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.