In the world of data-driven marketing, many marketing professionals are challenged by integrating the various marketing disciplines into a coherent whole.
A Teradata survey found that 80% of marketers believe silos prevent them from having a full view of campaigns and customers across the various channels. As audience fragmentation continues to accelerate, marketers need to look at an increasing number of data sources in order to effectively track customer behaviour and develop campaigns and interventions that influence customers and affect sales.
The key challenge is creating a real-time database of accurate customer profiles that can be segmented at a micro level for highly targeted, focused marketing campaigns. With the closing of the gap between marketing and sales, the ability to develop quality leads faster and cross-sell and upsell to existing customers has become a massively increasing requirement of most marketing departments.
Technology infusion
The infusion of technology into the marketing function has enabled brands to solve these problems and take advantage of delivery at speed and scale. Marketing automation technologies can offer comprehensive cloud based and scalable databases that can accommodate a variety of preferences, interactions, automations, behavioural analysis, coupons, and rewards to allow brands to categorise, remarket, target, embed, track and guide people to the point of purchase – whether online or offline.
However, many brands attempt outsourcing to get there faster, and they end up building digital silos instead of digital brand assets. They’re not building a cohesive, on-going ability to reach out at speed and scale, or to address large groups of people on a micro-segmental basis. Instead, they end up paying for lots of one-off campaigns whose data loses currency and relevance very quickly.
Integrated data
As eMarketer analyst Brian Yeager says, “silos cause redundancy. They don’t allow you to get a single view of the customer, causing disjointed experiences.” However, according to a Teradata survey, less than half of marketers feel they have fully integrated data across teams. While most marketers are convinced of the value of a single customer view, it’s not easy to pull all the pieces together. A cloud-based marketing automation platform that integrates with existing tools can make this job easier: giving marketers the agility they need to deliver new, accurate and personalised forms of value to customers in real-time, based on consolidated customer information across multiple data sources.
If you struggle with silos in your marketing department (don’t feel alone – a 2013 study found two-thirds of marketers do) it may be time for you to speak to a marketing automation technology partner who can help you implement the tools you need to really get to know your customers.
Nick Orton is CEO at Grapevine
