• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, April 27, 2020

Brands are pouring money into data this year, according to the Dichotomy Of Data, a study by Dun & Bradstreet. 

Of the companies surveyed, 75% expect to increase their data quality investments in 2020, and 18% strongly foresee doing so. 

And email vendors should be getting at least some of this money, as 65% of the B2B respondents use email as a channel, tying email for first place with online advertising.

However, the study notes that having a “high-quality email list or performing simple firmographic segmentation is no longer enough to fully realize sales and marketing ROI gains.”

Another 62% are active on the web, and 61% in social media. Of the people investing in data quality, 90% feel it will improve sales and marketing performance, and 39% strongly feel that.

But only 7% believe that investments will affect meaningful personalization, 7% ABM, 7% aligning online and offline activities and 4% whitespace identification.

Rather, these indicatives are the ones that get the most positive impact from data quality investments:

• Sales prospecting and closing. 
• Generating customer insights/intelligence based on analytics.
• Campaign execution. 

Among the many barriers to investing faced by companies, the main ones are:

• Cost—37%
• Better ROI with other initiatives—27% 
• Lack of understanding of data quality—27% 
• Lack of results evidence—25%
• Key decision-makers not on board—24% 

But the investments apparently pay off once these hurdles are overcome. Of companies that have invested, 100% saw overall performance gains and 94% improved their sales and marketing.

But 100% of firms that decreased their spend saw no improvement in sales/marketing performance, and 75% suffered a decline. Moreover, 35% took a hit in overall results.

Here’s more apparent proof of the power of data. Executives are confident in the state of data quality for use in these areas:

• Representing target audiences—89% 
• Identifying target audience—87%
• Up-to-data information—86% 
• Consistent structure of data—85%
• Completeness of data—82% 

Intent data is a category unto itself. The poll found that 60% use first-party intent data and 51% third party intent data for following purposes:

• Personalize web experiences for anonymous visitors.
• Prioritize leads with lead scoring.
• Personalize email to nurture leads. 

Dun & Bradtreet surveyed 500 B2B decision makers, including some that work in firms that also conduct B2C marketing, evenly split between the U.S., Canada and the UK.