Tag Archives: big data

Weekly Roundup – 2.1.13

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Happy Friday everyone! We’re back again with another roundup of the week’s best digital marketing tips, tricks, and trends. This week we’re emphasizing big data, because we believe it’s a trend that’s changing the very face of marketing. Keep reading to find out why.

Big data success includes personal, real-time analytics: Merkle exec – Big data and mobile marketing are two significant trends that have taken marketing by storm. As society continues to move towards a mobile-centric view of technology, marketers have had to adapt their strategies to accommodate this evolution. Big data plays into this paradigm, because it gives marketers a chance to analyze web behavior, purchases, and other data to determine the most effective way to  engage new and current customers. Keep reading to learn more about the tools and strategy marketers need in place to truly take advantage of both mobile marketing and big data.

Vague Goals Seed Big Data Failures – We all know big data is this new shiny toy, but did you also know that 55% of big data projects don’t get completed. Furthermore, “inaccurate scope” is listed as the primary reason these projects fail. Big data is like any problem. It needs to be tackled in increments. To succeed, start with a problem you’re already trying to solve with data, and see if adding more data to the mix clarifies the solution. Measure the results, and iterate from there. For more on the pitfalls of improperly planning your big data initiative, click here.

Major Differences Between Marketers and Consumers #Infographic – As marketers, we sometimes get caught up in the cleverness of our own creations. A multichannel campaign delivering relative content at multiple touchpoints with the intention of steering the prospect along the buying cycle is enough to make our mouths salivate. But it’s important to note that marketers and consumers view and interact with brands in drastically different ways. Check out this infographic for a quick peek at many of the differences.

10 Reasons Why Email Marketing Still Works – Email may be a legacy channel, but we still firmly believe that it’s an effective tool for generating new leads and strengthening relationships with current customers. Check out this quick but comprehensive roundup of 10 reasons why email is still healthy and alive in 2013.

That’s it for this week everyone. Be sure to let us know what you think in the comments.

Why Are Marketers Still Managing Their Data Manually?

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Experian QAS’ recent study “Data Quality and the Customer Experience” is a telling story for today’s data-driven marketers. To start off, here are a number of interesting insights culled from the study:

  • Less than 1% of organizations surveyed lack a data strategy.
  • 66% of respondents use a manual process like Excel to manage data and perform light analysis on that data.
  • 1/3 of respondents don’t know how much of their data is inaccurate.
  • 94% of respondents realize that some of their data is inaccurate due to incomplete, outdated, or duplicate data.
  • 65% of the time, respondents blame these inaccuracies on human error.

So, what kind of picture does that paint of today’s “data-driven” marketer? To me, it looks like organizations overwhelmingly acknowledge that data is critical to their success. A similarly overwhelming number of organizations understand that they, in fact, do have a data quality issue. Yet, for whatever reason, these organizations haven’t invested in the tools needed to rectify that issue.

My suspicion is that marketers haven’t decided to adopt an automated tool for addressing these data issues for a few key reasons:

  • The economy may be slowly righting itself, but it’s not anywhere close to full strength. That means budgets are still agonizingly hard-won battles fought in boardrooms across the land.
  • This whole idea of big data, as well as its touted benefits, is still rather new and unproven. If the status quo has worked all these years, why not wait until the picture is less murky before making a big investment.
  • The sheer number of tools available, and their panoply of features, has heads spinning. While there’s surely a goal or an ideal outcome of their data strategy, marketers may not know which tool will get them to that point.

So, what’s the answer? Marketers would benefit from first identifying the problems in their current processes, and then identify a tool that solves those problems.

If the issue is duplicate data, look for a tool that can de-duplicate databases and then merge that data into a new, unified database. If inaccurate records are plaguing the organization, it makes sense to look for a tool that includes hygiene and validation capabilities. Better yet, find a solution that can collect data right from your lead capture forms, validating and autocorrecting it as it is imported.

If you don’t understand enough about your current customers and inbound leads, look for a platform that provides appending services and enriches your contact database. Take the same approach if your database analytics are lacking. The key is identifying priorities and seeking out a tool that aligns with those priorities.

The trick, though, is not settling for a tool that bottoms out with capabilities that can only solve your current problems. You want a tool that’s going to allow you to continue to grow as a data-driven organization. Think about how you see your marketing evolving over the next one to two years, and move towards a tool that aligns with that vision. Once you can nail down these two areas of your data strategy, choosing the right tool should be much easier.

3 Reasons Why You Might Need A Data Management Platform

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Big data. Big data. Big data. If you’re in digital marketing, reading about big data is all but inevitable. There’s a good reason for that. Big data is a catchall for many of the latest innovations happening in marketing right now. Simply put, marketers have a ton of data, they don’t quite know what to do with it, and they don’t have the tools to use it. But, there is a way that you can start curing your data malady, and make better use of your data while you’re at it: a data management platform.

Here are three reasons why you may want to consider implementing a data management platform (DMP).

You Collect Data from Disparate Channels 

If you’re like most modern organizations, you’re collecting data from a variety of different sources. You could be collecting data from your website, mobile campaigns, social media channels, landing pages, or from your email campaigns, just to name a few sources. But, when you’re working with data from so many different channels, it’s easy for disorganization to slip into the picture.

You can’t use disorganized data as quickly or as easily as you want. Maybe you also store the data in several different systems, further confounding your ability to use your data as effectively as possible. This is a problem.

A data management platform is going to index all of this data, and spit out a unified view of your customers that lives on one platform, not several. This means that you can use all the data you collect to market to your customers and leads in a more meaningful fashion. You’ll be able to send more targeted offers, build a better customer experience on your website, and make better predictions and judgments about your customers.

You’re Managing Your Data with a Cobbled Together System

The intention isn’t to insult anyone’s engineering talent, but a dedicated data management platform tends to perform better than any homegrown system. They’re built to function without an extensive technical staff, which can save you the time and money that you’d otherwise allocate to staffing and training. You can now dedicate these valuable resources to other areas of your core business.

Beyond the time and money saved by not hiring a huge technical staff, in a general sense, a DMP is going to allow you to perform core functions like segmenting and extracting data, and running profiles of your data in a way that is seamless, fluid, and less headache inducing.

You Want to Move More of Your Infrastructure into the Cloud

Data management platforms truly excel when they live in the cloud. The cloud is, after all, the future of computing. In large part, that future is already here. It allows your staff to access services no matter where they are, as long as they can get an internet connection – a very powerful development that keeps employees productive, even if they’re on the road or working from home.

Beyond the obvious productivity benefits, cloud based services can save your money – always a positive in this economy. In fact, research from the Cloud Disclosure Project found that by investing in cloud-based services, “US businesses with annual revenues of more than $1 billion can achieve economy-wide savings in energy alone of $12.3 billion a year by 2020.” You can also save on hardware and staffing costs. And you won’t have to worry as much about a complete hardware failure wiping out all your data – regardless, I do recommend establishing a backup plan.

When investigating these cloud-based data management platforms, I recommend inquiring about their intrusion security and backup procedures. Your data is one of your most valuable assets, and you don’t want to ensure that your platform protects it appropriately.

If your organization falls into any one of these buckets – or perhaps all three – investigating a data management platform could be worth your while. In today’s data driven economy, it pays dividends to have the right tools for the job at hand.

How Does Data Improve Your Marketing?

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To a certain extent, data has always been integral to marketing. Even in the Mad Men days. Agencies and brands relied on market research to guide the launch of new products and their accompanying advertising campaigns. And Traditional direct marketers, outdoor advertisers, and TV advertisers all had (and still have) their own methods and tools for measuring the performance of their respective initiatives. But now digital marketing is the big kid on the block, and data is the star of the show.

Digital marketing allows marketers to collect, measure, and analyze the performance of their campaigns nearly in real-time. Frankly, it’s an empowering shift towards insight driven action. And as brands allocate their marketing spend to all digital all the time, it’s now increasingly plausible to ask, “Are you using your marketing data as effectively as possible?”

If you find yourself asking that question, or maybe your boss is asking you that question, then keep reading for some quick insights that data can deliver about your marketing.

Iterate Quicker

Agile, modern digital marketing centers on the process of iteration. That means consistent and incremental improvements across your marketing program. This is where data enters stage right. Since digital makes that information readily available, you can iterate faster and more accurately. It means that you don’t need to make decisions based on feelings, intuition, or gut instincts. Instead, you can look at the truth of your marketing situation, and use that perspective to make accurate and thoughtful decisions.

A More Accurate Analysis

Data can help you accurately identify the components of your campaign that would most benefit from improvement. We’ll use email marketing as a quick example. If you have a low open rate, think about improving your subject line. You might also refine your targeting to identify a better audience for your offer. If you look at your campaign and see a poor click-through rate (CTR), test your call to action (CTA) in different locations within the email creative. You can also revise the CTA copy and visual design. Further still, you might just need a more compelling offer. Data makes these insights possible right now.

Distributing marketing investment

Marketers aren’t new to the budget game. Increasingly, we find ourselves asked to do more with less. So, when it’s time to allocate our spend, we start to doubt ourselves, wondering if we’re making the “right” decision. But, now, marketers can rely on data to identify the channels and campaigns that are working best so that they can place a greater proportion of their marketing spend into those channels and campaigns. Ultimately, this targeted distribution of funds helps marketing programs’ efficiency and effectiveness.

The trick to this whole data revolution is making sure you have this data available for your use, and then determining the best ways to use the data. Please, think of this post as a buffet of general ideas. Every organization is different, and each collects and uses data differently. You just need to find the process and infrastructure that works best for you.

3 Benefits of a Data Management Strategy

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Data with Attributes

In case you haven’t been paying attention, data now occupies center stage in most marketers’ mindsets. This is especially true for digital marketing. The discipline’s reliance on easily measured channels means that marketers have a wealth of campaign and customer data that they can use to inform their larger marketing strategies.

However, as the volume of data we collect increases, so do the related challenges. Namely, how do you draw meaningful conclusions from this data, what tools are available to make that easier, and what are the benefits of an effective data management strategy?

While we won’t dig into the tools and tactics used to manage and process your marketing data in this post, we will cover the benefits of a data management strategy.

Better merge disparate channels

Running email campaigns, SEM campaigns, and display campaigns? All that data is going to contain a mix of nonstandard attributes. That makes it difficult to get a clear look at your data; it also makes it hard to pull any meaningful conclusions from that data. That’s a problem, right?

A well-developed data management strategy should include a way to merge all this channel data. This merged data is going to give you a unified vision of each customer. It will also help you identify customer and channel-specific trends. You can then capitalize on these trends to better develop your customer acquisition strategy and allocate marketing dollars where they’re going to be most effective.

Clean Your Data

Unless you’ve been fastidious from day one, your data is going to be at least a little bit dirty. That means you’ll have missing or false values scattered throughout your data. This false information could include inactive or improperly formatted email addresses, phone numbers without area codes, or demographic data that’s just plain wrong.

To resolve this issue, your data management strategy should allow for data hygiene. This process will correct all of your invalid attributes and, in some cases, append additional attributes onto that data. By running hygiene, you’re going to walk away with data that’s accurate and, ultimately, far more useful. Much like when you merge data from different channels, this clean data will help you make smarter marketing decisions across the board.

Visualize your data

Data visualization is an extremely important component of an effective data management strategy, but it’s hard to get right. Essentially, data visualization is the process of analyzing your data and presenting the findings in an easily consumable way. Infographics are a simplified form of data visualization.

This visualization is important because it makes it easier for your staff to review your data and draw conclusions from that data. It’s also an effective way to illustrate the insights that you can glean from your data if you are in a situation where you need to justify your data management strategy to senior leadership.

As you can see, a data management strategy will deliver a number of benefits to your overall marketing program. And we’re just scratching the surface! Stayed tuned for more posts of this nature. We’ll dig deeper into data management, and specifically discuss how it can help your organization, and how to manage your data in the most effective way possible.

Image Credit: kikashi