Use but Don’t Abuse

                                                                                                  (Godfrey, 2015)

Companies are collecting a huge amount of customer data to make marketing strategies, predict consumer buying behavior, map customer journey and so on. This type of data can be very helpful for marketers in designing campaigns, understand their customers and target audience. IoT and artificial intelligence are some critical tools for capturing data for companies(Uzialko, 2018).

But there are many challenges attach to the customer data collection which we will discuss further in this post. 

But first, let’s understand what customer data is and how it can help marketers in making data driver marketing strategies for their companies.

Customer Data: Ant information related to your customer gathered at the time of interaction with your business through a website, mobile app, social media, campaigns and other offline/online channels (Deshpande, 2019).

Key customer data you will come across (Roberts, 2013)

• Identity Data: name, email address, DOB, contact details, social media information, etc.
• Quantitative Data: Transaction information, website visits, social media likes, complaint details, etc.
• Descriptive Data: Family details, lifestyle details, and career details.
• Qualitative Data: Attitude of your customer, opinion about your business and motivation factors.

Benefits of Customer Data for Marketers:

• Personalized customer experience
• Customer segmentation
• Increase Conversion rate
• Improve communication with the customers
• Better customer service
• Increased ROI

Challenges in collecting customer data and use for data-driven marketing: 

• Data coming in from multiple platforms and at high frequency, it’s becoming a difficult task for marketers to decide from where to start and how to use it (Martin, 2018).
• How to centralize all your customer data from every part of your business (Sheerin, 2019).
• Analyzing the data and finding the best suitable KPI metrics to follow.
• Finding the right tool and platform to organize the collected data.
• A lot of customer data is captured and analyzed every day that governments are imposing strict data privacy laws. GDPR in EU says companies have to comply with the GDPR to collect, store, use data of an individual. Companies fail to comply with GDPR can face heavy fines (Uzialko, 2018).

Ensure your data is properly organized and easily accessible for the required purpose.

Reference List

1. Deshpande, I. (2019) What is Customer Data? Types, Collection and Analysis of Customer Data | MarTech Advisor, martechadvisor. Available at: https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/data-management/customer-data-definition-types-collection-validation-analysis-martech101/ (Accessed: 18 February 2020).
2. Martin, N. (2018) How To Overcome The Challenges of Data-Driven Digital Marketing, Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolemartin1/2018/12/18/how-to-overcome-the-challenges-of-data-driven-digital-marketing/ (Accessed: 18 February 2020).
3. Minkara, O. (2014) ‘Using Customer Data for Marketing: The Good, Bad & Ugly’, Aberdeen, 4 December. Available at: https://www.aberdeen.com/cmo-essentials/good-bad-ugly-using-customer-data-for-marketing/ (Accessed: 18 February 2020).
4. Roberts, J. (2013) The four key types of customer data for marketing or... how valuable is knowing my customers pet’s name?, Smart Insights. Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/customer-relationship-management/customer-privacy/types-customer-data/ (Accessed: 18 February 2020).
5. Sheerin, O. (2019) The Benefits of a SAS Customer Data Platform, Hidden Insights. Available at: https://blogs.sas.com/content/hiddeninsights/2019/12/18/the-benefits-of-a-sas-customer-data-platform/ (Accessed: 18 February 2020).
6. Uzialko, A. C. (2018) How and Why Businesses Collect Consumer Data, businessnewsdaily. Available at: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10625-businesses-collecting-data.html (Accessed: 18 February 2020).
7. Godfrey, V. (2015) Big Data Makes For Better Outbound Marketing, Marketing Land. Available at: https://marketingland.com/big-data-makes-better-outbound-marketing-135571 (Accessed: 19 February 2020).