There is no question that data is the lifeblood of most businesses in the information age. But does your marketing team understand the data? Are they able to analyse it and make use of the opportunities this information offers?
To truly understand data is not easy for most people and organisations, but it’s also not as difficult as one might think. Here are my guidelines for getting started:
Locate the data
In most companies, data is tucked away in various storage areas, such as database tables, Excel spreadsheets, hard drives, CD’s etc. The first step to understanding your data is finding and organising it. In many cases, companies will employ database experts to locate the data and pull it all together.
Know what you’re looking for
When companies are starting out on their data journey, they often don’t know what they should expect to find. This can result in accumulating untargeted, unsegmented information. By using the right direct marketing tool, not only can the segmentation be done for you, a lot of common issues like multiple contacts and data segmentation from ID numbers can be automated as well.
This tool should also enable marketers to see their customer responses to campaigns in real time.
Knowledge is power
The more you get to know your target audience, the better you can segment it. This enables more effective targeting of niche subsets and optimises your lead generation efforts. By using real-time reporting, A/B testing, demographic targeting and exclusion intelligence, marketers can hone their experience so that they are constantly learning about their audience through the campaigns they run and the feedback they receive.
Understand customer responses
To more effectively learn from your data, you’ll need to observe how people respond to different types of campaigns. In a similar vein, listening to what people are saying in reply messages, and taking appropriate actions, is an important way to differentiate yourself. Often, marketers miss the fact that customers are replying to text messages and asking various questions, rather than simply opting in or out. To better understand your customers, make sure you are linked to their feedback directly.
Respond to feedback
Being empowered to deal with customer feedback and understanding the analytics behind it is imperative. There are automated ways to do this which enhance trust and the brand. Keep in mind that feedback isn’t necessarily outright positive or negative, it could include subtle clues like an increase in opt-outs to your marketing due to bad marketing targeting or over-marketing. This is valuable information if you are collecting and analysing it.
Experience wins the day
Part of the problem with understanding data, and reading beyond the numbers, is that data and analytics can be daunting if you’re not a data scientist. Yes, in-depth data manipulation and analysis does require some training in data science, but marketing teams do not necessarily have to become experts in order to glean value from data. There are tracking and analysis tools available, such as Leadify, to help you in this process. Understanding what does and does not work only comes with direct, hands-on experience.
Focus on leads, not traffic
To make the most of the opportunities data offers, marketers should focus on upskilling themselves and their team to understand the basics. This will allow them to direct their efforts and resources to campaigns that generate genuine leads, rather than simply increasing traffic generation.