Marketers continued to put more dollars toward data-driven marketing in Q1 2014, according to recently released research by Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Winterberry Group.
“More than 40 percent of US marketing professionals said they increased spending on data-driven marketing in the first quarter of this year, compared with 38.4 percent who said the same in Q4 2013,” according to a post at eMarketer.
The research also indicates that data-driven marketing investments may have come to a bit of an impasse. More than half of survey respondents didn’t expect to change their spending on this tactic in the second quarter, compared with 36.5 percent who said it would rise.
“DMA/Winterberry reported slowed growth in both revenues—which hit a two-year high in Q3 2013—and profitability from data-driven marketing in Q1 2014,” says eMarketer. “Around 45 percent of respondents said that their revenues had increased quarter over quarter. Profitability gains slowed for the first time in Q4 2013, and the trend continued in the first quarter of this year: 37 percent of marketers reported growth in profitability from data-driven marketing in Q1, compared with 45.3 percent in Q4 2013.”
Q2 2014 results will be available soon enough, and the story could change. Survey respondents were upbeat about both revenue and profitability growth for that quarter, and nearly 60 percent said they expect the former to rise; about 50 percent expressed confidence that profitability would also climb.