Back in February we ran the Data Demons quiz to understand how effectively marketers were using their customer data which revealed your Data Persona.

 
By answering a few quick questions, we were able to tell you if you were a Data Slayer who is maximising all of their data for personalised marketing, a Data Demon who is putting some to good use but more can be done, or finally a Data Devil who is not getting the most of the customer data they have.
 
Well, we took these results, mashed them up on a super-computer (my calculator) to see what, if any, interesting points we could take away. And the results were not what we were expecting!!
 

Incredibly, we found that 81% of you who took the quiz were either Demons or Devils.

 
Essentially this meant that most of you were not happy with how your data was working for you and were looking for your data to do more for you and your business.
 
This is interesting in a world where data driven marketing is core to any successful strategy and so presents a really exciting opportunity for those not quite there yet.
 
So, let’s break the results down…

Power up your data

 
First, we found that 1 in 3 do not ‘Power Up’ their data, which means they choose not to add additional sources to boost the potential power of their data.
 
It’s a bit like playing Super Mario World, but never jumping on one of the mushrooms to ‘Power up’, you might get the results eventually or to the end of the level, but it’s lot harder and it takes many more attempts.
 
By using contextual data like locational or drive time information within an email campaign, a restaurant chain (for example) could simply show the closest bar or restaurant together with some great associated offers to entice its customers in.
 
Or if you want to jump straight to the advanced side, you could power up your data with the help of article intelligence and feed your data into a Machine Learning model that can tell you exciting predictions such as who has a high propensity to purchase or who is likely to churn in the coming months.
 
You can use this information to create a targeted segment, this will allow you to specifically communicate with a customer in a more targeted fashion, in turn increasing the likeliness that a customer will engage.

Spinning plates

 
Then we found that also 1 in 3 of those who answered the quiz have 4 or more data silos. That is a lot of plate spinning, how can you be expected to successfully manage a marketing campaign when your data is stored in many different places?
 
Unless you bring all the silos together in one manageable place, it would be too difficult to efficiently build a successful marketing campaign.
 
By allowing all your data silos to integrate through a single platform, you can a Single Customer View (SCV), showing only the data that you require and strip away data that you dont.
 
This will allow you to see through a clear window as though you were the customer, in turn you can segment better, and deliver far more personalised messages, meaning your campaigns become far more accurate.

Trying to be creative

 
We then found most participants use 3-5 data points to drive personalisation. This is far more than I would have expected, for after you take Salutation and Name out of the equation, most will still be left using as many as 3 more data points to personalise content.
 
Now, this isn’t too much of an issue if you have a powerful system that allows you insert merge fields into a creative output. But as the previous point on data silos explores, the challenge comes when you have several disparate data silos.
 
If your data silo’s mean you are having to import data to achieve personalisation then you have the issue of it becoming out of date very quickly.
 
You may think you are personalising for a customer, but their behaviours could have changed since when your data was exported from wherever that silo may be.
 
Therefore, having a single customer view within a powerful marketing automation platform that can tie all of this together in real-time is key and probably why you’re reading this in the first place.
 
But the best platforms allow you not only to tie all of this data together, they also allow you to personalise any number of data points within your campaigns, in a way that enables you to be as creative as you want. Adding a personal element can really secure the success of your marketing campaign.

Let’s get personal

 
Now, most people who participated in the quiz stated that they ‘loved doing personalisation’, but surprisingly only 22% of those who took the quiz personalise all their communications.
 
As we go further into the results, we can see that 1 in 4 participants said that they are a team with limited time and resources. 1 in 10 said they didn’t know how to personalise and nearly 1 in 5 said that their data is everywhere, so it would be too manual and time consuming.
 
This means that although most of those who participated in the quiz said they loved to personalise, a whopping 78% had either no personalisation or some of their communications are generic.
 
On top of that a combined 70% were put off personalising for the factors mentioned above.
 
Outsourcing is a great way of building serious personalised marketing campaigns. It allows you to employ a top professional team who have industry leading experience while continually being supported by an account manager, essentially becoming an extension to your own marketing department.
 
Perfect for those who have limited time and resources.

In summary

 
Whether you’re a Slayer, Demon or a Devil, the results tell me that most of you want to be able to do more than you are already, that’s as clear as our single customer view. By making a few small changes you can drive your data to make it do so much more for you and your business.
 
It’s easy to make a decision based on gut feelings, but once data is applied, business decisions become far more accurate leading to better direction and greater return of investments.
 
RedEye not only provides you with a platform to solve all that we’ve mentioned but we have an incredibly talented team who are genuinely excited to help you through your Marketing Automation journey.
 

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