Marketers need to own data strategy

As the world’s attention increasingly moves online, our buying habits are changing. Digital marketers have been catching up on the trend and making dramatic changes to their marketing strategies. They are using e-mail marketing and customer engagement tactics to reach audiences, as well as drive engagement in social channels.

To create an effective data strategy for marketers, a company needs to understand the customer at the atomic level. This way, they know what tools they need to use to reach the customer with the most relevant message.

Data-driven marketing (or “personalised marketing”) is a strategy that influences marketing and customer experience based on customer insights gleaned from data. Data strategy is about how to optimise the execution of a marketing campaign, customer journey or the customer experience.

This includes optimization of online and offline customer engagement, driving customer loyalty, and formulating customer retention strategies.

A data strategy for marketers can be summarised as:

• Identifying key performance indicators
• A data strategy for marketers is not just about data analytics
• Getting the most out of data
• Where to get info

There are many tools that can be used in a customer data strategy. Customer data can be obtained through in-store sensors and devices, purchase history, customer loyalty plans, customer feedback, social media posts, surveys, and more.

An effective strategy includes determining how to use these sources, which may include:

• Linking customer data from different channels
• Measuring the ROI on campaigns and programs
• Understanding customer lifetime value
• Learning from customer interactions

In order to not be left behind, many marketers are investing in data-based strategies. A recent survey stated that 53 per cent of companies are planning to increase their data-driven marketing budget.

The survey also found that 75% of marketing programs were at least 10% data-driven.

However, many marketers feel overwhelmed by the high-tech skills needed to make the most of data. The survey found that 38% of marketers felt that they needed to learn more about the data they had access to while 54% felt that they needed to learn more about the metrics they had to measure marketing results.

The entire organisation needs to be truly, deeply invested in crafting a strategy that will create an outstanding customer experience, drive competitive advantage, and generate sustainable and profitable growth.

A data strategy’s success is premised on understanding and unlocking the secrets of customer behaviour, and then using that knowledge to design and execute an omnichannel digital strategy. There is a technology component, but it is not the driver - marketers are.

The data-driven customer experience is not about connecting the dots on a company's data infrastructure and technologies; it's about the entire customer journey and the relationship with the company.