Silos are the first part of the broken marketer experience
Customers overwhelmingly receive a fragmented experience as they move channel-by-channel according to a study by Accenture. Indeed the research found that three quarters of customers suffered from this affliction.
Despite the promise of digital delivery and the universe of data points that marketers now have available to them to build better experiences, buyers still receive a fuzzy brand picture across channels due to a broken marketing process.
It is an issue discussed in a new Oracle Marketing Cloud White paper called "Data Management, a prescriptive guide fortified to build stronger marketing."
According to the paper, "Data management is a critical component of a marketing organization’s successful planning and execution, and it’s hard to decide where to focus efforts without the right measures in place. Once marketers start focusing on usable data, even more sources of information come to fruition—providing both a valuable and challenging concept to tackle."
The authors argue that pulling together those insights is a vast undertaking. But, they say, "It can provide incredibly useful results that make marketing downright easier (and more importantly, seamless for the customer). "
Once this core issue is addressed, marketers typically organize information in into a data warehouse where insights are extracted at a later date or time (though not in real time). But these insights are not truly actionable or personable.
"By analyzing a wealth of first-party, second-party, and third-party demographic, contextual, behavioral, and transactional data about customers and campaigns, you can answer these questions. Marketers can use this data to deliver targeted, one-to-one messages to consumers at the exact moments in the purchase process that customers are ready to buy."
The authors caution that collecting, analyzing, managing, and acting on this first-party and third-party data is a complex challenge. "You need the right tools and strategies to manage critical audience data assets. This is the foundation on which to build an effective marketing house, if you will."
According to the paper, "Today’s marketers deal with a vast number of technologies and vendors to mend together data assets to inform actions, but the manual execution of siloed systems causes marketing inefficiencies, and thus a broken marketer experience. Ultimately this trickles down to perhaps the most detrimental aspect to business and the brand: A fragmented customer experience."
Start at the silo
"The first part of the broken marketer experience stems from a four-letter word: SILO, "says the paper. "Thanks to silos of data about customers from different channels—such as website visitors and behaviors, search, CRM, purchase data, email, and social—these valuable attributes often aren’t unified in one location."
The end result is that marketers are not able to intersect their knowledge of the customer profile across these channels to better refine their targeting, communications, and strategy over time.
"Data management at its core gives marketers the power to use data from disparate channels to define their target audience. When a marketer has a centralized world of data to use, they can start to assemble a target audience that is both granular and scaled while taking into consideration actions or intent across online, offline, mobile, search, and social channels."
Data Management, a prescriptive guide fortified to build stronger marketing is available for download today.
About the authors
Andrew Birmingham is the director of the Which-50 Digital Intelligence Unit. Andrea Dixon is the marketing manager, Japan and Asia Pacific for Oracle Marketing Cloud.
Oracle Marketing Cloud is a corporate member of the Which-50 Digital Intelligence Unit. Members contribute their expertise and insights to Which-50 for the benefit of our senior executive audience. Membership fees apply.