On February 2, 2021, Underworks Co., Ltd. announced the results of the “Survey on Marketing Data Management Efforts – Efforts to integrate and utilize data that play a central role in digital marketing, and its challenges and prospects.” The survey period is from December 1, 2020 to December 25, 2020. Responses were received from 272 companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, targeting executives at the chief executive level or above.
This survey revealed the importance of marketing data management and current challenges.
Reference source:
90% of listed companies emphasize data management in terms of marketing results, and more than 40% have started initiatives – “Marketing Data Management Initiatives Survey 2021 Edition” released –
87% of respondents feel that marketing data management is important
Data management in this study refers to the construction of an integrated platform for marketing data and the utilization of data for data analysis and marketing measures.
Specifically, by centrally managing a variety of data related to a company’s customers and performing cross-sectional analysis, it is expected that data will be visualized and marketing effectiveness will be increased.
By analyzing and visualizing vast amounts of data from different locations, it becomes possible to extract targets with specific attributes and quickly execute marketing measures such as advertising and mail magazine distribution.
What is DMP? How to visualize data to increase marketing effectiveness
First, when asked how important data management is to improving marketing results, 53% said it was “very important,” and when combined with 34% who said it was “important,” 87% felt it was important. That’s what I found out.
Less than half of companies, 47%, are working on data management.
Although data management is felt to be important for improving marketing results, how many companies are actually tackling it?
Next, when asked about the status of their company’s data management efforts, 45% of companies said they were “working on it,” less than half of the total.
However, only 25% of companies answered that they plan to tackle this within the next year, indicating that 70% of the companies are already implementing data management initiatives or are planning to do so. 29% of companies answered, “Undecided/No plans to take action.”
More than 80% of companies are stuck with “partial data linkage”
Next, we asked about the status of data management in seven stages from stage 0 to stage 6, and when we asked multiple answers about the issues in stage 2, we answered, “Some data is linked, but most of it is not integrated.” The largest number of companies (53.7%) answered “No.”
Combining Stage 0 “We have not been able to collect marketing data at all” and Stage 1 “Individual data is scattered and cannot be linked at all,” more than 80% of companies say that most of their data is not collected on an integrated platform. It became clear that there was no such situation.
Barriers to data management include inter-organizational collaboration and specialized human resources
Although we recognize the importance of data management, the following data reveals the barriers to actually tackling it.
When asked multiple answers about the challenges faced when working on data management, 39.8% of the top respondents answered “coordination between organizations and coordination between departments”. Next was “expert knowledge and human resources in various technologies” at 34.9%, followed by “strategy planning and medium-term roadmap formulation” at 31.3%.
More than half of major companies invest more than 10 million yen
Finally, we will look at the state of data management at major companies.
When we asked how much annual budget they allocate to service areas such as strategic planning, collaboration with other technologies, data cleansing, and data migration when integrating data, more than half of major companies with annual sales of 200 billion yen or more answered The answer was over 10 million yen.
Furthermore, when we asked major companies about their expectations for initiatives, 55.9% of the top respondents answered, “understanding customer branches, visualizing customers with BI, analyzing and understanding customer needs.”
Next, 52.9% said “Improve internal efficiency, reduce waste, and promote collaboration between departments,” followed by 38.2% who said “Implement the PDCA cycle, including measuring the effectiveness of measures.” Additionally, “Predicting customer needs using AI” rose to 38.2%, a significant increase.
Data management requires collaboration among multiple departments, so it is important to clarify the purpose of data management and unify awareness among departments.
This survey revealed that although data management is recognized as important for improving marketing results, sufficient efforts are not being made due to issues such as coordination between organizations, specialized human resources, and strategic planning.
Although it is an extremely difficult initiative to implement, if data management can be realized, marketing effectiveness can be expected to improve. At a time when many companies have not been able to realize their initiatives, now may be the perfect time to tackle data management and differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Reference source:
90% of listed companies emphasize data management in terms of marketing results, and more than 40% have started initiatives – “Marketing Data Management Initiatives Survey 2021 Edition” released –