Predictive Marketing Is the New Frontier for Marketing Technology, Survey Says

SAN MATEO,CA--(Marketwired - Oct 13, 2015) - A new study of senior marketing professionals found that 68% of adopters of email, CRM and marketing automation solutions said that predictive marketing is key to future success. In addition, an overwhelming 98% of the most mature marketers surveyed, who comprised one-third of respondents, revealed that they are either fully committed to deploying predictive marketing or are currently implementing predictive marketing in some capacity. The research suggests that predictive marketing is beginning to move from buzz to business value across B2B companies of all sizes.

Predictive marketing is defined as the practice of using data science to learn an ideal customer profile from existing data, including CRM and marketing automation data, then identifying the prospects that best fit that profile, both inside and outside the existing pipeline. This enables marketers to more precisely target potential customers, and to have more control over the top of their marketing funnel. The 2015 State of Predictive Marketing Survey Report published by EverString involved 527 interviews with director-level or higher marketing professionals who are decision makers and implementers of marketing technologies and platforms at U.S.-based B2B companies with up to thousands of employees.

Other notable research findings include:

• 91% of marketers who reported that they are defining the future of the company and leading the charge into current and new markets are either fully committed to deploying predictive marketing or are already implementing predictive marketing.
• 67% of marketers using both behavioral and firmographic attributes to score their leads are fully committed to deploying predictive marketing.
• 53% of marketers actively engaged in account-based marketing strategies are fully committed to deploying predictive scoring and 82% of those marketers are researching predictive marketing.

"Predictive marketing technologies are really about adding higher levels of precision, allowing companies to improve efficiency and cease spray-and-pray techniques that infuriate more prospects than they attract," said Matt Heinz, of Heinz Marketing. "How closely can you match your content to what the prospect or customer actually cares about, or what they're struggling with right now? Predictive marketing may never be a perfect science, but it has the ability to dramatically increase trust, engagement and conversion between buyers and sellers in the immediate future. And that goes for both marketing campaign results as well as engagement with the sales team."

From data overload to data science: The changing role of the marketer and why predictive marketing is the new endgame
Pressure to drive numbers, address new buyer habits and expectations, and adopt new technologies has generated a new type of marketer: the marketing technologist. Instead of taking a back seat to sales and engaging in activities that can't be measured, these marketers now have a seat at the revenue table. By utilizing the multitude of innovations in marketing technology, marketers are able to make data-driven decisions. Today's marketers are embracing this new role and looking to data science to crunch the numbers in order to be more efficient and targeted with their day-to-day activities -- success in their jobs depends on it. Predictive marketing provides the precision of analyzing critical insights at machine scale, thereby enabling marketers to be significantly more data-driven in all of their decision making processes to target the right customers and properly prioritize them.

Almost half of those surveyed, 47%, stated that they are aware of predictive marketing and are currently investigating how to use it in their marketing. While these individuals have yet to adopt a platform, the concept of predictive is beginning to take hold. In fact, 25% of respondents said that they are currently using a predictive tool already. However, there is still a fair amount of confusion about the definition of predictive marketing and how it can help marketing teams -- 24% of respondents stated that they don't use the technology and the concept is completely new to them.

Modern pressures have also produced a new type of marketing strategy: account-based marketing (ABM). With ABM, marketers spend time targeting key accounts, rather than using broad-based lead generation techniques. By combining ABM with predictive marketing, marketers can first identify the ideal audience, then target the right accounts with much greater precision.

• Of the marketers currently utilizing ABM, 80% believe that predictive marketing is a critical piece of the future marketing stack.
• Of the marketers who are using ABM, 40% reported that they have read about predictive marketing and are currently investigating how to use it, and 26% stated that they were actively using some predictive technology.

"Building a state-of-the-art marketing technology stack is no longer just about optimizing work flow. The most sophisticated B2B marketers are now focused on optimizing audience selection, both inside and outside their existing pipeline, and they want more control over the top of their funnel," said J.J. Kardwell, president of EverString. "Predictive Marketing makes both of these goals possible by putting the power of artificial intelligence and applied data science directly into the hands of B2B marketers."

To learn more about the correlations between predictive marketing and factors such as marketing team size, company size and marketing maturity, download the 2015 State of Predictive Marketing Survey Report.

Industry experts are available for comment on the EverString survey project. They can provide deeper analysis on survey findings. Inquire at everstring@bhavacom.com.

About EverString
EverString helps build new pipeline and increase conversion rates with the only account-based, full lifecycle, predictive platform for B2B sales and marketing. The EverString Decision Platform identifies a company's ideal customer profile, and then finds the prospects that best fit that profile, both inside and outside the existing pipeline. EverString's SaaS platform provides Predictive Scoring, Predictive Demand Generation and Predictive Ad Targeting, empowering marketers with the full potential of predictive analytics and applied data science. EverString is backed by leading investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, IDG Ventures and Lakestar. For more information, visit www.everstring.com.