T
he workshops looked at how data-driven marketing has rapidly evolved
over the last decade and where it is likely to go in the future. So, why use
the term data-driven? Pegg points out that there has been an explosion
of data generated from a vast array of sources, from the traditional
marketing lists produced by list brokers; to CRM and loyalty-card data; data
provided by consumers on social media, and in-company data from non-marketing
sources, including, of course, employee data. This goes beyond traditional
interactive & direct marketing.
The challenge is to be able to bring this data together and to legally exploit it for
marketing in an effective and efficient way. As Martha Bush of Sigma Marketing
said, ‘It’s not the data – it’s what you do with it that makes the difference’, and
in order to do the right thing companies must create internal data governance
policies which cover information security, transparency, choice, understanding of
the core business, stewardship within the company, and ownership. This policy
can be seen as setting the ‘data culture’ of the company, including data hygiene
and avoidance of data silos.
There also has to be a well-thought out policy laid down by the marketing
company on how often data is used. Mailing a consumer with a variety of offers
too often usually becomes a nuisance and then spam and before you know it,
the customer has opted out and the company has lost a valuable client.
Today, companies are looking at the lifetime value (LTV) of their customers to
ensure that they retain them as loyal customers. The old adage that 30 percent of
your customers provide 70 percent of the turnover remains as true today as it was
in the past. The tools to leverage that and ensure that the consumer remains
loyal are to be found in the professional use of data-driven marketing including
analytics and data assessment to identify core customers and to predict their
lifetime value. In order to ensure that the various sources of data are used
effectively the chief marketing officer (CMO) has become the main purchaser
of new IT solutions, and the choice of solutions has grown exponentially.
Pegg also pointed out that to thrive in marketing today it is essential to build
a strong database marketing operation in your company, which includes
understanding staff roles and skill sets. This also requires top management
commitment, without which the tools needed in terms of specialised software
and analytics/segmentation, would not be made available.
At the end of the day, Pegg pointed out that the customer is becoming
increasingly sophisticated and empowered thanks to the information available
on the internet and social media. If marketers fail to recognise this, and fail to
take action to ensure that their customers remain loyal, customers will quickly
drift away.
Marketers should therefore, continuously ask themselves a few key questions.
Are you looking at the full picture to understand your marketing programme’s
performance? Are you spending enough time on the front-end and back-end
analysis? Do you have the right players in your data-driven marketing team?
How can you improve the data, systems and tools to ensure your database
marketing is effective? And do you have support of senior management?
Lauretta Ngakane is a marketing and communications specialist with over 19
years of hands-on experience in Southern Africa. As a specialist in mobile
marketing and data protection, Lauretta is also a Mobile Marketing Winner$
Team Leader and co-founder of the Thinking Mobile Confex Series. She is MD
of
Contact her on tel
+27 (0)11 704 0937
, fax
+27 (0)86 503 6868
, e-mail
Skype
Laurie338
and connect with her on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Lauretta Ngakane
Nex Media •
Vol 2 Issue 3
11
