Data is the Biggest Roadblock to Cross Channel Marketing Success

Every day 2.5 exabytes of data is produced. Don't know what an exabyte is? Neither did I. One exabyte equals 1 billion GB. 

The reason I start off with a data stat is simple. Of course data is the biggest roadblock to cross channel marketing success. Why? Because data seems to be the roadblock for ANY marketing success. Why? Because there's so much of it... and more to come. A lot more. IoT ring a bell?

Not So Nifty Fifty

In a report issued last year by Econsultancy, when asked to describe their organization's ability to manage data across multiple channels, 51% of respondents said they operate under the dreaded silo landscape. And as you can see from the chart below, that number has been at least 50% since 2013.

If that weren't bad enough, look at the other end of the spectrum where a measly 5% say they have a single platform that can manage data cross multiple channels. 

Yikes. 

Now, if you're still wondering why cross channel marketing is so vital, go back and read something I wrote this past December, 4 Cross Channel Marketing Stats Marketers Need To Know Going Into 2017. I'll wait. 

What Marketers Need

Aside from more vacation time, marketers - or more specifically marketing leaders need to create a data-driven marketing culture and organize the required people, processes and systems. They need to eliminate data silos and create a single source of truth. And they unequivocally need a 360-degree view of customers to link online digital marketing efforts to offline purchases to give marketers the true ROI on dollars spent reliably and efficiently target the right message, to the right person at the right time.

Today’s customers frequently interact with brands across multiple channels and devices leaving a trail of identifiers - Read: DATA - (like email addresses, loyalty accounts, browser cookies, and mobile device IDs) littered amongst the various technologies that power those customer interactions.

In order to keep pace with customers in real time and effectively personalize each customer’s experience, it’s up to marketers to bring all of a customer’s interactions, preferences, and behaviors across channels together in a way that allows them to get a complete profile of each customer that’s up-to-date.

So Now What?

By now it should be painfully obvious that using the right technology to handle all that data you're accruing every single second of every single day on every single customer is paramount for survival. 

However, as the demand for multichannel campaign management (MCCM) grows, the number of vendors has grown, too. With so many options, how do you assess the capabilities of each one to make the best choice for your company?

You download the Gartner Magic Quadrant For Multichannel Campaign Management. That's how. 

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