No longer choices based on gut feelings or perceptions, but the need to respond and make decisions based on firm data and information: upstream, the volatility of markets and the socio-economic environment, the unstoppable process of digital transformation, and the evolution of buying habits and behaviors, which are driving more and more companies to use data and insights as a basis and guide in decision making.
This is what is called a data-driven approach, which is the consideration of data not just as a tool, but a real asset on which to build one’s competitive advantage.
Data-driven marketing: what it is and why it matters
In an environment where big data and artificial intelligence represent the new frontiers of business, marketing could hardly remain indifferent.
If tracking systems and Analytics tools, have always been part of the daily routine of marketers and strategists, it is the approach to such tools that has evolved. No longer anonymous and aggregated data, as they used to be analyzed and presented by the most popular analytics tools, but effective profiling and segmentation activities of one’s audience, aimed at creating and implementing personalization strategies.
In the age of the customer experience, it is the information collected about each individual user that makes the difference: it is no longer enough to know how many users have opened a newsletter or clicked on a banner, but it is necessary to know who has done so and at what stage of their customer journey. Here is where data are not only collected and analyzed, but also queried: only in this way is it, in fact, possible to ring the user with personalized messages and content.
The goal is to enhance the user’s browsing and purchasing experience and thus increase its value over time.
A data-driven marketing approach puts, therefore, the user/customer at the center: all data collected on purchasing and browsing behaviors are used as the basis for effective personalization strategies. The benefit is obvious: more effective and high-performing campaigns and a better return on one’s investment (ROI).
Data driven marketing and CDP: how to give value to data
If data and information become the basis for a new marketing approach, it is evident the significant contribution that a performance technology solution can make not only to collect, normalize and manage data, but more importantly to “operate” it, i.e., make it useful as a basis for profiling activities, segmentation, personalization, as well as predictive marketing strategies.
In this context, among the best performing technology solutions are the customer data platform.
Not just simple data collection platforms but much more: Gartner defines customer data platform as: “a marketing system that unifies a company’s customer data from marketing and other channels.”
A definition, perhaps scarcely exhaustive, from which we can nevertheless infer the fundamental aspects that characterize a customer data platform:
- ability to collect data from multiple sources such as website, APP, eCommerce, POS, ticketing systems, etc;
- saving and normalization of data at the single customer view level, so it is possible to have a complete 360-degree view of the individual user;
- ease of access and use, such that it can be used by different departments in the company.
Generally speaking, a customer data platform proves to be a valuable ally for data-driven marketing strategies in that it combines in itself both functionalities related to data collection and normalization, as well as those related to data actionability, i.e., it allows the deployment of numerous customization activities on-site and off-site.
Customer data platform: more data, greater results
Increasing the effectiveness of marketing strategies is the goal of marketers and strategists, and the choice to adopt a customer data platform can be aimed precisely at that.
If the watchwords are simplification and actionability, in fact, a CDP, as anticipated enables all of this and allows for true enhancement of the customer experience and greater effectiveness of marketing activities and campaigns.
Master data, information on purchase and browsing behavior that can be updated in real-time, qualitative information and data provided by external properties: users and customers no longer have any secrets for marketers and strategists.
But to make the most of the full potential of a data-driven marketing approach and the use of a CDP requires not so much the ability as the willingness on the part of companies to make choices and decisions based on data and to translate these into activities that can in turn be measured and analyzed!
