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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Business confidence and

data collection still clash

Although the acceptance for data-driven marketing is number has risen by 18 percentage points to 37%,
growing, many users still worry about protection of pri- while however 93% of the consumers are still against
vacy. At least, this is the result of a representative study this kind of random data collection.
by the marketing tech provider Silverpop, titled "data-
driven marketing: reality vs. customer demands", which Nevertheless, the appreciation for the data entry in-
was carried out in March of this year. creased slightly. Compared to 2013 (50%) now 54% of
respondents have an idea of what companies do with
In 2013, when such research was conducted for the first the collected data, and more than 80% of users are
time, the gap between reality and customer marketing already convinced that companies using the data will
was obvious, but now is closing partially, according to send them matching offers. After all, 63% see already
the current results. an improvement in the service quality, which is an in-
crease of four percentage points.
However, the desire for transparency, which users have
expressed earlier, still falls by the wayside. Compared Nevertheless, users’ confidence is still low as they still
to 2013 (79%), currently 74% of marketers still deploy question what happens to the data – e.g. 91% fear that
personal customer data, which means that there is al- their data can be sold. On the other hand, by now only
ready a slight stagnation. 22% of companies communicate measures to protect
customer data, not like two years ago, when 34% still
Today, however, far more diverse data sources are did it. Even the transparency desire of consumers is not
managed and used in a more analytical way: If, for in- sufficiently taken into account: While 72% want to know
stance, in 2013, CRM data was still the most widely what kind of data companies have saved on them, only
used, in 2015, web analytics (up 17 percentage points) 26% of companies actually fulfil the clients’ wish.
as well as cash and inventory management systems are
gaining in importance. Real-time marketing is still no bed of roses, although
from a technical point of view it is already manageable.
However, the trend is clearly towards Big Data, which It requires a lot of diplomacy, patience, honesty and
means lots of data instead of a targeted and transparent especially hard work to succeed. However, if you han-
monitoring. Marketers that collect personal information dle it being well prepared and open-minded, you will
want to gather as much information as possible, regard- definitely gain more brand engagement, recognition as
less of whether it is needed or not. In this case, the well as gaining trusting and loyal customers. ◊

By Daniela La Marca
6 Asian eMarketing July 2015: Real (Right)-Time Marketing
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