The Parallels Between Conserving Freshwater Mussels and a Marketing Database

New research has just been published highlighting concerns about the data regarding freshwater mussels. The data is unevenly distributed and with differences in data quality, the true mussel situation is rather murky. This is not unlike many databases held by companies today, where data is of poor quality and can’t be trusted to reflect the true nature of their customers.

If measures were in place to ensure data quality it would be possible to accurately measure a variety of attributes and get a trusted understanding of the situation.

Experts would like to be able to measure the mussel’s ‘life-history traits, distribution, conservation status, habitat preferences, and main threats’. With the disparate data in need of cleansing and merging to create one consistent view, these critical factors cannot be accurately measured. Therefore like a marketing database, a Single Mussel View (SMV) is required, to determine the true state of the species. Data quality clearly has implications for the conservation of these mussels.

Back to the world of business and marketing, data quality and data management are crucial for gaining a full understanding of customers. A Single Customer View (SCV), as eluded to earlier, brings disconnected data together in one place, to provide one cohesive and trustworthy source of data delivering a comprehensive understanding of customers.

Having information in one place puts the power in the marketer’s hands; they have the data needed to inform their decisions. They can measure precisely how many customers they have and deliver personalised and relevant messages, for example the customer who has stopped purchasing will need a different message to one who is a regular spender.