68% of marketers play to greatly (20%) or slightly (48%) increase their data-related marketing expenditures this year, according to [download page] results from a survey conducted by Infogroup Targeting Solutions and Yesmail Interactive at the DMA2012 Annual Conference and Forrester Research’s e-Business Forum. With an additional 23% of respondents planning to maintain their data-related spending this year and 6% unsure, just 3% will make some cuts in this area.
Survey respondents at the Forrester conference indicated a variety of areas in which they plan to improve their data methods. Data analysis emerges as their top priority for improvement, followed by data cleaning, data collection, and data application. This aligns with results from a Neolane and Direct Marketing Association survey,in which marketers cited big data’s primary challenge to be its analysis, rather than its application to marketing.
To help, 56% of respondents at both conferences surveyed by Infogroup and Yesmail indicated that they would hire new employees this year to handle or oversee data collection or analysis. Unsurprisingly, data analysts and strategists are most in demand (20%), followed by developers and programmers (11%), data managers and data collectors (7% each).
About the Data: The data is based on survey of more than 700 top marketers from around the world.
