketers use data, metrics, and analytics to inform marketing decisions, improve marketing performance, and report on their contribution, impact and value.  This year’s survey is particularly focused on marketing dashboards, data, and analytics- important capabilities for today’s marketing professionals.

In appreciation for completing the survey, participants will receive:

• An executive summary of the survey results (note: ITSMA members who complete the survey will receive the full report)
• The opportunity to request a copy of the Forrester report resulting from this survey. (note: All Forrester clients will be able to access the report from Forrester.com using your normal subscription login.)
• A chance to win a Kindle Fire (the first 500 survey respondents will be entered into a drawing)

All responses will be kept strictly confidential and reported only in the aggregate. The survey closes at April 30, 2013. If you leave the survey and re-enter, you will be returned to the place where you left off.

The survey can be found here:

Marketers who have come to be perceived as value generators for their organization have learned how to use data, analytics, processes and metrics to move business results and demonstrate their contribution. The problem is that many marketers are tracking metrics that are easy and convenient but have little or nothing to do with the organization’s performance. The real challenge for a good number of marketers is to develop and use metrics that drive results.

ITSMA and VisionEdge Marketing have teamed up in an Marketing Performance Mangement survey (open until July 27th) to give marketers the opportunity to gain insight in their use of marketing data, metrics, and analytics to inform marketing decisions, predict buyer behavior, improve marketing performance, and forecast trends.  Read More

Responsys. A survey among 115  industry executives found that 88% are either currently running or planning multimedia campaigns of this type. Despite this trend, the majority (79%) feel they need more support or tools to help them implement marketing campaigns across different channels.