Marketing managers see knowledge about the customer as the biggest challenge

This year, the area identified by marketing managers with the greatest need for action also corresponds to the area they named as the most important task: 38% of those surveyed worldwide stated that understanding the needs, wishes and attitudes of customers is the greatest challenge in 2016 (EMEA region: 14%). For 52%, improving knowledge about the customer is one of the three most important to-dos (EMEA region: 15%). Other key challenges include increasing their own visibility compared to competitors (global respondents: 13 percent; EMEA region respondents: 19 percent) and staying ahead of new marketing trends (global respondents: 11 percent; EMEA region respondents: 17 percent). Technology integration (global respondents: 15 percent) and the collection, networking and management of data (global respondents: 11 percent) are among the other key tasks.

"The marketing of the future will be driven by the promise of a first-class customer experience at all times. This presents a real challenge for companies, as customer intolerance of poor brand interactions is putting significant pressure on companies to adopt data-driven strategic approaches," says Stephane Baranzelli, Managing Director EMEA at publisher Experian Marketing Services. "Today's brand managers have recognized the importance of knowing the customer, but acquiring knowledge remains difficult. As our survey shows, this is one of the biggest challenges for all marketers worldwide - regardless of company size or industry."

And what is keeping the EMEA region busy?

The Digital Marketer Report 2016 provides further interesting results for the EMEA region in particular, some of which differ slightly from the international results:

- 85% of the marketing managers surveyed there stated that they would implement cross-channel marketing campaigns in 2016
- 93 percent say that their (customer) communication is already personalized
- 86% are convinced that marketing teams are responsible for the integrated customer experience across all channels or will be in the near future
- Only 23 percent confirm that their marketing team is fully integrated

The top priority for respondents in the EMEA region is the "integration of technology to automate, harmonize and execute cross-channel interactions with customers" (18%). In second place is the improvement of knowledge about customers (15 percent), and third place among the most important to-dos is the better networking of organizational departments to achieve greater customer centricity (14 percent).

Unlike globally, EMEA marketing managers ranked the collection, networking and management of data as one of the three most important areas of action in 2016 (43.3% of respondents). The biggest challenges on the way to a single customer view are seen by respondents in terms of technology for integrating customer data points in real time (17%), access to data across the entire company organization (15%) and keeping data up to date (15%).

Gregor Wolf, Managing Director of Experian Marketing Services Germany, explains: "High-quality data and powerful technologies for integrated data usage in the content-creative and media areas across the entire campaign process and all systems involved are of central importance for the functioning of a successful single-customer-view-based marketing approach. Only this combination enables the high-quality customer experience demanded by consumers and a new dimension of intelligent customer communication."

The complete Digital Marketer Report 2016 is available as PDF here for download (direct link).