When harnessed effectively, customer data has the potential to transform global marketing and revolutionise the use of new technology enablers, making it a key player in successful marketing efforts.
Today, marketers face the challenge of navigating a complex web of data management technologies to gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers. The average number of data management tools used within the marketing function is six, a mere fraction of the 900 different applications within an enterprise, only 28% of which are integrated (source: Salesforce), which presents a clear need for growth and improvement in the IT department to enable this technology infrastructure.
Within this context, it's crucial to consider how you can clearly understand your customers' rapidly evolving circumstances and needs. Seventy-eight per cent of marketers from Salesforce research describe customer engagement as data-driven, underlining the urgency of understanding and meeting customer needs. They expect to turn to more data sources, with prevalent transactional data and known digital identities.
Nevertheless, few marketers are completely satisfied with their customer data, raising questions about whether they can use it to its full potential. This dissatisfaction underscores the need to improve data unification and activation, which are among the top five challenges in navigating the marketing evolution.
Once data is sourced, integrated, and managed, it is time for it to work. The potential of accurate, timely, and permissible structured data (such as customer demographics and purchase history) and unstructured data (like social media posts and customer reviews) for unlocking valuable insights is immense, offering marketers a world of possibilities.
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