3 Ways High-Quality Data Puts You at the Top of Customers’ Nice Lists 

The biggest shopping season of the year is upon us, and it’s a time that reminds us of what’s really important during the holidays (wink) — engaging customers and closing deals. Of course, none of these magical occurrences is possible without high quality data. Like Santa’s demand for good behavior, good data is a ‘must-have’ requirement for fulfilling all your business desires.

Conversely, those on the naughty list (businesses with bad data) can look forward to wasted budgets, missed opportunities, and a profit-sapping loss of confidence with customers whose experiences have been negatively influenced by duplicate marketing pieces, misspelled names, wrong titles and other bad data faux pas. To inspire you to aspire to Santa’s B2B nice list, we’ve gathered three reasons why enhancing your data quality should be a top priority this season.

1. Good Data Enhances Your Customer’s Experience

Maintaining good quality data isn’t just about keeping clean, current and complete customer and prospect lists. Don’t get us wrong, clean, enriched and validated data is beyond important to your company’s ability to reach the right people at the right time; however, it’s the patterns and information that emerge from analyzing data that make it vital to every marketing endeavor you will pursue. In short superior quality data is the sole source of all great insights, and these insights are essential to creating a more engaging customer experience (CX).

Prepare to “Sleigh” the Competition
Before you can mine your data for amazing CX insights, you’ll need a few marketing technology tricks up the sleeve of your Santa suit to make magic happen on a global scale. First things first, you’ve got to have automated data processes in place that empower you to keep data perpetually ready to use at a moment’s notice. Next, you’ve got to connect all of your data sources throughout your enterprise and automate the process of pulling the right data for personalized campaigns from sources throughout your organization.

Once your data is clean and well-connected, message orchestration becomes your key to delivering to each and every one of your thousands of customers content that resonates with them on a deeply personal level. Lastly, to ensure your customers enjoy a merry ride down your sales funnel, you’ll need to orchestrate a customer journey for them that empowers them to engage with your brand across multiple channels and platforms in real-time. Be sure to track how your marketing campaigns are performing so that you can continue to fine-tune messages and craft customer experiences that wow.

Good Data In Action: A global company (and Sureshot customer) had enjoyed success with their email campaigns, but wanted to increase engagement. Their data revealed that many customers preferred receiving information by text, so they launched an SMS/MMS campaign that equipped customers with product reminders. As a result of acting on data insights, they saw an immediate increase in customer satisfaction, as well as a 10X increase in customer engagement.

2. Good Data Empowers You to Build Meaningful Relationships

One of the strongest desires all humans have is to be known. Each of us has experienced the terrible moment when someone, who you thought knew you well, did or said something that made you think, “This person doesn’t know me at all!” Unfortunately, this feeling is not relegated only to our friends, but includes the people and companies we do business with. Collecting quality information about prospects and customers is essential to your ability to build more meaningful relationships through personalized approaches.

When you use data to create marketing experiences that are tailored to your customers’ unique interests and needs, you reiterate to them that you are listening and attentive, two qualities that are in short supply these days, and yet both are deeply attractive. In order to gather more personalized insights quickly, make data enrichment a top priority.

The Power of Data Enrichment and Personalization

• 90% of leading marketers say personalization significantly contributes to business profitability
• 66% of customers want brands to understand their unique needs and expectations
• 91% of customers are more likely to shop with companies that provide relevant offers and recommendations
• 20% is the average increase in sales when marketers personalize customer experiences

3. Good Data Makes You a Smarter Decision-Maker

Researchers at Princeton, who were investigating how bad decisions are made found that, “erroneous decisions tend to arise from errors in the information coming into the brain rather than errors in how the brain processes information.”  In short, bad data leads to bad input, which leads to bad decisions and a bad outcome. The reverse is also true: good data leads to good input, which leads to good decisions and a good outcome. Whereas poor data quality often gives a false or incomplete view of a business situation, high-quality data is a confidence-boosting tool for uncovering insights that identify risks and opportunities. Using high quality data in your decision-making also leads to decisions that enhance overall strategies and operations.

More Good Data In Action: A recent Fortune article revealed how airlines are using data to enhance their decision-making and increase customer satisfaction and profits. In one example, a United Airlines executive shared that the company analyzes and processes more than 150 customer variables, such as past purchases and previous destinations in real-time, and then uses this data to instantly generate personalized offers. By making more informed offers based on a customer’s collected data, United has increased revenue more than 15 percent.

Naughty or Nice Data? You Decide.

To experience your own profit-boosting miracle this season, start by enhancing the overall quality of your data. Then, leverage it throughout the new year to build stronger customer relationships and make better decisions. If you are ready to harness the power better data can bring to your marketing strategy and initiatives, contact us, or start by taking our FREE Martech Assessment.