Today’s mobile, social and
Web-savvy buyers favor a
personalized experience. But if
the data you have on a contact is lacking,
you’ll be limited in the tools you can use
to connect on an individual level. In short,
your marketing is only as powerful as the
data at your fingertips.
Think of it this way: If you put two competing
companies side by side, the one that has the best
actionable data is going to win in 2014. Yet rather
than investing in building an agile marketing
platform that can capture and respond to
customer behaviors in real time on an individual
level, some companies have been heavily
investing in data warehouse initiatives.
These warehouses can be helpful in identifying
trends and key market segments you might not
be able to spot otherwise. But they also have
limitations – the number-crunching process can
be expensive and slow, the data anonymous and
aggregate, and the systems ill-equipped to use
individual customer data to immediately trigger
an email, initiate a new campaign or send an
SMS message.
At the end of the day, it’s all about being able to
“listen” to customer and prospect behaviors so
you can respond at the right time
and place with the right message. And in
order to accomplish that, you’ve got to
have fabulous data stored in a database in
your marketing platform — not just sitting
in a data warehouse in aggregated,
siloed form.
So, how can you begin strategizing about an
actionable database? Start by thinking about the
five or 10 data elements you need to personalize
your marketing and target contacts on an
increasingly one-to-one level.
Remember the old adage, “How do you eat an
elephant? One bite at a time,” and begin by
capturing your top data elements for your most
important database records. Sure, it’s probably
going to take a while to get all those data fields
on your wish list perfectly populated, but the key
is to put a plan in place for capturing these data
elements over time.
Key tactics for building an actionable
database in 2014:
• Try some new techniques for gathering
“explicit” data — surveys, progressive forms,
popovers or modal windows. Test and see
what drives the best results.
• Consider reaching out to a third-party data
service provider for data append tools that
can help you get more information into your
platform and boost your data intelligence.
• Set up Web tracking and system
integrations that enable you to capture
the behaviors of your customers across the
various channels they use to interact with you
– mobile, social and offline.
• Design some business rules that leverage
this data. You might, for example, set
up a triggered email that’s sent if certain
behavioral criteria are met, or build a largerscale
nurture program that continuously
takes into account what contacts tell you
about their interests.