Salesforce launched the third edition of its “Marketing Intelligence Report.” The report dove into how marketers use data and analytics to personalize customer experiences, navigate changes in data privacy regulation and prepare for the complexity of cross-channel measurement in a digital-first world.
This year’s “Marketing Intelligence Report” surveyed 2,500 marketing decision-makers from around the world to uncover how marketers are using data for marketing-led growth and customer experiences. Key findings from the research include:
- 90% of marketers agreed that recent data privacy changes have fundamentally changed how they measure marketing performance;
- Nearly four in five marketers globally said data quality is the most critical factor driving marketing-led growth and customer experience;
- Only about one in five marketers said their company “exceeds expectations” on any analytics component. AI-driven insights, data taxonomy, media planning and pacing have the most opportunity for development; and
- 98% of marketers emphasized the importance of having a complete, centralized view of all cross-channel marketing, but 71% of marketers evaluated the performance of their cross-channel marketing in silos.
To learn more about the trends shaping cross-channel marketing, Demand Gen Report sat down with Loretta Shen, Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Salesforce, to dive deeper into today’s marketing culture.
Demand Gen Report: What makes this “Marketing Intelligence Report” different from previous reports?
Loretta Shen: This report is all about trends, analytics and going deeper into data. We started these reports three years ago and since then, the challenges and opportunities around data have really increased over the past year. Marketers are increasingly focused on all these digital channels customers are engaging on, and each digital channel brings a ton of data that can be an opportunity to better serve their customers.
However, the challenge is there’s so much data and it’s always changing, and new trends keep popping up that change the way we use data. Now it’s all about proving how marketing is contributing to society. And so, in this report, we saw that marketers are really coalescing around two key trends in their responsibilities. We call it the dual mandate, which includes customer satisfaction since customer relationships have always been at the center of the marketer’s world. And then the other piece is business growth. We explore that further in this report and really show how marketing has become a dual mandate.
DGR: What has been a big change you have seen in marketing styles post-pandemic?
Shen: This year, and over the past few years, we’ve seen a larger conversation around data privacy. A lot of regional trends started to happen around how to protect consumer privacy and consumer data and measure customer interactions online. For this report, we dedicated a whole section to data privacy and how it’s impacting marketers that dives deeper into those insights, such as how marketers respond in certain areas and how they change their strategies.
Now that you can’t track your customers the way you used by buying third-party cookies and tracking them on open exchanges, for example, you must rethink a consumer-friendly and private way to earn the trust of your customers. You need to find a way to get them the offers they need along with the personalized content they want.
DGR: How do marketers define their roles in the digital-first era?
Shen: It goes back to this dual mandate where marketers are both stewards of the customer experience and builders of customer relationships. It’s all about building a journey, moment by moment, and turning those moments into relationships. That’s top-of-mind for marketers today.
This ideal is echoed in our “State of Marketing Report,” where 80% of marketers view their responsibility as leading customer experience across their business. On top of that, 94% of marketers globally viewed their function as critical for driving growth, which increased by 87% from last year. Growth can mean driving revenue for their business and making sure that every investment made as a marketer has returned. So, in defining marketing success, it involves a lot of metrics that relate back to how they defined their role using the dual mandate system.
Not only do marketers need to integrate data across business units and sources, but they also need to share it to generate value, foster teamwide collaboration and connect marketing to business outcomes. With data unified in one place, marketers are positioned to lead growth in their organizations and engage their customers.
