Marketing is increasingly built on data. Database services provide the raw material for constructing buyer personas, developing account-based marketing strategies, and analyzing your audience’s needs. But what principles govern the data on which modern marketing rests? We’ve put together the six critical properties that make data-driven marketing successful.
Quality over Quantity
There’s no shortage of data; the challenge database managers face is separating high-value data from noise. If data is driving your decisions, then your decision-making is only as good as your data. High-quality data has undergone data hygiene, enhancement, and verification processes to ensure its quality. Look at the “three C’s” of data to assess its value; data must be clean, complete, and current to give you the right starting point for developing a segmentation and customization plan.
Define Success
When you’re clear on your goals, you’re better able to devise a strategy to reach them. That’s true in almost any endeavor, but it’s especially useful when dealing with large volumes of data. What counts as successful data-driven marketing for your organization? How do you know when you’ve got it right? When does the perfect become the enemy of the good? These are key questions for marketing database managers because success isn’t always binary; you may not see a clear result instantly, so it’s vital to create specific benchmarks.
Focus on Customers
All those millions of individual data points are more than just numbers. They represent your leads and customers, and they’re the ultimate point of taking a data-driven approach. When data helps you derive more insight about your customer base and create more accurate buyer personas, your database management strategy is doing its job. In turn, that insight lets you personalize every interaction with individual prospects and truly connect with them, laying the foundation for long-term customer relationships.
Embrace the New
Database marketing is still a nascent field, one with discoveries and innovations yet to come. The businesses that enjoy the greatest success with their data-driven marketing plans are those who remain agile enough to change with the times. A perfect example is responsive web and email design. With it, content and visual elements are modular so they can shift to display equally well on different devices. This approach future-proofs marketing activities because it will also work for whatever comes next in consumer technology.
Keep an Open Mind
One big mistake marketers make is aiming for the audience they think is there instead of the one they have. Data-driven marketing eliminates this problem by using feedback from leads to guide marketing decisions – but it only works if companies are willing to take that step and trust in the data.
Find the Right Partner
Marketing database management is a rarefied field. Businesses that offer complete database services can adapt to what your organization needs better than a one-size-doesn’t-fit-all DIY solution. You have oceans of data available to you now, but don’t set sail alone.
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