02/01/2021

Marketing Analytics Teams Face Hurdles in Customer Data

Management
Published 27 January 2021 - ID G00735343 - 11 min read

By Analysts Lizzy Foo Kune

Initiatives: Marketing Data and Analytics

Gartner’s 2020 Marketing Data and Analytics Survey reveals insights on how CMOs
are utilizing marketing data and analytics to make decisions, what data management
challenges they face and how individual use cases can be the necessary guide to
identifying solutions, including customer data platforms.

Overview

Key Findings
■ Respondents report that over half of their decisions related to marketing content and customer
targeting are influenced by marketing analytics. This is especially true for decisions regarding
changes to content for marketing or advertising and changes to targeting prospects or customers.

■ Despite this data’s current influence, challenges exist that prevent marketing analytics teams from
successfully integrating and analyzing marketing data. Data management is the top activity
marketing analytics teams spend time on, increasing 12% since the last survey conducted in 2018.

■ Use cases inform the people, processes and technology that will serve as solutions to marketing
leaders’ challenges.

Recommendations
CMOs seeking to increase the sophistication of their marketing data management capabilities should:

■ Learn the basic components of marketing data management to create an effective framework that
outlines data acquisition, organization, storage, analytics and delivery within marketing.

■ Identify data-wielding stakeholders, interview them about how they use data to support their efforts
and make decisions, and then map the data sources they discover.

■ Define specific, concrete use cases when evaluating technologies to enhance data management in
support of customer insight and understanding.

Survey Objective
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Previously conducted in 2018, the 2020 Gartner Marketing Data and Analytics Survey of over 400
producers (those who deliver marketing analytics) and consumers (who receive information from
marketing analytics practitioners) of marketing analytics was designed to understand how marketing
teams are leveraging data and analytics to power modern marketing. It examined the biggest challenges
marketing leaders face, including hiring and retaining skilled talent, and proving the value of what their
teams do.

Data Insights
Challenges Prevent Marketing Analytics Teams From Successfully Integrating and
Analyzing Marketing Data
Respondents report that more than half (54%) of decisions are influenced by marketing analytics (see
Figure 1). Of those decisions, analytics are expected to have the most influence over:

■ Changing the content for marketing and advertising (48%)

■ Changing the targeting of prospects and customers (42%)

■ Changing the features of products and services (41%)

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Figure 1. Marketing Analytics Wields Strongest Influence Over Marketing Content and
Prospect/Customer Targeting Decisions

Despite the influence marketing analytics has on specific marketing decisions, there are hurdles that
keep marketers from utilizing this data to its full potential, the largest of which pertains to data. When
asked to rank the top three activities that teams spent time on, the No. 1 task was data management,
integration and formatting, with 64% of respondents placing it within their top three (see Figure 2). This
is a 12 percentage point increase from 2018, indicating that its prevalence within this category is
growing, not diminishing.

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Figure 2. Time Marketing Analytics Teams Spend on Data Analytics Increases 2018 to 2020

Factors contributing to this struggle likely fall under the heavy learning curve CMOs face in
understanding data management and what it entails. What was once IT’s domain is now under the
supervision of marketing leaders who lack the talent and resources to support their effort, as well as the
foundational knowledge to communicate their data needs to IT. Plus, data analytics projects continue to
drive strong interest in data masking, and consent and preference management, which are often part of
IT’s domain. Marketing can’t succeed without the support of IT in these activities.

What’s more, time spent on skills development remains minimal, with respondents reporting only 23% of
their time was spent engaging in this activity in 2020. This is an alarming step down from 39% in 2018,
especially when considering how much time is spent engaging in activities related to an unfamiliar
domain.

Despite these challenges, the demand from stakeholders for marketing analytics to prove its ROI
increases, especially as COVID-19 spurs businesses to lean more heavily on increasing customer
retention. Thus, we see CMOs eager to bridge the customer data management gap. Data management is

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a hot topic among clients, especially within the realm of customer data (see What Marketing Leaders Are
Asking About: Marketing Data and Analytics, 2Q20). When we look specifically at data management
supporting customer data integration efforts, the top reason it’s a challenge is a lack of shared unique
identifiers.

This challenge isn’t going to get any easier. Third-party tracking and mobile identifiers become harder to
come by as major web browsers like Mozilla and Chrome phase out of using third-party cookies and
Apple’s next iOS defaults to not tracking users unless they manually choose to activate the feature. It
forces marketers to refocus their attention on first-party data, and they’ll need to create shared identifiers
here to find value (see Market Guide for Identity Resolution).

Additionally, we see operational issues arise over CMOs’ and marketing teams’ inability to access data
sources and lack of awareness of data sources (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Lack of Unique Identifiers Cited as Creating the Most Difficulty for Data Integration

So, how are marketing leaders planning to overcome this hurdle? While most marketing analytics teams
still struggle to link customer data, there is a clear effort to solidify those links. Nearly half (45%) report
linkages existing between a few data sources today, while 60% plan to achieve linkages between most or
all data sources in the next two years (see Figure 4).

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To do this successfully, marketers will have to factor in the continued development of data regulations
and changes to come. In the next year, major browsers will reduce or eliminate third-party tracking,
leading to challenges in measurement and identity resolution. Meanwhile, regulatory bodies soldier on,
building on the momentum of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR). Because of these changes, marketers need to prioritize what data they
collect, and how it will be used in service of personalization, ad targeting and measurement use cases
(see Build a Marketing Measurement Framework for Lasting Measurement Success).

Figure 4. Customer Data Integration Efforts Move Toward Linkage Between Most Data Sources in the
Next Two Years

This is a significant amount of projected progress in a short period, especially when considering how
much organizations currently struggle (and have struggled since 2018) to successfully link customer
data.

The operational issues of not knowing or having access to data sources also pose challenges to
success. Education will be key in ushering marketing analytics teams forward in their customer data
linkage goals.

Recommendations:

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■ Educate yourself on the basic components of marketing data management, and create a framework
for marketing’s data management, including acquisition, organization, storage, analytics and delivery
(see Establish the 5 Components of Marketing Data Management).

■ Use Gartner’s case study on Decision-Focused Data Maps (General Mills) as a guide for how to
identify stakeholders, discuss their data-related decisions and how they use data to support their
efforts, and map the data sources you discover.

Use Cases Will Inform the People, Processes and Technology That Will Serve as
Solutions to Customer Data Challenges
Data access and integration may be the biggest hurdles, but the solution isn’t necessarily to achieve near
or total integration. Instead, clients must tune into their use cases to figure out the right combination of
people, processes and technology to solve the problem at hand. According to our survey feedback, the
highest “first choice” selected within respondents’ top three use cases was to “improve the accuracy of
marketing measurement,” which, in turn, is designed to gauge and prove ROI (see Figure 5).

To fulfill this use case, marketers should turn their attention back to data management. Ask:

■ What data exists?

■ What data needs to be integrated to solve for these things?

■ Does it really require an integrated view of the customer?

See How to Build and Present a Business Case for Marketing Technology Investments for additional
information on identifying use cases.

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Figure 5. The Most Important Use Cases for Successful Integration of Customer Data

Customer data platforms (CDPs) have been a hot topic of inquiry from clients seeking to manage
customer data (see What Marketing Leaders Are Asking About: Marketing Data and Analytics, 2Q20).
They seem like a logical solution considering they’re designed to unify customer data from marketing
and other channels so that users can enable customer modeling and optimize their targeting efforts. Yet,
surprisingly, more than half of respondents (51%) do not currently use a CDP for integrating customer
data. In fact, despite a strong correlation between CDP adoption and marketing analytics maturity, 1 4%
do not know what a CDP is (see Figure 6).

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Figure 6. Less Than Half of Analytics Teams Report They Have a CDP

This could be due in part to CDPs’ current state within the Hype Cycle (see Hype Cycle for Digital
Marketing, 2020). They currently linger between the Peak of Inflated Expectations and Trough of
Disillusionment as the marketplace becomes inundated with a highly varied selection of CDP “types.”
These types vary in significance based on individual users’ necessary use cases (see Market Guide for
Customer Data Platforms). Another factor that likely plays a part is that customer data integration is a
means to an end. That end is what marketers list as their primary use case rather than the means
(customer data integration).

“After all, customer data integration itself isn’t what delivers value. It’s what
marketers and technologies do with it that creates value.”

Simply put, there are numerous options but no “cure-all” CDP that satisfies every need. According to
recent Gartner surveys, growth in the market may be slowing due to market saturation (see Survey
Analysis: Identify and Adopt Mature and Emerging Technologies in Your Martech Stack).

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Still, marketers see the future potential in this new platform, with 30% of survey respondents saying they
plan to invest in one within three years. Currently, the most important use case that motivated or will
motivate CDP investments is customer understanding/insight (see Figure 7). This is especially true
during the current pandemic as marketers seek to understand their customers better in order to adapt
their scenario planning in a way that improves customer retention and loyalty (see How to Strengthen
Scenario Plans Using Customer Data).

Figure 7. Most Important Use Cases That Motivated or Will Motivate CDP Investment

To evaluate whether CDP capabilities are able to produce the results you’re seeking, create concrete,
clearly defined use cases when evaluating optimal CDP solutions (see Market Guide for Customer Data
Platforms).

In reality, there are multiple marketing technology solutions to address the use cases in Figure 7, and
features of these technologies often overlap. These include (but are not limited to):

■ Customer understanding and insight: Marketing dashboards, business intelligence solutions,

customer journey analytics, A/B and multivariate testing tools

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■ Audience activation: Ad tech platforms, media measurement technology, media planning technology,
account-based marketing platforms, data management platforms andsocial media management
platforms

■ Artificial intelligence/Machine learning modeling: Data science and machine learning platforms

■ Segmentation: Web analytics, multichannel marketing hubs and email marketing platforms

■ Omnichannel personalization: Personalization engines

■ Identity resolution: Identity resolution solutions, data onboarding providers and data clean rooms

Additional reading on these technology categories can be found in The Gartner Marketing Technology
Vendor Guide.

Recommendations:

■ Be specific when determining the use cases for integrating your customer data. Avoid vague or
abstract definitions by drilling down to specific challenges and solutions to those challenges so that
you can determine whether the capabilities of your proposed solution will successfully satisfy your
business needs (see How to Build and Present a Business Case for Marketing Technology
Investments).

■ Conduct regular audits of deployment and usage of the customer data management tools in your
marketing technology stack. Respondents to Gartner’s 2020 Marketing Technology Survey indicated
that martech utilization remains an issue (see 2020 Marketing Technology Survey: Cost Pressures
Force Martech Optimization and Innovation).

■ As you build martech solutions to address key use cases, create key performance indicators (KPIs) to
measure the impact of adoption and usage on performance.

Additional research contribution and review:

The author wishes to thank Elizabeth Carlton for her writing contribution to this report.

Evidence
1
Survey Analysis: How to Build a More Mature Marketing Analytics Function

Gartner’s 2020 Marketing Data and Analytics Survey: The purpose of this study was to better
understand the current approaches to marketing analytics that support marketing strategies to enable
future growth and success. The primary research was conducted online from June 2020 through July
2020 among 415 respondents in North America (49%) and Western Europe (51%). Eighty-three percent of
the respondents came from organizations with $1 billion or more in annual revenue. The respondents
came from a variety of industries (number of respondents in parentheses), including: financial services

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(68), high tech (52), manufacturing (65), consumer products (37), media (60), retail (51), healthcare
providers (30), travel and hospitality (27), and IT-business services (25). This year’s survey had a split
panel with 209 producers of marketing analytics and 206 consumers of marketing analytics. Producers
of marketing analytics were required to have high involvement in producing marketing analytics used to
inform decisions. Consumers of marketing analytics had to have a high level of involvement in decisions
informed by marketing analytics. A team of Gartner analysts who follow marketing developed the
survey. Gartner’s Research Data and Analytics team reviewed, tested and administered the survey.

Disclaimer: Results from this study do not represent global findings or the market as a whole but reflect
sentiment of the respondents and companies surveyed.

Acronym Key and Glossary Terms

Data Data masking technologies are offerings designed to desensitize data to protect it
masking against confidentiality or privacy abuse. These technologies enable organizations to
(DM) operationally minimize the footprint and propagation of sensitive data (or its view),
without extensive custom development. Data is either masked before access or at
the time of access, depending on the use-case requirements. The most common
use case for DM technologies remains the desensitization of data in nonproduction
environments.

Recommended by the Author

Marketing Data and Analytics Survey 2020: Optimism Persists as Results Fall Short of Expectations

What Marketers Need to Know About Customer Data

Technology Insight for Marketing Analytics
Survey Says: CMOs Must Make More Decisions Using Analytics
Survey Analysis: How to Build a More Mature Marketing Analytics Function

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