Marketing needs to be data-driven in order to compete. Basing your strategies and tactics on robust data leads to more accurate insights, quicker decision making, and more effective marketing campaigns.
And there’s a lot of data available. Statista predicts that the world will produce, store, and consume roughly 181 zettabytes of data by the end of 2025. To put that into perspective, one zettabyte is enough data to store 30 billion 4k movies.
Figuring out how to collect and use the vast amount of available data may seem complicated, but data-driven marketing is well within reach. This post will cover five examples demonstrating what it can look like and how you can succeed by basing your marketing decisions on the numbers. We’ll talk about:
- What is data-driven marketing?
- Top five examples of data-driven marketing strategies
- Data-driven marketing example: Philips crafts a new digital identity
- Benefits of data-driven marketing
What is data-driven marketing?
Data-driven marketing is the practice of using data to improve marketing communications. Traditional marketing tries to understand the target audience based largely on trial and error. With data-driven marketing, concrete details allow you to be certain that you’re optimizing every part of your marketing strategy.
Over the last several years, digital transformation has enabled data-driven marketing like never before. It’s also created a demand for this type of marketing, generating a cycle of enablement and expectation. Because so many companies are using data to inform customer experience (CX) management, users have come to expect the kind of engagement that data-driven marketing enables — one that’s highly personalized and interactive.
Top five examples of data-driven marketing strategies
There are multiple ways you can put your customer and company data to work. Here are five examples.
1. Share data across different channels
Customers today rarely engage with a company or brand on a single channel. This means data silos are a major roadblock to any business that uses or is trying to implement an omnichannel marketing strategy. Trends and insights from one marketing channel need to be shared with others so that marketing decisions can be better informed.
Sharing data between different channels helps you unify customer profiles. For example, how a buyer behaves on your landing pages should inform your social media campaigns and vice versa. If they view a product on social media, that same customer should be able to easily find that same product when they visit your website. When you allow data to be shared across channels, conversations become seamless as prospects move back and forth.
Sharing data also enables you to apply successful strategies from one touchpoint to another. If you find a particular call to action (CTA) effective in your emails, try that same CTA on your website or social media posts. Additionally, if you find certain keywords you’re using for paid advertising result in clicks or conversion, share that data with your social media team so that they can create posts targeting the same audience.
2. Use demographic data to plan campaigns
Another method of data-driven marketing is using demographic data to plan campaigns. Demographic data includes details like:
- Age
- Race
- Income
- Education
- Job title
- Income level
- Marital status
You’ll collect a lot of this data on leads and customers as you build detailed customer profiles. This information can come from social media accounts and form fills, and help you optimize personas and design targeted marketing campaigns.
But publicly available data on general audience segments is helpful as well. You can find quite a bit of demographic data using sources like the U.S. Census Bureau and its surveys — including the American Community Survey or the Current Population Survey.
Look for demographic data to inform your next marketing campaign. Maybe you’re advertising a high-end furniture brand to the entire city but haven’t received many leads. Use demographic data to determine which neighborhoods are in a higher income tier. Focus your resources on targeting those zip codes and performance will likely improve.
3. Personalize the customer journey
Personalized customer experiences are essential. According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions and 76% get frustrated when companies don’t. Additionally, growing companies drive 40% more of their revenue from personalization.
Customer data is the only way to personalize your content and communications. Go beyond plugging someone’s first name into an email. Data allows you to dig deeper and offer a level of personalization that’s rich and unique.
There are countless ways to use customer data to create personalized marketing experiences and your team will get more creative with personalization as they get used to using customer data. There are a few common strategies you can start with.
- Personalized product recommendations. You can easily personalize product recommendations on your landing pages, home page, emails, paid ads, and social media posts just by automating data related to recent product views and purchases. Show similar or complementary products or those that other customers with similar purchase histories also bought. Use email or paid ads to retarget customers who started to shop but then left before completing a purchase.
- Personalized discounts. Customer data can be used to offer discounts on abandoned cart items, special discount code “gifts” for birthdays, or loyalty program rewards.
- Personalized messaging. Names in emails and special offers on birthdays are some very simple ways to use customer data to personalize the customer journey.