The days when marketers could get away with trusting their gut feelings are coming to an end. The data-driven marketing revolution is upon us. Marketers are overwhelmed by the need to use data to make marketing more effective and efficient. Data has become the lifeblood of all organizations, according to a new white paper published by Aberdeen “Data Driven Marketing”. The study identifies exactly how the Best-in-class organizations are using data to impact marketing.

Top performing companies are predominantly using data to segment and target the market to develop more impactful delivery of multi-channel campaigns. These companies saw a 13% growth in customer profitability, while Industry Average companies had an increase of 1%, and Laggards had a decrease of 12%! Ian Michiels, Research director at Aberdeen, surveyed 272 organizations from all industries and company sizes to benchmark the current use of data-driven decisions in marketing. How do organizations use data, and what are some of the biggest challenges facing the market today?

Identifying return on marketing investment was rated as the top pressure for 49% of all respondents with respect to data-driven marketing. The difficulty in properly allocating sales to marketing investments leaves many marketers wondering which combination of marketing channels deliver he biggest bang for the buck. For many marketers, the challenge with data-driven marketing is not the lack of data, but the lack of actionable insight that can be derived from that data. An inability to translate data into business insight was one of the top three challenges for 47% of all respondents. Data quality issues and disparate data silos were also cited among the top hindrances to fostering a data-driven approach.

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Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks company, is the leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence. Having queried more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is positioned to educate users to action. Founded in 1988, Aberdeen has established the market leading position as the “voice that matters”