Report: 89% Of Marketers Have Problems With Cross-Channel Marketing, Data Linkage Is The Biggest Culprit

The holy grail of digital marketers is the single customer view that can unlock the potential of personalization and the insights into consumer behavior. A new study from Experian however shows that connecting these dots isn’t easy. A whopping 89% of respondents admitted that they have challenges when trying to create a single customer view.

The biggest culprits that hinder the creation of a customer view are poor data quality, the siloing of departments, the inability to link different technologies and the lack of technical tools.

The biggest problem in cross-channel tracking specifically is the inability to link (32% of marketers reported as having problems) followed by the company’s technology (31%) and the overall organizational structure (31%).

The end result of these customer view issues is an uncoordinated, unaligned marketing effort. Even though date linkage and a unified view are problematic, companies are still trying to customize their efforts. Experian reports that 82% of marketers are in-fact personalizing their communications, though 50% report it is on a remedial data front — such as something simple like using a customer’s first name.

When it came to grading their cross channel weaknesses, marketers found that data quality as well as testing/interpretation/segmentation & modeling were their weakest areas of expertise.

For the full findings (100+ pages) head on over to Experian and download their 2015 Digital Marketer report.