Data privacy issues are putting marketing chiefs on a collision course with their agencies, with nearly a third of CMOs claiming they have ditched an agency or channel partner over the past year due to customer trust or privacy concerns.
That is one of the key conclusions of a new Gartner survey which reveals three-fifths (60%) of marketing leaders believe that getting the balance right between customer value exchange and privacy will make collecting first-party customer data much harder this year.
The study, which quizzed nearly 400 marketing leaders, shows that 85% have implemented a formal policy to manage customer data, yet privacy remains an ongoing challenge. Despite this, marketers are leaning into personalisation more than ever, with 42% citing that they are executing one-to-one personalised messages to customers.
In response to growing consumer awareness of data privacy, nearly four-fifths (78%) of marketing leaders empower their customers to manage their own data. Even more (82%) indicate that their organisation is prioritising first-party data to create immediate value for customers.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study found that marketing chiefs who act decisively to shore up first-party data achieve the strongest results. Over half of respondents who strongly prioritise the use of first-party data reported exceeding their customer retention expectations.
Marketing organisations that pursue multichannel strategies are more likely to take advantage of these benefits. Conventional wisdom suggests that brands that manage fewer marketing channels are able to more easily pivot towards first-party data. However, the survey found the opposite to be true.
Almost half of organisations that manage 11 or more marketing channels have increased their first-party customer data collection, compared with just over a quarter of those with 10 or fewer channels.
Organisations with more channels are also more likely to be driving growth through new experiences and service channels (36%), and are leveraging AI to deliver customer engagements (24%).
Gartner marketing practice senior director analyst Ant Duffin said: “Third-party cookie depreciation is causing sources of data to disappear, and many marketers are still scrambling to shore up their first-party data strategy.
“As this data becomes more challenging to collect, marketers must adapt by leveraging new sources of data to fuel personalisation and build deep customer relationships.
“Data privacy is an issue that isn’t going away, and it’s imperative that marketing leaders build strategies that will secure the data they need while keeping the needs of customers front and centre.”
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