Most B2C marketers (53%) say they have an excellent grasp of transactional data such as consumers' purchase history, and 42% say they have a good handle on basic demographic information such as gender and age, according to a recent report by Yesmail and Gleanster.
However, far fewer marketers say that they have an excellent understanding of relationship data, including customers' level of participation in social media (20%), channel preference (21%), and household composition (27%).
Moreover, just 21% use events such as birthdays or having a baby to trigger automated campaigns.
Below, additional key findings from the report, which was based on a survey of 100 senior marketers from mid-to-large B2C companies.
Targeting Customers
- 83% of marketers surveyed say they are effective at delivering targeted offers and messages using predefined triggers.
- Customer profile and purchase history is the most used data input for creating targeted email campaigns (67%), followed by customer feedback/satisfaction information (59%), and point of sale transaction data (56%).
- Less than half of marketers use Web browsing history (41%), social data (38%), and third-party attitudinal data (36%) to segment consumers.
Obstacles to Better Personalization
- Respondents cited limitations in marketing tools (42%) as the No. 1 challenge that stands in the way of better personalized customer communications.
- Fragmented marketing systems (34%) and poor data quality (34%) are No. 2 and 3.
Better Segmentation With Better Data
- 86% of the marketers surveyed say they could do a better job with segmentation if they had better customer data.
- Less than half of marketers are satisfied with their data quality (46%), multichannel campaign configuration (46%), and Web analytics integration (48%).
About the research: The report was based on a survey conducted between March and April 2013 of 100 senior marketers from mid-to-large ($10 million to over $1 billion revenue) B2C companies with online and offline sales models.
