• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, April 20, 2022

Marketers have been challenged by recent data privacy changes, and 90% have fundamentally altered how they measure marketing performance according to Marketing Intelligence Report, a study released Wednesday by Salesforce.  

For instance, brands have made the following investments in technology in an effort to cope with privacy changes: 

• Marketing analytics and measurement technology — 52% 
• Customer-data platform technology — 50% 
• Real-time interaction and personalization technology — 45% 
• Content management technology — 44%
• Identity enrichment and resolution technology — 41% 

But fewer than half are very confident in their ability to do the following in the face of the recent changes:

• Hit sales or business targets — 42% 
• Create personalized customer experiences — 40% 
• Identify and target relevant audiences — 39%
• Compare marketing performance across channels — 38%
• Measure marketing ROI — 37%

Among other privacy shifts, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection has reduced the relevance of email opens, and Google’s third-party cookie deprecation has pushed businesses to “a consumer-first, content-based approach to data collection,” the study states. 

As a result of all this, brands have invested in these marketing tactics in response to the changes, with email marketing falling far down the list:

• Paid social —54%
• Mobile marketing — 52% 
• Web experiences — 51% 
• Content marketing — 49% 
• Paid search — 48% 
• Email marketing — 43% 
• Event marketing — 41% 
• Programmatic/display advertising — 40%
• Affiliate marketing — 39% 
• Out-of-home marketing — 38% 
• Connected TV/OTT marketing — 36%
• Traditional TV/radio advertising — 32% 

Email investments remained the same for 42%. And 13% reported a decrease.  

But companies face serious challenges: 80% say their ability to track ROI for each investment needs improvement. And 33% aver that their insights are too slow for marketing decision-making.

The study separates companies into high performers (17%), moderate performers (69%) and underperformers (!5%). 

It shows that 48% of the high performers are completely satisfied with their ability to drive email opt-ins, as are 42% of moderate performers and 36% of the underperformers.  

But 59% of the high performers are satisfied with their ability to generate sales, while 51% are satisfied with audience/follower growth. In addition, 51% are able to fuel form fills and sign-ups, 51% to achieve product adoption, 51% to create content downloads and 52% to pull website visits. 

Brands also say these disciplines are key to driving marketing-led growth: 

• Data quality — 79%
• Shared marketing and sales business objectives — 74% 
• Cross-channel analytics — 73%
• Collaboration across distributed teams — 73%
• Real-time personalization — 73%
• Testing new marketing channels/platforms — 71% 
• Artificial intelligence performance insights — 69%
• Unified customer profiles — 67%

Similarly, they see these skills also fuel customer experience:

• Data quality — 77%
• Shared marketing and sales business objectives — 75%
• Cross-channel analytics — 72%
• Collaboration across distributed teams — 75% 
• Real-time personalization — 74% 
• Testing new marketing channels/platforms — 72%
• Artificial intelligence performance insights —71% 
• Unified customer profiles — 71%  

In another finding, the study shows that 40% say their cross-channel data integration is mostly or entirely automatic. But 42% have an even mix of manual and automatic, and 17% are entirely manual.

Salesforce surveyed 2,583 marketing decision makers worldwide.