2017: The Year of the Data Driven CMO

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a great holiday season and I wish nothing but the best for everyone in 2017 and beyond. 

Now, as for you, the CMOs of the world, as we wave goodbye to 2016, the time has come to wave goodbye to some bad habits when it comes to the use of data and data driven marketing. No, I will not refer to this as a New Year's resolution because we all know how long those last and this is far too serious to have it go the way of the latest diet or exercise regimen that lasts all of two weeks. 

Survey Says: Wrong

Picture a group of marketers on the TV show Family Feud. The question posed is "What is your primary source for customer data?" Well chances are the answer from a marketer would be via surveys as research from Bazaarvoice showed that nearly 70% say surveys are indeed their primary source for customer data.

Not surprising in the least the same research revealed that a mere 27% of customers believe surveys are the best way to learn about them.

I have to go back and re-process that stat again, the one where 70% of marketers use surveys to ascertain data about their customers. 

Apparently the calendar is wrong for this is NOT 2017 but somewhere in the late 80's/early 90's range. 

Surveys? Seriously? 

Let me guess are these same marketers still communicating via fax machine, too? 

Hi, I'm Big Data. Have We Met?

Yes, you may think you know just how big Big Data really is. But then again maybe you don’t. Maybe you don’t realize just how much data is being generated every single day. You know it’s a lot but are not quite just how much is a lot. Well how does 2.5 quintillion bytes per day sound?

That would be 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 in raw numbers.

Pretty staggering isn’t it? 

As to some specifics as to what makes up all that data, consider every minute of every day :

• 347,222 Tweets are sent out
• 4.2 million Facebook posts are Liked
• 1.7 million Instagram photos are Liked
• 1 million Vine videos are played
• 51,000 Apple users download an app

It does not take a data scientist to realize that’s a whole lot of data going on every minute of every day around the world. 

And yet 70% of marketers are still using surveys to get data on their customers?

If 2017 is in fact to be the Year of the Data Driven CMO then said CMOs must stop using archaic methods to gather and in turn use that data and to do that they need to use the right marketing technology. 

Yes, It Really Is That Easy

The challenge, however, is wading through the nearly 4,000 martech solutions currently available. With so many options—and more arriving daily—identifying the right ones and getting them to work together is not easy. Modern Marketers need to spend more time innovating and less time integrating. That’s why an open platform that offers not only pre-integrated apps, but an open infrastructure to make future innovations, is essential to success.

As technology converges with the marketing function, many new concepts and marketing categories have been created: Web analytics. Predictive Analytics. Tag Management vendors. Email Marketing. This list really goes on and on and on.

Fortunately for you we're here to help. Download The Truth About the Martech Stack to learn what differentiates leading marketing technology platforms from the rest.

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