Data-Driven Marketing: It’s Time to Get Personal

In order to move past the spam folder and connect with the customer, SMBs need to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time. But in order to do this effectively, they need to have the right data.

Let’s take a look at how data-driven marketing can help SMBs deliver personalised, relevant experiences that win over customers.

What is data-driven marketing?

Data-driven marketing strategies use customer analytics to maximise the impact of marketing buys, personalise communications, and track and optimise campaigns. The key to effective data-driven marketing is to make engagement beneficial for the customer, rather than a nuisance. 

By leveraging analytical insights, you can move beyond targeting the right (and broad) demographic for your offerings. You can also tailor your messaging so that it’s more likely to connect, and engage your audience on the channels they’re more likely to use. Even better, you can use hyper-specific insights to create micro campaigns with impressive conversion rates.

For example, DirecTV used third-party data from USPS showing customers that recently applied for a change of address. They knew that these customers would most likely be looking for a new provider for their television plan, so they sent them ads that led to a custom homepage set up for recent movers.

Meanwhile, OK Cupid’s data is part of its product. Not only can it create matches based on shared personality traits; it’s created a popular blog based on data, which reveals some pretty telling insights into human behaviour.

How can data-driven marketing help SMBs?

Using customer data enables SMBs to gain deep insights into their customers’ preferences. Instead of operating on hunches, SMBs can greet their customer on a more personal level.

Here are just some benefits that data-driven marketing can offer.

• Increase ROI. By segmenting audiences and targeting those segments with highly relevant communications, SMBs can increase conversions. In fact, research shows that ROI for analytics and business intelligence is an impressive 1,301%.

• Reduce costs. By reducing spending on impressions that won’t convert, SMBs can get more out of their marketing budget. Data-driven marketing isn’t just about making an impression – it’s about making the right impression with the right person.

• Improve the customer experience. Ad blockers and spam folders exist for a reason – customers don’t like to be bombarded with irrelevant or pushy communications. Data-driven marketing enables you to provide more value to the customer, helping to drive sales and increase lifetime customer value. According to Forbes, 90% of customers say that they’re more likely to shop with a business that provides relevant offers.

• Gain new customer insights. Focusing on tailored engagement will help you drill down and see what customers are responding to on a more granular level. You can run A/B testing on your focused messaging and track campaign data in real time, enabling you to craft offers with maximum impact.

• Create a data-driven culture. Data is crucial for good decision making. By showcasing the transformative power of data through marketing activities, you can help the workforce embrace analytics in their everyday processes. This can help increase productivity and optimise workflows.

Six tips for using data to supercharge your marketing

Ready to start putting your data to work and clicking with more consumers? Here are six tips for getting started on your journey.

1) Know your objectives. Data is most effective when it’s used to fuel progress towards a specific goal. For instance, you may want to improve your brand’s online reputation and your NPS (Net Promoter Score). Or you may want to increase membership in your loyalty programme. Or perhaps you want to drive more traffic to your site. Whatever your goal is, you’ll want to make sure it’s well defined. You can then use your data to build a roadmap towards achieving it.

2) Demolish organisational siloes. If your business’s departments don’t share data, then you’re not getting a complete picture of your customer. By integrating platforms and centralising your data management, you can remove barriers and allow information to flow freely. For instance, demographic information that’s used by your marketing team can also be used to supercharge your sales or improve customer service.

3) Move into real time. In order to quickly adapt to changing market conditions – and customer preferences – information needs to be timely. By leveraging real-time data, you can make marketing decisions based on the most up-to-date information. And by enabling you to identify new opportunities and potential revenue streams as they arise, streaming analytics can provide a competitive advantage and boost ROI. 

4) Create an omnichannel approach. Offering a unique, real-time customer experience across touchpoints can act as a brand differentiator. But creating seamless journeys across channels isn’t just customer-centric: it’s a great way to showcase your voice as well. Omnichannel experiences can drive sales, improve operational efficiency, extend a brand’s reach and increase customer lifetime value. Most importantly, omnichannel experiences are personal experiences. Just ensure that your marketing voice is consistent across touchpoints, and that the impact of your marketing activities can be measured and evaluated on every channel.

6) Leverage automation. AI is helping to unlock potentially game-changing marketing benefits for SMBs across the world. In fact, the State of Marketing report shows that high-performing marketing teams average seven use cases for AI. Furthermore, 70% of high-performing teams have a clearly defined strategy for using AI, as opposed to just 35% of underperforming teams. AI-based tools can collect and analyse data, then turn this data into actionable intelligence. AI can also power chatbots to improve the customer experience, and be used to make smart, automated marketing buys through programmatic marketing.

7) Use visualisation tools. Data-driven marketing starts with having access to the right data, but how you showcase it is also important. Look for powerful data visualisation tools that can not only unlock the potential of your data, but also present it in an actionable, easy-to-digest way. Tools like Tableau can create dashboards and offer real-time insights, helping the entire workforce quickly get to grips with complex data.

Ready to move your marketing onto the information superhighway?

Data is a potential goldmine for marketers. Today’s marketing is incredibly informed. It’s highly personal. And it’s more customer-centric than ever. With the right information and the right message, better business relationships are just a click away.

To see more about how data can help you provide next-level customer experiences, check out the CRM Handbook. And to see how you can manage and leverage data to build better connections, sneak a peek at the Marketing Cloud demo.