3 Questions to Explore How Data-Driven Marketing Can Drive Better Customer Engagement and Value

Not too long ago I wrote a blog about why consolidation around marketing automation is suddenly so popular. In a nutshell, I identified three main consolidation drivers: Silos are breaking down. Sales and marketing are talking to each other … finally! The need to improve customer engagement and the intersection of big data insights and improved go to market is a major driver. The pressure is on the C-suite to use resources and budgets to drive growth. Marketers must be accountable for the success of their spend and campaigns. Organizations must be more customer-centric in order to thrive in today's data-driven economy, especially given the proliferation and complexity of new marketing channels. Marketers have a unique opportunity to strategically leverage the data from these channels to engage and strengthen customer relationships. While it's important to understand what's fueling the latest software consolidation frenzy, customer-centric companies (and those that aren't quite yet) also need to understand how marketing automation solutions stand to improve their business and the customer's experience. For companies seeking to control and streamline marketing operations, multichannel campaign management, marketing analytics and data management, and digital marketing and digital messaging, you should ask yourself these three questions: 1. Is your company ready for marketing automation? Many companies are on the path, but they only have pieces and parts implemented like data measurement or email marketing. For this reason, it's critical for marketers to assess the positive growth impact that integrated marketing applications can have on their company (read: sales and revenue). During this assessment period, take time to align the solution capabilities and benefits with your marketing and business goals. If your CEO wants to see the impact of specific marketing campaigns on sales, you should seriously consider campaign management and analytics. Many integrated marketing solutions are modular, and part of the reason for that is so you can select what functional solutions make most sense to deploy first. 2. Do I have the right business processes and workflows in place? According to the Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey, 2013, Global, almost half of the companies surveyed have the processes in place right now (e.g., data quality, measurement and workflow), so if you don't you're not alone. It takes time to align people from different departments (e.g., IT and marketing) to extract critical data from marketing campaigns and to inform and improve future marketing efforts with the goal of ultimately improving sales and revenue. Such deep, cross-functional alignment is a cultural shift for many organizations, so start small. Take some time to educate various stakeholders on new business processes and workflows that reach beyond the walls of marketing. 3. How fast should you move? According to Teradata's survey, about half of all companies are on the path to improving the application of data to marketing. It's no doubt the other half will be on that path soon. It's more important to add new capabilities and complexity over time. You can't force cultural change, so make sure marketing is aligned with key stakeholders in the C-suite like the CEO and CIO. If you want to learn about some real-world examples of how brands are integrating marketing and driving better customer engagement with big data marketing, stay tuned for my new business book, which comes out in October. It lays out the challenges marketers face today in being data driven and provides some case studies and five steps to begin embracing a more data-driven approach. Lisa Arthur is chief marketing officer at Teradata Applications, as well as the author of the upcoming book, "Big Data Marketing: Engage Your Customers More Effectively and Drive Value."

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3 Questions to Explore How Data-Driven Marketing Can Drive Better Customer Engagement and Value

Lisa Arthur

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Lisa Arthur