Five Steps To Better Campaigns In Data-Driven Marketing

From Boardroom level downwards, it clarifies ROI by capturing vital information needed to establish the true value of customer activity.

Digital has also brought a far greater reporting capability and level of transparency for KPIs, due in the most part to the data that brands have access to through a wealth of customer touchpoints. Every marketer knows that this is a critical part to driving a brand’s data strategy and applying an improved level of customer centricity, based on real-time personalisation, but yet find it difficult to set robust frameworks in place to measure success.

The need to improve customer acquisition, nurture retention and build compelling internal cases for investment in data-driven marketing can cause headaches. So how can data help? More pertinently, how can data be used to define meaningful and focussed KPIs that accurately reflect a brand’s key objectives and ensure that they are met?

Campaign success looks different to every brand depending on two things: their goals and value drivers. Typically, these fall into three key dimensions: cost savings and increasing efficiency; increasing revenue, profit and effectiveness; building customer engagement/loyalty. Therefore, every piece of dialogue will have a different set of KPIs to quantify its impact.

Primarily, marketers need to understand what success will look like in a meaningful, but more importantly, calculable way to provide a tangible figure to measure the impact by. They can then make an informed decision to pinpoint what worked and should be replicated, what should be refined or, conversely, what failed and should be stopped so they can make a genuine business case for continuing activity or directing budget into more profitable areas. Technology and the flow of data are both critical to aid a real understanding around how these connections are driving the business forward.

Here are five proven steps to ensure that brands are capturing, interpreting and evaluating the correct data to improve the effectiveness of their campaign’s performance.

1. Gather

Collect what information you have on your customers, highlight where it comes from and when and how you receive it. This requires good tech connections, flexible data and an understanding of how these connections and touchpoints influence and impact the customer journey to create an accurate portrayal of the data you have available to you at any moment in time.

2. Understand

When you have your data, you need to get under its skin. What does it all mean, and how does this help you interpret and decipher what customer interactions have told you about that individual and the type of segment they belong to? Refine what information is useful and what is not. Take time to shred the unwanted attributes and assemble an accurate Customer View that takes into consideration individual behaviours, preferences and level of engagement.

Crucially, this will provide the shape and structure needed to understand what interactions are possible and viable to form successful experiences and campaigns. Frequently, this requires a data presentation layer and technology to visualise the data, so don’t be afraid to really dig deep into what data you have to uncover the greatest insights.

3. Decide and Automate

So, you’ve got your shape and structure, now you can create predictive outcomes that will drive your ability to create conversations and offers based on real time and historic behaviour – key to personalisation. The real-time part requires connected technologies but these are driven by the data you have gathered and the understanding you have derived. Create experiences for individuals when they are most likely to resonate with them, and not batch sent at a fixed time – which only serves to dent the brand/customer engagement.

4. Execute

The final step that delivers the preferred experience at a time and format, with the right content that will lead to the best response. This is where technology delivers and connects the brand, its content and the consumer together with ease.

5. Test and learn

Keep repeating this cycle in a way that enables you to effectively test and learn from previous experiences and campaigns to truly understand how your consumers like to be engaged with.

Whether you’re a gaming company or an automotive manufacturer, follow these proven steps and you’ll be able to identify opportunities, track marketing spend and calculate a valid ROI, across all viable channels and touchpoints. Technology platforms exist that enable measurement across the spectrum, consequently fuelling marketing efficiency. Brands that succeed in attributing value to consumer interactions will grow and expand their engagement with consumers as well as delivering a positive return for the brand and the board.

By Neil Evans, MD at Occam