Top Digital-Marketing Leaders Pinpoint the Industry’s Progress with Data, Analytics, and the Data-Driven Personalization of Campaign Creative

Verve, the leader in location-powered mobile marketing, announced publication of The Realities of Data and Marketing: What’s Really Happening, How Marketers Are Succeeding (and Struggling), and The State of Personalization, an exclusive Verve-sponsored research survey of top digital decision makers in the Ascendant Network. Ascendant, an exclusive invitation-only networking group for the most prominent and progressive executives in marketing, queried members on the critical relations of data to marketing.

Key findings from the study include:

• Data is driving real-world results for marketers’ campaigns. For the majority of the respondents in our survey, the application of data to marketing is driving planning, metrics, and sales: 82% said data is fueling real and sustainable results for marketers and businesses.
• The story of data adoption is a story in process. Nearly half (45%) the respondents believe they have only scratched the surface of what consumer and customer data means to their marketing efforts.
  Marketers are struggling with how “personal” personalization should become. Getting from broad-stroke personalization to tightly aligned contextual moments is an ongoing challenge to some degree for 78% of the marketers in the survey.
• Marketers envision a bright future of data-driven conversions and ROI. Some 82% of marketers in the study say they expect data to boost conversions among their customers, and 77% said data analytics will be at the heart of ROI lift in quarters to come.

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“Data and data science is now at the heart of everything marketing leaders can achieve and marketers, by a vast majority, are telling us that they’re seeing lift, returns, and positive business outcomes because of it,” said Julie Bernard, Chief Marketing Officer at Verve.

“At the same time, this new research draws back the curtain, allowing us to better understand what we’ve long suspected and known — that ownership and investment in data initiatives is an evolving, multi-department conversation across companies and that the best practices around personalization and consumer experiences are very much evolving, too. Marketers are balancing three key factors in their work with data — sheltering customers’ privacy, fostering relevant moments in the mobile space, and earning greater returns and loyalty. As a positive forecast for the industry, and a compelling ‘reality check’ around just where marketing stands in terms of data-science maturity, we’re very excited to co-present this new report with Ascendant Network,” added Bernard.

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