Data Driven : Beyond the Data

New thinking about data's role in creating marketing success

"Data" has become the darling of the marketing world recently as information technology and database marketing really hit their strides in business (Check out the Target Marketing July 2012 cover story, "Are You Ready for Big Data?" to brush up on your consumer data know-how if this topic hasn't been on your radar screen).

Marketers now know more than ever about their customers and their shopping behavior. We also have extremely powerful technology to drive a mind-boggling number of calculations in record time.

However, caution is in order as data do not, by themselves, provide solutions. Data must be interpreted, organized and combined with other resources to truly add value. Let's look at four ways other resources can be added to database marketing to provide a competitive edge when most marketing teams are now solely focused on data.

1. Rules
The way we interpret the data matters. One of the most important elements that guide the interpretation of data is the rules around how we define and interpret data. Rules help both define the manner in which the data is organized and provide consistency in reporting over periods of time.

To do: Get other members of your team involved when creating rules for data understanding and reporting. Management and marketing team members must be at the table as the data is organized and defined.

2. Understanding Customer Behavior and Your Brand
Every brand has unique elements and it is important to understand the key performance indicators (KPIs) that drive success for your brand story.

The usual "best practice" priorities for KPIs may need to be restructured to reflect your customer behavior. An example that comes to mind is one brand learned that the amount of time customers were engaged with the brand was directly linked to their lifetime value. In this case, an "engagement" data element was created and was ranked higher than recency when predicting conversions.

To do: Write down your brand story and list the key data elements that are important to that story.

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