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Investing in customer data technology will make it easier for you to deliver coordinated multi-channel campaigns that resonate with your target market. How should you be getting the most out of your digital marketing stack in FY24?
Is your enterprise awash with martech solutions, some of them not generating the customer engagement and sales pipeline you hoped that they would?
If you answered in the affirmative, you’re far from alone. The marketing technology industry has burgeoned over the past 12 years; recording growth of 7258 percent in that time, according to the 2023 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic.
Today, marketers have an extraordinary 11,000 solutions to choose from, up from just 150 in 2011.
Businesses of all stripes and sizes have embraced the promises and possibilities offered. So much so that the average enterprise now has 120 tools and platforms in its digital marketing stack.
Struggling in siloes
But owning or subscribing to martech solutions and using them effectively are two very different things. For many organisations, having access to a plethora of standalone platforms and programs has led, not to higher click through rates or greater customer lifetime value but, rather, to the emergence of a series of channel based siloes within the marketing department.
Hence, the individual in charge of email communications may have very little to do with the person managing affiliate marketing, for instance, while the folk overseeing socials don’t collaborate with either of them.
The net result is almost always a disjointed brand and customer experience. Because the teams don’t talk and the various platforms and programs they use don’t connect and share data, there’s no opportunity – or capacity – to create a single customer view.
Consequently, it’s impossible for the business to segment customers and target them with customised, relevant campaigns.
Instead, old school ‘batch and blast’ tactics remain the order of the day, with each channel team using its own incomplete – and very often dirty, or incomplete – dataset to fire off generalised messages and offers.
The power of a personal approach
In today’s times, that’s hardly a recipe for marketing or commercial success.
Personalised marketing, on the other hand, is. Research has consistently shown that it’s one of the surest ways for a brand to forge deeper connections with its customers, foster long term loyalty, grow sales and deliver a consistently excellent customer experience.
Businesses that do personalised marketing well generate 40 percent more revenue from their activities than average performers, according to McKinsey.
But doing it well is impossible in the absence of a rich seam of up-to-date, accurate data – transactional, personal and behavioural. This is used to create a detailed picture of every customer on your books.
That’s where a Customer Data Platform (CDP) can change the game.
A CDP is powerful software that brings multiple streams of data together in one repository where it’s easily accessible by marketers, and makes it possible to build those in-depth, holistic 360 degree customer views.
It’s foundation technology that can enable your organisation to use the martech tools it already owns to deliver integrated, highly personalised customer journeys.
Smarter, faster campaigns
Once a CDP is deployed, your marketing team will be able to investigate, segment and target customers with relevant, personalised content that can be shared over multiple channels concurrently.
And they’ll be able to do so secure in the knowledge that the customer data they’re drawing on isn’t just comprehensive and up to date; it’s securely stored and its usage is compliant with privacy and consent regulations too.
Putting cohesive, omnichannel campaigns together becomes faster and more straightforward and the results will be more effective too, courtesy of the fact that the segmentation you build into your CDP can be leveraged to conduct tests on small samples of your target markets, prior to launch.
Managing executive expectations also becomes easier, provided you select a CDP that has sophisticated data analytics capabilities. Regular reporting from multiple touchpoints can be used to generate insights to inform business decisions – decisions that may have a positive impact on the company’s product or service offering, and ultimately, its profitability.
Keeping your digital marketing stack up with the competition
Data driven personalised marketing has been proven to drive sales and customer retention. In today’s times, businesses that don’t make it a priority risk losing mind and market share to competitors with the commitment and capacity to show customers that they’re understood, heard and valued.
A CDP platform can simplify the complex process of consolidating data and enable your organisation to harness the capabilities of its existing martech stack, to orchestrate personalised omni-channel campaigns at scale, and with ease.
If maintaining your competitive edge matters to your organisation in FY2024, then equipping your marketing team with the technology it needs to succeed is likely to prove a very smart move.
Amy Parker is a senior marketing consultant at n3 Hub.