What is the Stage of Your Marketing Data?

In today’s world of data driven marketing, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Accenture revealed that 78% of customers receive a fragmented experience as they move from channel-to-channel, yet according to Mashable.com, 72% of consumers prefer an integrated marketing approach. And Blue Research showed that 94% of consumers and prospects discontinue relationships with companies because of irrelevant ads or promotions.

It’s clear that today’s modern customers have high expectations. They expect companies to know them across all digital channels, engage them with relevant and personalized content across multiple channels, and lead them by anticipating their future needs in order to maintain loyalty.

Wow! That’s a very tall order. In order to get to this higher state of marketing data consciousness, it’s going to require a level of data orchestration that allows you to understand your customers, their needs, and their expectations. You’re looking at possibly integrating various disparate systems across your company’s data landscape – Marketing, Sales, Services, Finance, and more.

So, are you alone in this big world of data overload? Not at all! Take the poll to find out where you stand among your marketing cohorts.

Poll: What is the stage of your marketing data maturity?

• Data Optimization:
  • You have built rich profile data sets.
  • You have an advanced digital marketing practice that dynamically enables a highly personalized experience across multiple channels and in real-time.
  • Your data is highly integrated.
  • At this stage of data sophistication, anything you can do to even incrementally improve performance would be welcome.
• Foundational Data:
  • You are collecting basic information and doing simple segmentation and personalization.
  • You are starting to think about your customers needs and using behavioral data to drive targeting.
  • You are respecting your customer's preferences.
  • Some of your data is integrated, but not all.
• Basic Data:
  • You predominantly send batch and blast.
  • You send campaigns on a fixed marketing schedule.
  • You do not personalize messages.
  • Your data is segregated across multiple systems.
  • You have a database (or several) that you wouldn’t bank on being even 30% accurate.

Once you identify where you are, you can start to make a plan for how to advance your maturity. Whether that’s crafting a company-wide data management strategy, starting a data cleansing plan, exploring ways to integrate different databases, or gaining more insights to drive actions based on existing profile and behavioral data.

Need some help figuring out your next steps? Request to participate in the, Marketing in a Data Driven World facilitated discussion. Also see our full menu of services that are available at no cost to Oracle Marketing Cloud customers.

Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Melissa McConnell, Marketing Advisor, Oracle Marketing Cloud. Melissa is driven and enthusiastic about implementing technology and marketing automation to take sales and marketing processes to a higher standard. As a Marketing Advisor for Oracle Eloqua, she brings over 10 years of marketing experience to help customers along their modern marketing journeys, guiding them with real-world experiences to help untangle complexities and get the most out of their marketing automation investment. Connect with Melissa on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/melissamcconnell/en.