Two thirds of marketers don’t believe they can accurately calculate the value of their customers, according to research from international marketing company BlueVenn (www.bluevenn.com).

The survey of 202 US and UK senior marketing professionals reveals a wide range of stats that shed light on marketers’ attitudes towards available tools and the most challenging elements of their roles. Data analysis tops the list of today’s challenges, with 99.5% of marketers attempting to analyze their customer data. One third of marketers, however, admits to the lack of relevant knowledge and tools to fully undertake a task that now requires more than 50% of their time.

Unsurprisingly, 72% of respondents consider data analysis to be the most important skill-set to acquire over the next two years, placing it at the top of their core marketing skills’ list above SEO and social media.

“More than ever, marketers have a wealth of data at their disposal to effectively track their customers throughout the sales cycle and truly understand what makes them tick,” , Curt Bloom, president of BlueVenn US said. “However, our research suggests that most marketers do not have the tools, the time or the skills necessary to access and utilize it.”

Among other findings, BlueVenn’s research exposes a drastic resource drain across marketing departments resulting from the existing skills gap. Nearly 27% of marketers have already transferred their data analysis to IT and a further six percent have outsourced it entirely, ultimately limiting their own access to potentially vital customer insight.

Achieving a Single Customer View emerges as another big struggle. Many marketers find it impossible to ascertain a complete memory for each customer in a single, trustworthy marketing database that would unite the disparate data the business collects:

° 82% feel they do not have the knowledge or resources needed to bring together multiple data points and create a true Single Customer View.

° 41% of marketers have to manage more than 20 data sources for every customer.

° Less than a third feel that their brand has managed to accomplish genuinely omni-channel marketing, and many marketers are starting to give up on the Single Customer View entirely – one in 10 consider the concept to be one of several “mythical beasts” that just aren’t practical in the real world.


“While marketers often give up before they start on strategies such as omni-channel marketing and the Single Customer View, the tools for their successful implementation are in fact readily available,” said Bloom. “With the right analytics and marketing automation platforms in place, marketers don’t need to (and shouldn’t have to!) become data scientists. For example, clients like AAA and Gatehouse Media use the BlueVenn omni-channel analytics and customer data platform to reap the benefits of a true Single Customer View, which fuels their ability to gather and apply customer insight across multiple campaigns in real-time.”