Just 16% of North American B2B marketers say that their prospect data is accurate, reliable and comprehensive, with 79% admitting it needs improvement, details the CMO Council in a new report. Part of the problem seems to be that a plurality 24% update their data resources only periodically, with few doing so constantly in real-time (17%) or daily (14%). Marketers may have difficulty updating data more than periodically, given that they are drawing on a wide variety of sources.
The most common source of prospect data and customer insights are internal proprietary databases (51%), according to the report, though many also turn to trade shows and industry events (44%) and data developed by individual sales reps. More than 1 in 5 are also using 3rd-party information sources (31%), social media (25%) and channel partners (22%), although few are gleaning insights from telemarketing or contact centers (15%), list brokers and aggregators (9%) and outsourced service providers (4%). Read the rest at MarketingCharts.
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