While the attraction of data-driven marketing isn’t in doubt, the challenge confronting businesses can be daunting.
According to the Q1 2014 Gleanster Research customer experience survey, about eight out of ten senior marketers believe their organisation could be doing a better job of using customer data to inform customer acquisition and retention strategies.
While I have always taken the stance I could be doing a better job, no matter how high functioning or innovative my team may have been, a lot of these companies are really in this boat in regards to utilizing customer data to create better customer experiences and content. Many organizations talk about being data-driven, but few truly are.
This is because it is hard to become a data-driven company. It is much easier to sit in meetings and discuss gut feelings than it is to study data and understand what is driving the business. Moreover, creating the environment and culture to be data-driven is a long journey which many cultures don't have the stomach for in this quarter-over-quarter business world we live in.
Implement an organisation-wide data strategy
Marketers have been making significant progress with the status of their data, and statistics from the Teradata 2015 Global Data-Driven Marketing Survey indicate that today data-driven marketing is either embedded or strategic for 78% of marketers – a large increase from only a year ago, when an ad hoc approach prevailed.
Be careful with this statement. As I commented on previously, IT should focus on providing raw data for the organization to consume and the individual business units create the structures they need to make business decisions. This is monitored by the Data Governance Committee, which brings together the organization to share data and knowledge for organizational-wide use.
Restructure the organisation
For data-driven marketing to become a reality, different business units and departments must be able to collaborate and share data. And as well as demanding that there is consistency in data management, this also means that organisations silos need to be broken down, both within the marketing department and throughout the entire business.
Indeed, structural silos represent a significant obstacle that prevents the successful sharing of data and inter-company collaboration. The Global Data-Driven Marketing Survey, for instance, indicates that internal silos prevent 42% of marketers from having such a full and consistent view of their customers.
This has been something I have been harping on for quite some time. Organizations are not structured correctly for marketing to be at its most optimal. This pertains to technology, org structures within marketing and especially when it comes to data. IT is usually the biggest obstacle when it comes to proper structure.
When marketing owns their data they can be an efficient machine. Marketing moves at a pace much faster than normal parts of the organization. This is particularly true in todays world of Digital Marketing. The key to a great digital marketing strategy is a data strategy. If another department owns the data, marketing then becomes a slave to the pace of that department. This can be hampering when time is of the essence in creating new experiences with their customers. I am a firm believer in marketing owning their data.
Create a cross-functional team
To support collaboration and break down silos, organisations should also develop a cross-functional team, including marketers and IT.
This is the purpose of having a strong Data Governance Committee. It brings many of the operational, IT and marketing groups together to discuss data, which in turn leads to business discussions. This group becomes the starting point for cross-functional discussions regarding business drivers and KPI's in the organization.
Integrate data
Marketers need to create a single, complete, actionable and flexible view of their customers and prospects. However, over time, most enterprises have invested in numerous marketing technologies that specialises in different disciplines, leading to siloed data and a lack of visibility of prospect behaviour, and a lack of a holistic understanding of customers.
This goes back to the restructuring of the marketing organization. Marketing has broken itself up into silos by improperly structuring based on channels. Web should have never been a separate division, along with Social and Direct. These are all the same tasks, just using different technology to achieve the goal. If structured properly, the data coming from all these different groups would already be integrated because they were under one direction. Since they haven't been, data is disparate from silos within marketing and this strategy should change as marketing become more data-driven.
Leverage analytics
With the data integrated and augmented, businesses can utilise analytics to deliver actionable insights and guide decision-makers. And it is not just marketers that can benefit from this rigorous exercise – departments ranging from sales and customer service, to finance and purchasing, can all profit from greater insight into prospects and customers.
This should go without saying. Any decision in marketing, which isn't based on analytics, should be looked at with a skepticism. Even when it comes to decisions that typically don't seem like data-driven decisions, data can be used to drive better action. For example, a new branding campaign could use the help of analytics to better target the ad to a segment of customers driving growth for the company. Identifying the behaviors of this segment can influence creative direction, ad placement and proper timing. Analytics should be the backbone of a data-driven marketing organization.