The most important priorities of digital marketers for 2016

DIGITAL MARKETING In an Adobe study, more than 7,000 marketing experts shared their priorities in digital marketing. The customer experience is the key factor here.This year's Digital Trends Report - part of the quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing published by Econsultancy in partnership with Adobe - focuses on the customer experience. The 7,000 marketing experts who took part in the survey most frequently named the three areas with the greatest potential as "optimizing the customer experience", "creating compelling content for digital experiences" and "data-driven marketing with a focus on individuals".

So companies are investing in experiences, but there is more to it than that. This customer experience aspect permeates all other areas of a company's business, take data for example. It should underpin every customer interaction, from advertising to customer service. From a strategic perspective, data-driven marketing decisions should also be made with the customer experience in mind. This year's survey shows that marketers are aware of both the opportunities and barriers to achieving this goal, and when asked about their strategic priorities for 2016, more companies (53 %) put data-driven marketing at the top of their list. While this is a large majority, a closer look at this statement in the larger context of the overall survey reveals that marketers are prioritizing data-driven marketing because of the customer experience, not in place of it.

Without competent handling of data, they simply cannot offer the desired experiences, but there are also obstacles: The report describes the challenges that companies face when they want to gain useful insights from initially unprocessed data. The obstacles are often found around stakeholders and processes. As in 2015, only 37 % are satisfied with how they attract and retain analysts to interpret their data. However, improvements were seen in the area of technology, with 41 % of respondents stating that they have a good data collection infrastructure in place. This is an increase of 10 % compared to 2015.On the other side of data is content. This is a crucial part of the customer experience, which is also reflected in this year's survey results. As already mentioned, marketers consider content creation to be one of the areas with the greatest potential. This will be confirmed both in 2016 and over the next five years. At the same time, personalization and content optimization are high on the list of top priorities for respondents, and of course experiences only work if companies can create and deliver this content efficiently and effectively. But today's content is much richer and more complex than in the past, so stakeholders, teams and organizations need to work better together, and respondents clearly agree: 94 % believe that improving the processes behind content creation and delivery will play an important role in delivering an optimal customer experience. Furthermore, 91 % see an equally important aspect in improving collaboration between creative and marketing teams.