How data-driven marketing helps serve the customer of the future 

The changing customer world

As customer expectations continue to be on the rise, marketers are shifting from a product-centric to a customer-centric approach. Organizations sense the need to better understand their customers in order to stay relevant  in the future. Therefore, we can observe increasing investment in data collection and activation capabilities to generate insights about customers, thus facilitating this shift.. Marketing organizations require a move from mass communication and intuition-led, to personalized and insight-led marketing activities and relationship development. Organizations that shift their approach are therefore better able to meet, and even exceed customer expectations and strengthen brand equity in a dynamic market.

What is data-driven marketing

Data-driven marketing (DDM) is a way of executing customer communication and engagement, as well as identifying innovation opportunities, by making use of data and insights, while continuously measuring and optimizing.

DDM consists of five main components: Identify, Capture, Analyze, Activate and Optimize

1. Identify: Having a clear vision of the data needs and use cases, defined in a (customer) data strategy, for a targeted and optimized data collection
2. Capture: Establishing relevant and connected sources of customer data in a responsible and compliant way, in line with the data strategy
3. Analyze: Enabling access to collected data points to identify relevant segments and deeper, actionable insights
4. Activate: Using insights to activate customers through relevant communication and creating experiences, across digital touchpoints
5. Optimize: Embedding a test and learn mindset, continuously optimizing performance and making well-informed strategic and operational decisions 

Some examples of DDM use cases are personalization, loyalty programs, lookalike targeting and improved website traffic.

Data-driven marketing can help answer some of the following questions for marketers:

• What are our key customer segments and how do we activate them with the right engagement & value proposition?
• How can we use insights to continuously validate and optimize our media planning?
• How should we organize the marketing team to be data-driven? What skills, processes and tech do we need?
• How can we use data to identify which innovations we should introduce to meet our customers’ needs and expectations?

How to become fully data-driven

The journey towards becoming an experienced data-driven marketing organization is progressive. It requires investment across three categories of capabilities: people & process, technology & tooling, and data & analytics.

Why to invest in data-driven marketing

DDM unlocks value for the business, marketers, and customers. Businesses can increase sales from campaigns by 15% on average and double-down on their return on advertising spend (ROAS). Marketers can strengthen campaigns through improved targeting, tracking of customer behavior across devices and identifying engagement patterns. They are also able to continuously identify and optimize actionable customer segments. With these segments they can leverage insights to create more personalized customer experiences, improving customer engagement, conversion, and retention. Customers benefit from data-driven marketing through experiences that trigger their emotions. Because it is exactly what they need, where and when they need it.

Source: Deloitte

Do you see the added value of data-driven marketing, but experience challenges to integrate it into your business?

Get in touch with us and stay tuned for the next blog in the series.