As marketers, we are constantly encouraged to be ‘data driven’. For starters, we are expected to keep a close eye on acquisition costs, track funnel metrics, and keep tabs on conversion rates.
On top of that, we use audience data for segments, behavioural data for optimization, and customer feedback data to find and solve customer experience issues.
With all of these various ways of using data, though, how can we be sure we’re doing our jobs correctly? That is, are we truly marketing in a ‘data driven’ fashion?
To find out, Econsultancy recently invited dozens of data driven marketing experts to Digital Cream Sydney to discuss what they do, the problems they face, and how they overcome obstacles. Through roundtable discussions led by Danielle Grant, senior marketing manager at PayPal, best practices emerged which attendees agreed were key to the success of data-driven marketing.
The keys to data driven success
So what do successful data-driven marketers do that others may not?
- They obsess about data management
Participants said that the first step toward data driven success is to devise a data management strategy, and a good data strategy starts with a data audit.
The audit does not need to be complicated; it may simply consist of writing down the answers to a few key questions:
- What data do you have? Make a list of everything you use and identify gaps.
- Where is it housed? Ensure you understand where data originates and ‘lives’.
- Who currently has permissions to access it? Is it everyone who needs it?
Then, once data assets are identified, marketers should also establish a data governance policy. The policy should state who is responsible for maintenance, who has editing rights, and what data is available to everyone. Ideally, the policy should state who the data ‘owner’ is and avoid having too many additional stakeholders involved.
Next, those with editing rights to the data should keep the shared data clean. As one participant said, “if something bad goes into your data, then you should expect bad stuff coming out”.
