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NetPlus Marketing, a top digital marketing agency, announced today the results of an exclusive roundtable study designed to solicit timely and valuable feedback to ascertain the current and desired status of online data measurement among experienced online marketers. This survey was completed by a small convenience sample of informed veterans in online marketing, each of whom completed an anonymous online survey. Areas of focus include features in demand for measurement tools, data points measured, challenges and barriers to entry.
Marketing experts and veterans provided general insight into their own measurement practices, as well as wants and needs. Responses indicated that, when evaluating measurement tools, marketers look for accuracy, aggregation, timeliness, insightfulness, flexibility and customization. Regarding what they are measuring, the study found that most marketers go for low-hanging fruit — tactics that are easy to measure. There is a significant gap between tactics used and tactics measured and that gap widens with the use of more recent channels.
The survey also discovered that the top methods of measurement are site side reporting, third party ad serving and customer surveys and feedback. Integration of data points across tactics is desired but for most, not a reality. At 83 percent of respondents each, paid search results, email and media (display, banners and rich media ads) were the top tactics measured by marketers, followed closely by Web site data at 77 percent.
The study also attempted to examine the challenges and frustrations marketers see with reporting methods and technologies. There was a wide spectrum of responses, relating to a variety of aspects from infrastructure and communication to inaccuracy and limitations to ease of interpretation and the ability to act on the information in a timely manner. Going a step further, participants were also asked what factors have prevented them from even attempting to measure campaigns. 50 percent of respondents cited a lack of actionable data as their main reason, while 37.5 percent each also cited reliability of data and lack of budget as factors.
“In our 12 years in the digital marketing space, we have been in a position to see just how important measurement and analytics are to a successful marketing campaign, and as such, are constantly advocating testing to our clients while advancing our capabilities to provide actionable insights,” said Robin Neifield, CEO of NetPlus Marketing. “The results of this study demonstrate that even the savviest of marketers, on whom we focused our survey, are still struggling with the best ways to implement analytics. Search, display and email are still the major players, and marketers are unsure how to integrate data points to make it actionable. Agency partners and analytics companies need to make testing a priority and the ability to integrate multiple data points to take measurement to the next level.”
