• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, February 19, 2015

According to a new study from Teradata, the 2015 Global Data-Driven Marketing Survey, data-driven marketing is the process of collecting and connecting large amounts of online data, and, with traditional offline data, rapidly analyzing and gaining cross-channel insights about customers, and then bringing that insight to market via a highly personalized marketing campaign tailored to the customer at his/her point of need.

Data-driven marketing is the means that leads to the end of individualized insights, says the report: moving beyond segmentation to true one-to-one personalization in a real-time context; achieving the capability to distill insights at the individual level,

Marketers have made significant strides in the status of their datadriven marketing over the past year. The most pronounced and impressive achievement is that today data-driven marketing is either embedded or strategic for 78% of marketers, according to the study. In contrast, in 2013 only 34% of survey respondents said their datadriven marketing was embedded or strategic.

A more strategic approach to datadriven marketing has already had a positive impact in decision making, especially in the speed with which decisions are being made. Speed was cited as a benefit of using data in making decisions by 59% of respondents versus only 31% in 2013. Speed is now the second most cited benefit, after accuracy, cited by 67%.

But appropriate access to useful data has been a stumbling block for marketers, and achieving success with data-driven marketing involves breaking down silos and enhancing enterprise-wide cooperation. To that end, eMarketer  reports on maximizing big data, with companies’ positions on sharing the numbers across departments.

Among executives surveyed worldwide, says eMarketer, about two-thirds agreed that some departments in their organizations had much better access to data than others. About four in 10 said access to relevant data was limited and strictly controlled at their organization or that accessing it wasn’t easy. And while more execs want to create a data-driven business, some had issues with employees gathering data, let alone sending it along to others.

Just over one-quarter of respondents believed that all employees had access to the data they needed, and only 16% said that it was also available in a user-friendly way. The ability to customize data feeds and dashboards with data was allowed by few.

Nearly half of execs whose companies had made more data available agreed that collaboration across business units and departments had increased, says the report. Making data more available and usable also helped with speed and efficiency in many areas: 63% said information and knowledge were shared more quickly and freely, 57% were able to control internal risks and operate more efficiently, 45% said quality and speed of execution had improved and 42% said decisions at all levels of the organization were made faster.

One issue that stood out in the study was employees’ ability to use data, says the report. Just 25% of executives agreed that even when data was made available, employees were able to readily extract relevant insights, and an improvement in employee innovation was one of the least common changes due to data availability and utilization. 41% of US marketing executives polled in October 2014 by Forbes Insights said that data analytics usage had resulted in new hires to bring in new skills,and possibly replace those who just don’t get it.

For additional information from eMarketer, please visit here, or for access to the complete study in PDF format, from Teradata, please go here.