From data mountain to insights - how do you unlock your data?

Marketing Automation 2 | Ternair

Every organization knows the problem of a growing number of channels and data. To better serve today's discerning consumer, everything has to be cleverly tied together. So what's holding everyone back now? On the everyday challenges that stand in the way of data-driven marketing.

Targeted and relevant communication

According to Conway's Law, every department has its own system and communication structure. Especially in medium to enterprise companies, this results in fragmented data in all kinds of systems and departments. This happens not only in sales, purchasing, or customer service, but also in online marketing. Email statistics, visit and click behavior, lead generation and social media interaction are still separated into individuals and data silos at many companies. This results in limitations on marketing opportunities, such as retargeting to one stage in the customer journey, lookalikes based solely on ad data and an incomplete view of the consumer.In practice, this means many irrelevant communication messages that feel like "spam": persistent ads for products the customer has already bought, the wrong messages for the wrong target audience and a disjointed set of interactions. In short: the exact opposite of what every marketer wants: targeted, relevant, timely communication with target audiences across channels and touchpoints. The ability to meet today's customer demands is closely related to two factors: integration between communication channels and data availability from those channels. Together, these make up the data driven marketing maturity model.Ternair data driven-marketing maturity model | Ternair.com

Data-driven-marketing maturity model

These two factors result in four different situations that companies can find themselves in:

  1. Single-channel marketing. Traditional marketing where the different communication channels are not integrated. Content is driven from different departments and tooling based on data silos.

  2. Omnichannel marketing. Many companies that claim their marketing is omnichannel are in practice working with different departments that do not (yet) integrate their data properly. Although the different in- and outbound communication channels are integrated, they do not (yet) result in personalized marketing because only a small portion of the customer data is available in the 1-to-f1 communication.

  3. Single-channel data-driven 1-to-1 marketing. Personalized 1-to-1 marketing using integrated relationship data. However, departments and tooling still work separately from each other. As a result, content is not integrated and aligned with the context of the communication channels.

  4. Omnichannel data-driven 1-to-1 marketing. Personalized 1-to-1 marketing using integrated relationship data. Here, tooling allows a multidisciplinary team to drive in- and outbound communication channels and content in a contextualized and integrated way.

Companies can take their next step in two different directions.

More data unlocking

In the workplace, it is often thought that fragmented customer data is just part of the job. That there are solutions to solve this relatively easily is unknown. That makes data disclosure a latent need. Managers familiar with full suite solutions also see the high cost of centralizing and maintaining data sources. Many solutions (even from well-known, big players) rely on periodically continuously synchronizing customer data by copying and importing entire source systems into marketing tooling. Compare it to iTunes back in the day where you downloaded an exact copy onto your device. But there is now also a Spotify approach to data retrieval: you can live stream data from the underlying databases. This makes retrieving and connecting data much less invasive. And the data is also available in real time.

If there is potentially a lot of data available that is not being used, then the first action points are:

  • Inventory what data sources exist and determine the purpose of each data source;

  • Inventory how data can be made available and create a data strategy;

  • Combine all available data sources for a central customer view.

Have you already made strides in integrating relationship data, the following are action items:

  • Create a 360° customer view by organizing all data around an individual customer;

  • Enrich customer data by calculating dynamic customer attributes;

  • Make all data available in real time as well to respond directly to behavior with your marketing.

Communication Channels Connect

Mobile applications, the Internet and social media are increasing the number of communication channels used intensively by customers and prospects. This complicates the playing field of marketing communications, because each channel often still stores its data in a separate system. As a result, there is no central overview for the management of campaigns.

The first action points in that case are:

  • Map out which communication channels are being used;

  • Coordinate all channels and make sure that data from the channels can be unlocked with a tool;

  • Select a channel that best suits your customer at that moment, depending on the time, place or goal.

Have you managed this, you have a personalized approach to outbound communication. Inbound is the next step to increase service and determine the next best action based on need. The following action points are for that:

  • Prioritize the customer and the customer journey and move the channels around that;

  • Align the different channels based on the customer relationship;

  • Depending on the time, place or purpose, select a channel that best suits the customer at that time.

What's still standing in the way of data-driven marketing?

Naturally, improving your marketing is not just a matter of putting the right action items on your action list. In practice, there are two overarching challenges that can get in the way of unlocking data and connecting communication channels:

  • Technology. With each new communication channel often comes separate tooling. The e-mail system is a recognizable example of this: most companies still use the same solution they chose in the beginning. Then, although newsletters are sent and there is an annual calendar to stay in the attention of customers, this is still far from data-driven marketing. The challenge is to capture the proliferation of data paths customers take in a customer journey. That starts with looking critically at the deployment and integration capabilities of each tool. Even the role of marketing automation should already be considered, because at the end of the day, technology must actually work for you and actively contribute to organizational goals.

  • Organization. Each new communication channel usually also gets its own department: from direct marketing and telemarketing to online marketing and social media. If you want to start putting the customer first, however, that also has implications for the organization. Consider setting up multidisciplinary teams. A cross-channel team brings customer ownership together in one place. Setting common goals then helps transcend the old silo thinking.

The next step

Uncovering data and connecting communication channels really isn't years of work. Within months, you can live stream data from the various data silos and make your marketing more personal and relevant. Every data element and detail about your customer can be used at the customer level for segmentation and personalization: so-called hyper segmentation and hyper personalization. The use of AI and machine learning can also be applied within your 1-to-1 marketing. The insights and predictions produced by the algorithms, for example, can be called up in real time via an API and used directly for your marketing.Ultimately, it is not a question of whether it is possible, but how you want to go about your marketing. If you think from your company's point of view, you don't look beyond your current capabilities. However, if you think from your customer's point of view, then you will see exactly what steps you still need to make on your way to mature data-driven marketing.

This article was published on Emerce on November 18, 2019.

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