• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, June 28, 2023

B2B email teams are at the mercy of targeting systems that may not serve their needs, judging by a new study from Anteriad titled Advertiser Perceptions.  

These data issues affect everything from demand generation to choosing vendors and partners.  For instance, the respondents list these challenges:

• Targeting the right prospects at scale — 42% 
• Actionable analytics/measurement — 42% 
• Sales and marketing alignment — 39%
• Budget resources — 35% 
• Growing the pipeline — 33%
• Keeping prospects engaged during the buying cycle — 27% 
• Identifying where prospects are in the customer journey — 24%
• Content development—17%

Similarly, trouble using insights/analytics is ranked as the top demand-gen challenge: 

• Inability to utilize insights and analytics effectively — 40%
• The pressure to meet KPIs inhibits innovation — 42%
• Our campaigns are activated and managed in silos — 37% 
• Increasing complexity of buying groups — 35% 
• Lack of tool consolidation/integration with current adtech/martech — 35% 
• Lack of infrastructure, resources and/or workforce — 33%
• A lack of clear and standardized definition of a lead — 32% 
• The difficulty of bringing humanity into B2B marketing — 28%

Given all that, it should be no surprise that key decision makers demand data accuracy, targeting and data security from would-be data partners. They want:

• Data accuracy — 91% 
• Ability to identify my target audiences — 89% 
• Data security, privacy and compliance — 89% 
• Data recency — 88%
• Pricing — 88%
• Ability to use in multiple channels — 85% 
• Ease of data ingestion into tools/tech stack — 82%
• Scale of data — 81% 
• Intent data quality — 81% 
• Service and support — 77% 
• Availability of an ID Graph — 72% 
• Global data coverage—69% 

What are B2B brands trying to achieve this year? Their goals are: 

• Revenue — 46% 
• Lead generation — 43%
• Lead conversion — 39%
• Brand awareness — 37% 
• Grow sales pipeline — 30% 
• Customer engagement — 25% 
• Brand loyalty — 23% 
• Upsell/Cross-sell — 21%
• Customer education — 18% 
• Foot/site traffic — 11% 

Anteriad surveyed 201 marketer and agency contacts from the Advertiser Perceptions AdPros community in the spring.