B2C Decision-Makers Agree: The Email Address Is the Most Valuable Piece of Customer Data

June 15, 2017

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Customer Satisfaction | Customer-Centric | Data-driven | Digital | Email | Personalization

Email marketing is consistently said to be the most effective digital tactic, so it’s perhaps not too surprising that B2C decision-makers are more likely to see customers’ email addresses as valuable than their phone numbers or social logins. That’s the view of more than 100 US B2C marketing/advertising decision-makers at director-level or above surveyed by [download page] Forrester Consulting on behalf of LiveIntent.

(Email is also highly valued in the B2B world – though as this study shows, it may have more limited value due to high persona churn rates.)

One of the reasons – per the report’s authors – that email is more valuable than, say, an IP address is that it’s deterministic, being linked to an individual as opposed to a device or household. Moreover, as the report notes, “email registrations tie customer activity together across a customer’s entire digital footprint.”

As such, email can be an effective way to consolidate data on a customer, which then allows marketers to personalize experiences across channels. This is important as marketers begin to integrate marketing and advertising technologies: the study finds that 35% are actively integrating such technologies, while another 58% are talking about doing so. Indeed, a majority (57%) feel that their companies’ adtech and martech will converge within 2 years’ time.

The top benefits of such a convergence include improved customer satisfaction (52%), better content / offer personalization (48%), and more complete / applicable customer insights (46%), per the study’s respondents.

About the Data: The results are based on a survey of 108 US B2C decision-makers who are director-level and above. All respondents are at companies with at least 1,000 employees, with 45% working at companies with at least 5,000 employees.

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