Data-driven marketing has become a new reality. Sure, gut reactions and feel still play an important role, but marketers are increasingly taking lessons from data scientists trying to review an increasing number of statistics.
The digital age has brought us more channels, but it has also brought us more information. Store visits and basic purchase information have been augmented with browsing patterns, mobile details and loyalty information.
Data and analytics are providing a host of benefits to companies. By better understanding the consumer, marketers can communicate through preferred channels, provide more relevant offers and overall have more personalized interactions.
According to a recent Experian QAS study, 79 percent of organizations said customer profiling was important or very important to their overall business strategy. In addition, 82 percent of companies now have an analytics department, mainly to improve customer intelligence and enhance marketing offers.
But even with all this available data, many marketers are struggling to find meaningful intelligence. While there is certainly a learning curve associated with any new initiative, many marketers struggle because of inaccurate data and an inability to isolate the data sets that are most relevant to a given task or objective.
Looking at data quality, organizations believe 25 percent of their data is inaccurate. In addition, information is often siloed throughout the organization in multiple databases that are difficult to consolidate and impede a complete customer view. With disparate data and a high level of inaccuracy, it is no surprise that marketers struggle.
Identifying meaningful data sets can also be challenging. The school of thought thus far has been the more information, the better. However, marketers need to be able to identify the information that is actually meaningful for a given objective and then be able to access those details.
Without a direction or a plan, too much data can become overwhelming and cloud results. Marketers need to outline their objectives and then decide if they have the data to achieve their goals, whether that be internally or externally through third party assistance.
Marketers should improve data hygiene and create a clear plan around data usage. Combined, these efforts will create meaningful intelligence.
To learn more on this topic, join me for a webinar entitled ‘Creating actionable insights from data.’ We’ll review research on data-driven marketing, review case studies and provide a data questionnaire to guide listeners through the new age of data-driven marketing.