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3 Reasons You Could Fail Your Marketing Goals in 2020

Blueshift

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61% of marketers realize that technology is partly to blame

The world we inhabit is growing more and more complex: consumer demands for personalization are growing, we communicate on more channels than ever before, and there are more martech tools popping up each day. These, among many other things, have created the perfect storm for even the strongest of marketers to fail at achieving their 2020 goals. 

It’s extremely frustrating for marketers and customers alike. These issues translate into personalization fails: inauthentic messaging, %first_name% flubs, and spamming. Possibly the most aggravating aspect of these bad situations is that marketers aren’t directly responsible for failure. Everyone on your team could be giving 110% towards creating an amazing customer experience, but it will ultimately fall flat if you don’t watch for these key problems.

1. YOU’VE GOT DATA ALL OVER THE PLACE

A house built on sand will always fall, right? The same is true of your customer data — a strong foundation is essential to success. Now, there are several things that could go wrong and lead to problems farther down the line, but the most common issue we see is having data stored in disparate systems. You might have a CRM, a data lake or two, and various other platforms for storing relationship and transactional data. In fact, 3/5 marketers are working off of disparate data rather than a unified system.

When marketers are forced to work off of multiple data sources, it not only leads to inaccurate information shaping the customer journey but also significantly adds to campaign ramp time; for marketers using multiple data systems, it takes a month longer to execute on average.

It’s no wonder marketers fall short of their goals when more time is spent being a pseudo data scientist and bringing a campaign to fruition seems more arduous than scaling Everest.

2. YOUR TECH DOESN’T HAVE YOUR BACK

61% of marketers who have to work against their siloed data realize that technology is partly to blame. A combination of data that are fragmented and a tech stack that’s fragmented too means marketers might as well be using tools from 30 years ago – they’re that ineffective in today’s consumer climate.

What’s more, it isn’t that the marketing team has selected bad pieces of technology (your ESP or CRM could be perfectly wonderful), but rather they don’t address the underlying problem of disconnected customer views and manual decisioning. If your marketing automation system or another campaign designer (like an ESP) isn’t equipped with the right foundational AI and unified data to feed into it the roadblocks can be almost insurmountable. Marketers report that failed automation can add 4 weeks to campaign ramp times with, “4 days of team alignment, 15 days to clean and process data, and 4 days of segmentation.”

Additionally, it’s incorrect to assume that one system will be able to handle all of your needs. CRMs, ESPs, and CDPs are not the complete answer to the 1:1 puzzle. Rather, a strategic combination of these various platforms will make reaching your goals feasible in 2020. It’s all about building your businesses perfect Data Activation Tech Stack.

3. YOU’RE NOT BUILDING A CUSTOMER-CENTRIC CULTURE

With any paradigm shift in business, change is just as much a product of culture as it is strategy. The idea that marketers should be able to have a unified customer view and have the tech to support them is great in theory, but it doesn’t hold much value without c-suite buy-in. It’s important to have leadership with the same vision of exceptional customer experience leading data-driven teams to success.

Marketing is shifting from channel-centric to customer-centric, and it will continue to become increasingly difficult to reach your goals if they aren’t relevant. The customer should be at the heart of your goal setting — and if they are increased revenue, conversions, and engagement will follow.