Market of one - Wooing the customer using data driven marketing

Here is an anecdote from our immediate environment. In our corporate office We have 5- 6 conference rooms and have multiple meetings. Our house keeping colleagues serve tea, coffee, snacks during these meetings. Here is an observation about Amit- one such smart guy who has differentiated himself. He would come into the meeting and take everyone’s request. If you happen to come to the office a second time, you would be delighted to get the fare you had asked first time around. Not only this he would bring a smile to many a partner’s face with this differentiated offering. Even amongst my own colleagues he wows them with his service levels and then goes beyond his assignment to stock things which might be in demand by the guys who are sitting back late, etc.?Once he has managed to establish trust, he manages to cross sell multiple things keeping in mind the preferences of the customer. Amit amongst the 12-13 guys is a differentiated brand offering.

To me a scalable version of this process is what data driven marketing allows you to do. In an customer centric marketing organization the task remains the same of winning the customer’s affection.?The task though challenging can never be accomplished just by data. It has to be delivered by people. Where data comes as a big enabler is to identify / manage customer expectation. It is a great tool in allowing us to nudge behavior by creating content / messaging specifically for the customer. How to continuously learn and manage customer needs, use every interaction as an opportunity to build on that information.?We then need to be familiar with the data and understand the value chain. In our B 2 B model the understanding of segment specific demand patterns would help us focus our sales efforts better while the?segmentation on B 2 C customers could help us identify probability of buying an asset class and when. ?All this would not be possible if the requisite data infrastructure is not there.?

In-fact, in a proliferated market want to create such relationships with our customers where in we not only want to understand their preferences but also create delight by treating them as unique special relationships. Knowledge management therefore becomes key to this process. In our organization we started the data profiling and cleansing process a couple of years ago before we utilized this for marketing activity. A logical progress or journey involves

Data Capture, cleansing and enrichment

Data Storage and orchestration

User centric modelling

Data Modelling

ML/ AI

?This is the bedrock of data driven marketing. As we go forward we plan to integrate unstructured data with structured data by listening well at the social outposts.?All of this to create the new oil for the marketing engine.

As the digital and marketing techniques converge posing tougher questions in a crowded marketplace, it brings about a fresh set of challenges for marketers. ?Serenading the customer has become even more exciting. Content strategy and leveraging the same could help propel this further

What has been your journey around this effort? pls do share