Missed Signals: Most Marketers Aren’t Collecting Customer-Journey Data (New Report)

With all the attention being paid recently (and rightfully) on data in a post-cookie future, I was actually somewhat surprised by the latest findings from Acoustic and Forrester Consulting.

According to the 1,200-plus marketing professionals surveyed for the Strengthen Customer Retention And Engagement With Behavioral Data study, only 75% say collecting real-time data about a customer journey and buying experience is critical, while only 47% are even collecting the data.

In other words, most aren’t collecting data, and a quarter don’t seem to think they need to.

“[The] findings demonstrate that marketers continue to struggle with collecting and leveraging customer behavioral signals throughout the customer journey,” says Mark Cattini, Acoustic’s CEO. “Without the right technology and strategy in place, this gap will only grow as third-party cookies deprecate and marketers lose visibility into customer engagement.”

(Source: Acoustic)

The study found marketing automation to be the most challenging function (for 73%), followed by audience management and segmentation (69%), personalization of customer outreach (67%), analyzing customer data (66%), and reporting/ROI of marketing efforts (64%). 

“Much of their focus was on the start of the customer journey; they could take more advantage of touchpoints throughout the journey if they tracked more customer behavioral data,” the study says. “For example, across the board, respondents struggled with predictions. In order to reach the state where they are ready to predict customer behaviors and act upon those predictions, they need to make sure they are aware of what data they have and where it is located.”

The study says once that data is collected, marketers need to consider a first-party “more holistic” data strategy that incorporates the metrics that capture the entire customer journey.

“If marketers want to determine their customers’ buying patterns and propensity to continue to buy, they need to track more customer behavioral data from multiple stages in the customer journey to see the full picture clearly,” the study says. “To strategically factor in this valuable data across the rest of the customer journey, they must first collect and understand that data.”