Manual Data Wrangling adding to a cocktail of challenges facing eCommerce Marketers

The eCommerce sector faces challenges beyond the perfect storm of supply chain disruptions and rising inflation, new research from leading marketing data analytics firm, Adverity has revealed. Nearly 1 in 4 of eCommerce marketers feel unable to demonstrate the business impact of marketing efforts while time and resources spent manually wrangling data was ranked as a significant challenge by respondents. The findings lay bare the critical challenge for marketers to bring their data under control with 34% of eCommerce businesses admitting a lack of trust in their data to inform campaigns.

Adverity’s new Marketing Analytics State of Play 2022: Challenges and Priorities report surveyed 964 marketers and data analysts across the US, UK, and Germany, identifying the key strategic challenges faced by marketers and data analysts as well as their priorities for 2022.

eCommerce marketers have access to more data than ever before, but possessing the data is not enough – eCommerce marketers uniquely understand the need to connect leads, sales, and ultimately revenue to their marketing efforts. The survey found that nearly 25% of eCommerce marketers are unable to demonstrate the business impact of marketing efforts. CMOs need data-driven insights and reports to justify their budgets and strategies as 2022 planning is solidified. However, if marketers cannot demonstrate business impact to the C-suite they run the risk of shrinking budgets, creative resistance, and dwindling impact in the boardroom.

Furthermore, the sheer volume of data points and sources can overload the data analysts that need to process them. More than 40% of marketers noted in the survey that they spend too much time manually wrangling data. This makes it challenging to discern insights through a labyrinth style stack of data entries.

Despite the challenges, the eCommerce industry ranked the most confident in how to improve marketing performance as compared to the financial services, agencies, media, and technology industries surveyed. Sales numbers in the eCommerce industry can certainly be used to verify marketing strategies but there are countless insights to be mined if the data is managed properly. eCommerce marketers have the opportunity to shift from relying on pure sales numbers or gut instinct to data-driven decision making; and now is the time to do it.

“The data we garnered from the survey truly paints the focal points that eCommerce marketers need to prioritize as we approach an estimated trillion-dollar year for online sales,” said Adverity CMO, Harriet Durnford Smith. “We see this disconnect as a great opportunity to offer solutions that boost marketer confidence in their data, helping show both them and the c-suite the value of their work. With already limited resources, marketers need to integrate tools that allow them to regain time to work on creative and strategic work outside of overwhelming manual data wrangling. As we look to map out 2022, helping marketers to bridge the gap between themselves and the data is key to setting a new standard in how we do creative campaigns and most importantly, in how we assert our business value.”

Read more about the challenges and priorities in marketing analytics and what marketers can do to get ahead of them by reading Adverity’s new research report Marketing Analytics State of Play 2022.

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About Adverity
Adverity is a leading intelligent data and analytics platform that enables businesses to make insights-driven decisions, faster and easier. Used by marketing, sales and eCommerce teams around the world, Adverity transforms siloed data into actionable insight, reducing the complexity in demonstrating marketing effectiveness and return on investment across multiple channels.
By automating data integration from hundreds of sources and working seamlessly with your existing tech stack, Adverity's flexible end-to-end platform delivers a single view of marketing and sales performance across your entire business. The platform's powerful data visualizations and proactive analytics reveals tangible insights and uncovers real-time opportunities for improving performance and driving growth. Adverity is headquartered in Vienna, with offices in London and New York.

About this report
In August 2021, Sirkin Research, commissioned by Adverity, surveyed 964 Marketers and Data / Business Intelligence Analysts across the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany about Marketing Analytics. The survey covered topics ranging from current capabilities, key challenges, and strategic priorities of organizations' use of marketing data and analytical maturity. Respondents represented a large range of industries, including Technology, Marketing Agencies, and eCommerce.

About Sirkin Research
Sirkin Research is the leading custom research service for B2B marketers. They have spent the last 15 years working with some of the fastest-growing marketing, technology and financial brands in the world, from Copenhagen to London to New York City, helping them understand and generate demand from their audience, based on hyper-relevant, data-driven insight. https://sirkinresearch.com/