Forbes contributor Kimberly A. Whitler has interviewed Tom Benton, the CEO of the Data & Marketing Association (formerly known as the Direct Marketing Association) about the impact that data is having on marketers.

On how data is changing the CMO Role Benton says, “Data hasn’t just changed the CMO Role. It has disrupted it. CMOs were traditionally communications and campaign-focused. Now, there are many more aspects to it. Today’s data-inspired CMOs must not only be marketing communications experts, they must also be user experience experts. They have to understand ecommerce. They have to understand the totality of the holistic customer journey.

I view data as fundamental to marketing. It has a horizontal impact across the organization, cutting across media, advertising, innovation, and everything else. Think about just one element—video. It used to be stationary and was primarily driven by TV. Now, media is ubiquitous, mobile, and interactive and so it’s generating a tremendous amount of data. Historically, we didn’t have high quality data but now we do. And so the question is: how do you take data and transform it into actionable insight? The consequence of this is that the increased amount and substantially better quality of data makes the marketer’s job more complex. This can affect what they do and the challenges that they face”.

How Data Is Changing The Role Of Marketers

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