Business that have a clear strategy for tackling digital marketing technology acquisition, integration and data unification will reap huge benefits.

That’s according to a study from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and retail marketing solution provider Tealium, which says a coherent plan will help companies improve both their business and marketing performance.

Of the 150 senior marketers in North America that took part in the research, 42% that invested in a marketing technology strategy saw a greater business impact than those that had chosen not to formulate a plan.

A greater return

The ‘Quantify How Well You Unify’ report found that 50% achieved more targeted, efficient and relevant customer engagements off the back a well thought-out strategy, while 39% saw a greater return and accountability of their marketing budget.

There are a number of reasons why a company’s marketing technology strategy could be underperforming, with Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council, warning against becoming overburdened.

“While 67 percent of survey respondents believe new marketing technologies are essential or very important to overall marketing group performance and effectiveness, they are being held back by technology overload, too many data sources, and lack of strategic application and integration of disparate point solutions and data,” he said

Aligning strategies

Successful marketing tech integration breeds successful campaigns and 30% of CMOs that manage and integrate technology extremely well or pretty well saw good value to their business, with 51% of these recording higher revenue contributions.

Not all CMOs have seen success in this approach. In fact, according to the study, only 16% have a marketing tech strategy that runs in parallel to their company’s overall business strategy.

Marketing technology companies still have much to do in educating businesses about how best to use their platform, with just 3% of marketers saying they are doing extremely well at integrating tech across functions.

The CMO has created an infographic with more statistics from its report, which can be seen below.