When it comes to customer engagement, marketers in organisations who sell through channels they don’t own have perhaps the toughest job of all to connect to end consumers. This is because in B2B2C distribution channels, intermediaries alone can hold the relationship with the client and as a result, information can be held in different systems, in varying formats, levels of completeness and accuracy. In multinational organisations, the challenge is even tougher as multiple character sets and languages add additional complexity.
Moreover, for organisations selling products and services through independent intermediaries such as retailers, information may be extremely limited and fragmented. This impacts their ability to understand buying behaviours, channel preferences and maximise their channel investments.
In this complex data environment cleansing, standardising and linking client records from external sources with those the organisation already holds is difficult and time consuming. As a result IT often struggles to consolidate multiple data sources to supply actionable client information to drive marketing engagement. The outcome is pockets of customer data that sit across siloed IT systems and are difficult to analyse and access. This could be data solely collected for shipping, warranty and customer service or transaction and social media data.
Another issue is that, even if marketers were able to access the source systems, it can be difficult to link customer data together, as it is often recorded inconsistently or held in different formats. Lastly, traditional IT approaches to managing data have revolved around investing in expensive technologies with long deployment timeframes, which struggle
to adapt to new ‘big data’ information sources that will follow.
So how can marketers achieve visibility into customer data to improve customer engagement and drive more successful marketing strategies?
Centralising customer data and ensuring customer information is accurate, up-to-date and easily accessible will be key to delivering consistent marketing strategies. By integrating customer, transactional and reference data, marketers can achieve actionable customer information allowing them to analyse customer behaviour, improve their channel strategies and achieve better campaign ROI.
A recent Forbes Insights report illustrates the benefits from adapting a data-driven approach to marketing. “Leaders in data driven marketing are three times more likely than laggards to say they have achievedcompetitive advantage in customer engagement/loyalty (74% vs. 24%) and almost three times more likely to have increased revenues (55% vs. 20%).
Understanding customers’ purchasing history, buying behaviour and channel preferences allows marketers to build a strategic approach to customer experience management. From more targeted offers (potentially in conjunction with channel intermediaries) to predictive analytics, the intelligence they can apply to their marketing campaigns moves far beyond
the approaches offered by traditional above the line advertising and other non-personalised techniques. There are also customer experience benefits, which can drive real competitive differentiation whilst lowering the cost of managing warranty claims and customer issues.
Then there are the benefits to channel partners. By analysing the customer segments that distribution channel partners serve, marketers can build a comprehensive understanding of how they are addressing their target markets, refine their channel strategies and thus provide better support to their partners.
Porsche, for example, consolidated and standardised data formats and data quality across all back end customer services, roadside assistance, and warranty systems. As a result, Porsche improved support for worldwide dealers, ensured effective customer communication, and secured increased brand loyalty.
The benefits from data-driven marketing are numerous. However, to be able to drive better customer engagement, organisations need to make sure they get data management right. By ensuring data quality and consolidating data from multiple sources, organisations will be able to achieve a 360-degree view of the customer and drive better marketing decisions across the business.
By Len Dubois, Senior Marketing Programs Manager at Trillium Software.
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