DMA Insight: Data and Training are Key Challenges Facing the Industry

Two key metrics that have seen the most significant change over the last 12 months are the lack of data available to marketers and how that data is managed. While there had been a decline in the majority of challenges to improving customer engagement and marketing, there was an increase in respondents finding a lack of data (46%) to be a challenge. The same trend can be seen in those finding a lack of data management (27%) to be a hindrance towards effectiveness measurement.

With the upcoming changes to the UK GDPR, we’re entering a new phase within data management, likely requiring additional learning and training simply to keep up-to-date. With the plans to remove cookie consent altogether and have websites more dependent on their own 1st-party data for online tracking (announced alongside stricter fines for a lack of compliance), it is becoming more integral now that employees working within these areas are well-versed in the full process of data acquisition, storage, and usage.

In-line with this increase in data difficulty was a rise in those finding customer engagement to be too complicated (16%) and those lacking senior support (15%). There was also a rise in those respondents claiming increased difficulties from their available resources and talent (30%).

As with the previous year, a limited budget (47%) has remained the largest contributing challenge to customer engagement. However, it is unlikely to be the sole contributor to these prior difficulties alone as those finding monetary resources to be a challenge had actually fallen considerably from 2021.