MarkLives’ digital agony uncle @DigitalGrandad1 is now taking questions on all issues digital. Tweet them to him or email DigitalGrandad@marklives.com.
Dear Grandpa – does size matter?
I was hoping you could help me demystify the topic around ‘Data and Big Data’. We are a high street retail brand and run a loyalty program and have over 520,000 records in our database that run monthly campaigns with little conversion – but my CEO attended a few conference recently and feels we are not doing enough, don’t have enormous amounts of data and we should be thinking big data. In truth I am not sure what it all means and quite frankly feeling quite insecure. I need to report back next week and advise on what is Big Data. Help.
Regards
Mr Insecure
Dear Insecure
“Big data is huge, its enormous, it’s gigantic, in-fact it so bloody big, its scaring the living daylights out of marketers, sending shivers down CTO’s & CMO’s backs, making some break out in a cold sweat and leaving them feeling very inadequate umm”
But, please don’t be insecure – your not alone! You must have heard the saying “size matters”, but let me tell you son, size doesn’t matter! It’s what you do with it that counts! So lets equip you with the intelligence to verify what you have is good and that you are taking the right steps in what you are doing with your data – let alone if it is big or small data and in doing so, demystifying your huge data Syndrome.
Did you know, everyday, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data–so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone”.
Lets first take a look at the definition of Big Data by my dear old friend Wikipedia:
Big data[1][2] is the term for a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage,[3] search, sharing, transfer, analysis,[4] and visualization. The trend to larger data sets is due to the additional information derivable from analysis of a single large set of related data, as compared to separate smaller sets with the same total amount of data, allowing correlations to be found to “spot business trends, determine quality of research, prevent diseases, link legal citations, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions.”[5][6][7]
Light-my pipe backwards Wiki! Even I got confused when I digested the above… what are they on about? So lets be serious for a few mins and summarize what they are saying in English and look at what big data is made up of?
“data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time.”
So big data maybe defined in many ways, by many different people and therefore it’s not surprising it is confusing people. In Grandad’s laymen terms, to me Big Data is like any other data, small, tiny, big, enormous, giganticor whatever size it is. Data is data. We have been gathering data for hundred of years (yes it is now growing at a phenomenal rate and the opportunities are unthinkable). But it’s not a new phenomenon or something that hasn’t been done before at a basic level. In-fact data has been used statistically by veteran marketers and data planners for decades (correctly and incorrectly), from the early days of stamp coupon data, through to direct mail, driving business CRM models, loyalty programs and tactical eMarketing through to visualization of trends, and predictions of change in behaviour.
Grandad’s Data falls into three parts:
- Gathering data – where and what data is being gathered by your organization across all touch-points from traditional techniques, digitals sources, through to transactional data and even third party appended data.
- Storing data – How is the data once gathered being processed to give you a true holistic view of your customer base, including data hygiene processes to ensure the quality and view is correct
- Data Mining – Once gathered and stored, what intelligence can be mined to drive insightful intelligence to data driven marketing.
In the old days when data was tiny compared to big data being gathered today and at the rate it is being gathered, one thing is becoming even more prevalent and clear is that every business needs to think about data and its power to drive data-driven marketing. Not doing so will be at your businesses detriment. This is NOT new. But you need to have a data strategy not a data size strategy:
- why you want to gather data
- how the data will be gathered across your business internally and externally
- How the data is going to be mined and analyzed
- How these insights will be used to drive more data-driven marketing
- How ongoing learning’s will be feedback to refine the journey ongoing
So son, it’s not about the size of data you are gathering but how you are using it. To me it sounds like you have started to gather data and use it to run campaigns. That to me is so 2000 (as my kids would say), the power of data has always been there. It the intelligence you add to it that gives you the power.
“DigitalGrandads #TopTweetTips to improve your security”
- understanding what data you really have,
- the quality of the data
- how old is the data
- identifying if your base are dormant vs active
- what is the value of your base
- appending segmentation models e.g. high value records vs. low
- Analysing your base through data mining – what insights can you learn for example who is responding, what are the attributes and triggers, can these learning’s be applied to improve your next campaigns
So before you start thinking about big data, tell your CEO your first step is better understanding your current data and setting an over-all data strategy. Then open the floodgates and think about big data with a sound solid foundation.
Happy data-mining Mr Secure.
– DigitalGrandad is a Marketing Professional with over 140 dog years of practical digital experience working with both global and local brands. From SME’s through to Multinational’s and across industry sectors he has seen and embraced the changes technology has given to us to better our lives. Yes he remembers the old days, but is now a firm traDigitalist born through traditional marketing.
If you have a digital dilemma and are too afraid to ask your boss or your agency, but feel you need to ask for some straight no-nonsense advice, please email me at DigitalGrandad@marklives.com with your question, or better still tweet to @digitalgrandad1. I’ll answer one every week on MarkLives.com.
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