Data is the Key to More Engaging Relationships with Your Customers

In today's age, when a consumer goes to purchase an item, she is faced with an unprecedented level of choice. Purchase in-store or online? Name brand or generic? Local store or big box retailer? Coupled with the number of channels brands have to reach a consumer during and outside of purchasing time, it is no surprise that consumers show a limited threshold for the amount of attention they give to brands.

Consumers have neither the time nor the energy to absorb every message that companies deliver to them each day. There is simply too much information out there to digest it all at any given time. This makes it critical for brands to create unique, timely, and personalized experiences with each engagement to capture the consumer's attention and generate sales.

Marketing leaders are faced with a perfect storm of business, consumer, and technological change that is exponentially increasing the complexity of every single marketing activity. In this new business environment, marketers need to rethink existing processes and embrace data, technology, and content to deliver more meaningful customer experiences.

Without the right data, however, it is impossible to deliver this type of consumer experience. According to a recent CMO Club study, only 13% of CMOs surveyed said they are able to truly deliver a personalized and engaging customer experience across channels. In order to address this challenge and tailor content and experiences to individual customers, marketers need to be able to listen to and capture contextual and behavioral data across social, mobile, web, email, video, and other digital channels, and combine this with relevant data from their “offline” behavior.

By capturing and leveraging the right data, it is easier than ever for marketers to deliver a personalized and engaging customer experience across channels. Delivering this level of engagement to your buyers opens the door to meaningful, engaging relationships.

At the end of the day though, modern marketing is not about gathering as much data as possible. There is no silver bullet when it comes to collecting and using data. Ultimately, marketers must develop a strategy that is centered on using the right data, in the right way, in the right channels, at the right time.

If marketers can achieve this level of targeting, they have a chance to capture the consumer's increasingly scarce attention and turn them into a repeat customer. Without this type of focus, however, brands will find their messages fall on deaf ears as consumers face an avalanche of information.

This post appears in The Attention Economy from LookbookHQ. Read more from other marketing experts in this interactive ebook.

Learn how to start thinking about using data in your own marketing to connect and build relationships with customers by downloading the Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Data Management today.