Expert views and opinions on all aspects of communications

October 7, 2015 Data and marketing: the perfect match

Sean Jackson, CMO, EXASOL

The sheer volume of data that is available today has created a new era for marketing and communications.  Indeed, business and organisations across the globe continue to produce enormous amounts of data at a staggering rate. This data provides infinite possibilities for marketing departments to truly understand the motivations of those they need to influence, enabling them to put their customers’ needs at the heart of activity while taking a more personalised approach where needed. It allows marketers to learn what messages, products and price points are resonating with their audience.

Not only does data guide the strategy to help your organisation gain more market share, but it arms the marketing department with a source of real evaluation. Measuring campaigns with data will show the true impact of the marketing teams efforts and the value they are driving to the business.

However, it’s not just about gathering and storing data. The marketing department needs to know what data is relevant and there needs to be analysis of that data to find the insights necessary to achieve their goals.  Only by understanding what questions you need to ask of the data, and the consequential analytics, can the marketing and communications department deliver true results.

Having the ability to collect and analyze data easily and then turn it into actionable insights that feed back into the business fast, is crucial in a world where there is so much information available on consumer activity, their likes and dislikes. The marketing department has a real opportunity to take the lead.

So where do you start? We’ll be talking about this on #CommsChat, but here’s EXASOL’s top four tips for getting going with data analytics in your marketing:

• Ensure your data is clean – there’s no use analysing data if it is of poor quality.  You wouldn’t expect great performance from a badly maintained car, so don’t neglect your data either
• Know what data you have and make sure you can access it all – to get a full picture of what’s going on, you need to be able to access all of your data.  Make sure people aren’t storing data in siloed spread sheets
• Have a clear goal in mind – figure out first what you are trying to achieve with your analytics before you embark on your analytic journey.  Too often companies start analysing data without having a clear goal in mind and get side-tracked with all the things data can do. You must remain focused
• Use the right tool for the right job – there are tools for just about every aspect of analysing. Once you know what your goal is, make sure you use the right technology to meet your objectives

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: #CommsChat, blog, Data, EXASOL AG, Marketing