Today consumers expect to be ‘known and understood’ by a brand – who they are, what they like and how they prefer to engage with them. In an increasingly complex data-driven world, marketers often struggle to deliver activities that meet that expectation. So how can digital marketers harness the true power of data to improve on-going customer engagement?
Customer data floods organisations on a daily basis from all sorts of sources, detailing each interaction and conversation across every channel. It’s only through collection and analysis that this raw information can be analysed and used to create those all-important deeper and personalised experiences. So-called big data has slowly, but surely, become the responsibility of the marketing department in many organisations.
Whilst all this data is the best way to deliver business intelligence, there can be too much of a good thing and it can get overwhelming to manage effectively. The pressure is on for brands to be data-driven, yet the time and expertise needed is often beyond reach. The key is being able to identify the information you really need to make the right business decisions and gain better insight about customers along the way.
Opening up data
The problem with data collection and analysis is that it has the potential to dilute the creative element of delivering a marketing strategy. A good way to ensure that this doesn’t happen is to take an open data approach. Open data means that information can flow effortlessly between your choice of marketing tools and between departments. This allows marketers to structure and centralise customer information in ways that work best for their business, which empowers them to be more creative.
Combining an open approach to data with an open approach to marketing can be very powerful for marketers and the wider business. Open marketing gives organisations the freedom to choose their preferred marketing tools, including analytics and reporting tools. An open marketing methodology, much like the fundamentals of open source software, allows marketers to integrate all the current and future tools they like. This integration can create a common view of their customers across all marketing technologies, so allowing marketers to put data to effective use and make intelligent decisions. Each team of marketing specialists can use technologies crucial to their tasks, and also benefit from the insight that easy access to data from the other marketing disciplines provides.
The combination of open data and open marketing helps to effectively integrate today’s best technologies, powering the all-important data exchange across all marketing functions and beyond.
With this new approach in place, brands should consider how the following elements could capitalise on this data-led strategy:
1. Customer dashboards: With the right marketing tools in place and data appropriately integrated, marketers need to think about how the insight this data delivers should be utilised. A custom dashboard ensures that information is displayed in the way most useful to each organisation and each team within that organisation. It’s important to remember that, because of the “open” approach to integration, each team will have their tools of choice to collect and report the data that’s important to them.
2. Bringing the marketing team together: A wider benefit of following an open approach to data and marketing is that it brings all the individual marketing – and arguably other commercial - teams together. This new strategy, combined with a friendly dashboard, encourages collaboration. Silos can be broken down allowing each team to have visibility into all department activities, building a single view of customers at every phase of the journey.
3. Real-time marketing: Real-time marketing should mean more than just sharing up-to-date content on social media. Through more efficient data collection, marketers can tailor the digital experience in real time. The assumption is often that brands collect customer data from a visit and add this insight into a customer profile. While this is often the case, real-time marketing allows brands to use that information during the customer’s visit. This can even be true for anonymous visitors, with brands presenting recommendations or content based on what the consumer clicks on or their geo-location. Real-time collection and analysis of data makes this possible.
Digital technology enhancements continue to progress at a staggering pace. Comprehensive and, continuously refreshed customer insight, along with the ability to deliver tailored digital experiences, give brands - large and small - a powerful advantage. Properly analysed data is the bridge that truly connects the brand promise to the customer. The combination of open data and open marketing is the path to fulfilling that brand promise.
By Maria McCann, Senior Marketing Manager at Acquia.
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