It’s all surveys today, Dear Reader. First, this Nielsen study finds that marketers rate audience targeting and creative as more important for campaign success than personalization or journey-based messaging. Most believe that effective targeting requires behaviors as well as contextual data. Lots more here on channel growth and effectiveness, ROI measurement, marketing objectives, and related topics.
Another story we keep telling is that customers really aren’t that interested in personalization. This survey for Sitecore by The Lacek Group finds that product quality (65%), money-saving offers (60%), and loyalty rewards (55%) are the biggest drivers of customer loyalty, while unique personal experiences (31%) and personalized communications (27%) are least important. Customer service (52%), privacy protection (45%), and brand values (36%) fall somewhere in between.
Targeting data is threatened by new privacy constraints, so 99% of marketers are working to replace it, says this Forrester study for data verification vendor SheerID. Most (85%) see “zero party” data (data that customers share voluntarily, such as survey responses) as critical for effective personalized experiences, but 36% worry that customer answers are not always accurate. Adding to the challenge: 42% of marketers have access to zero-party data but don’t know how to use it effectively.
Enterprise AI vendor Uniphore has acquired CDP ActionIQ and cloud data engineering system Infoworks. The combination of products will create a Zero Data AI Cloud that simplifies AI deployments by enabling companies to access data for AI projects without moving it from existing systems. Prices were not announced.