Creating a Synchronized Customer Experience Using Data

A Sureshot and Inverta Series

Part Three: How to Synchronize Data Across Your Enterprise

In Part One of Creating a Synchronized Customer Experience (CX), we covered the first step in building a better CX: implementing synchrony into your project planning and management process. In Part Two, we addressed the role that your marketing technology integrations play in delivering a perfectly timed omni-channel campaign. Today, in our third marketing synchrony installment, we’ll walk you through the role your data plays in creating the ultimate CX — one that is uniquely personal for each and every customer.

Consider Your Data Sources

According to Deloitte Digital, the average business has 17 unique apps, programs and/or systems that house customer data. Of course, that’s just the average business. When you stop to consider that Martech guru, Scott Brinker, maintains that the “average” marketing department uses around 120 martech tools (most of which house and use data), it becomes easy to see why 20 percent of data records have data quality issues. It’s also no wonder that 54 percent of businesses cite data quality and completeness as their biggest marketing challenge.

Managing Too Much Information

Perhaps one of the reasons that data management is the source of great anxiety across corporate marketing departments, large and small, is because the majority of the time (70%) that marketers spend working with data is spent looking for it. Conversely, only 30 percent of the time marketers spend with data is used to analyze it. Given these sobering statistics it becomes easy to see how Wharton found that 57 percent of marketers are getting diminished results from misinterpreting their data.

Deliverance from Data Blindness

Creating a synchronized customer experience, in which you use customer data to deliver personalized and well-targeted marketing pieces with precision requires data of the highest quality. This means you your contact data enterprise-wide needs to be standardized, clean and complete — at all times. Naturally, before you can credibly state that your data is good-to-go, you must be able to see what state it’s in. To avoid becoming a marketing data cautionary tale, we recommend taking the following actions:

1. Make a list of all your data sources, including the ones you have access to and the ones that you need access to (siloed sources).
2. Develop a detailed data-sharing strategy that notes:
   a. How each data source shares information and whether or not integrations are working or are hindered by too many manual steps
   b. You will also want to outline how data will be kept secure on its journey across systems, apps, platforms, departments, etc. This step is critical for getting silo-keepers to share.
3. Actively befriend and seek the help of folks keeping data in siloes. Come to the table prepared to show them how sharing data will enable you to help each other achieve departmental and overall company goals.
4. Add a data dashboard to your mix that centralizes access to data and gives you the ability to see data in real-time and at every level, right down to each individual segment.

Know What You Need to Know

Once you have a central view of the data across your enterprise, you are ready to take a hard look at your information and figure out what you have, what you need and what you want. An easy way to approach this task is to think about your ideal customer profile (ICP) and then make sure the key variables you use to market to these folks are complete across all records in your database.

For example, if CFO’s at mid-size companies in the northwest are your primary target, then you need to make sure you have the title, company size and geographic location for all of your current contacts. If you don’t have this information, or you do, but you acquired it more than three months ago, you will want to scrub your current list and then use a data management tool (like your data dashboard) to clean and enrich your data.

Align Your Data Reports With Goals

Now that you have got your data sources and quality in line, it’s time to synch you data with both marketing and company goals. Here are a few questions to help clarify your goals and move them from aspirational to measurable:

• What problem are we trying to solve?
• What Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) do we use to monitor progress?
• What result connotes success?

Once you hone-in on what it is you should be tracking, producing reports and analyzing data will become a much simpler affair. In fact, when you no longer have to spend 70 percent of the time looking for data, spending only one-third of your time analyzing it becomes acceptable, since the other two thirds should be spent developing performance-driven strategies and executing them.

When Sharing Information Is a Good Thing

Be sure you make it a habit of regularly sharing data insights with your team as well as executive management members. A good data dashboard will help you visualize your data in ways that enable everyone to get the big picture quickly. Over time, as you and your team track the journey of your KPIs, you will be able to see anomalies, act on opportunities, and consistently compare benchmarks to ensure everyone is on track to make goals. This, after all, is the greatest benefit of synchronizing your data processes — the ability to confidently make data-driven decisions that make both sense – and cents!