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by Prakash Patel (@prakashpatel_1) Data, data everywhere — but what does it really mean to us as marketers when often we only see data as numbers and not insights about our customers?

What I mean by this is that so many businesses gather and hold millions of records, from a growing number of sources and touch-points, without giving any thought as to their value, purpose or what to do with it.

No one the wiser

In this case, data is simply seen as a number of records in a database that is now justifying the large IT systems to hold them. The records are not seen as customers, prospects or even future opportunities. They could either be active, lapsed, dormant or high-value customers vs the norm and no one would be any wiser!

To me, data is one of the most important assets you hold within an organisation on your current customers and/or future prospects — that, if respected and valued, can undoubtedly help you build far deeper engagements, ultimately resulting in sales. However, if done badly, it could also be your Achilles’ heel and could do more damage than good to your brand.

Over the past few months, I’ve discussed the principles behind “data-driven marketing (DDM)”, “how to get strategic” and “building the foundation” — it’s now time to talk about data, the fundamental asset and crux of #DDM. If you are to get any true meaningful insights about your customers through data, then it needs to be fit for purpose and truthful.

Big data, small data, dirty data, clean data and just data!

Today’s businesses have oceans of data available to them from various touch-points — websites, on and offline, loyalty programmes, transactions, social media, customer-service systems, mobile apps etc — all collecting, tracking and logging billions of bytes of data every second. And the phrase “big data and DDM” is revolutionising businesses through the application of principles for mining huge data sets, whereby companies are reaping results and gaining competitive advantages.

For example, if you know more about a prospect’s buying and behaviour patterns than your competitor does, than surely you are at an advantage — if used wisely when targeting.

A data-driven business is all about having a data vision, with the ability to ask business and marketing questions to enable companies to start relevant and personal conversations (and it’s not hard or rocket science — it’s a process that needs to be embedded into your planning cycle).

But, to do that, you need to start with a solid foundation, where data is not just a number of records (fragmented view), but invaluable information on your customers from their perspective (single customer view). Let’s get started.

#Step 3: Data-mining and -interrogation – through a single view

Over the years, I’ve developed various customer experience strategies that looks at a company’s entire eco-system, from IT infrastructure and its database through to customer touch-points, distribution channels and its marketing to understand the entire customer experience.

But, at the heart of this, one of the most crucial modules is data, which is all about the data flow within an organisation — which goes into a lot of detail. However, the most important point is having a data business strategy and knowing why, where and how you are gathering data in the first place, then ensuring it is fit for data-mining and -interrogation and then finally how you intend to use it.

However, my quick cheat-sheet to getting a truthful view of data within an organisation is based upon having a clear data framework, with three crucial tiers, within your organisation (see below), which I believe any organisation needs to think about if it wants to use the data gathered for intelligent DDM purposes.

The three tiers are all about how data is sourced, stored and processed, which can then be data-mined and interrogated to drive more impactful communication through data visualisation and campaign management. So let’s review each of these separately.

Tier 1 — Building the data foundation

This is the oracle of where the data is stored and processed to create a true single view of the customer. Key checks include:

Are you building a database that is fit for marketing (not just for IT)?

How is the data gathered, processed and cleaned (eg data-hygiene processes such as de-duplication)?

Creating a truthful view of your customers is about having a single view of your customers (see example below) that includes, eg one customer who has brought different products, his or her behaviours, transactions etc all appended to one master record holistically vs individually. If this isn’t done correctly, then all future activities in data-mining, interrogation and DDM through tiers two and three will be totally pointless and misleading (becoming your Achilles’ heel).

In the example above, you basically have two different views in how data is seen and interpreted, based upon how it has been processed:

• The fragmented view: sometimes an internal view, when businesses don’t carry out sophisticated data processing but see the same customer as different customers, eg by products, area of business etc (four customers brought one product each and thus have four separate values).
• The true single view: a view where the single truth is found. In this case, the business sees one unique customer and all his or her interactions eg a single customer who has brought four products and is worth four times as much vs the fragmented view.

There are so many ways you can apply this thinking: from a marketing planning perspective, what is the true value of your customers — does this affect how they are managed, contacted, communicated or even classified (are they high or standard value?).

This principle needs to be applied at different levels when building a single-view database; eg it needs to be able to differentiate between individual and household views.

Tier 2 — Data analysis and interrogation

Data without any insights, analysis or interrogation is just data with no meaning, intelligience or value. The art and science of DDM is all about data queries, asking questions, setting hypotheses, data-mining, data-planning and modelling. All seek to unlock valuable insights, eg from identifying cross-selling opportunities through to acquisition or predicting customer behaviour. (Remember the Target case study, from my second column, about data being used to predict if someone were pregnant?)

Tier 3 — Data visualisation and campaign management

The final tier is all about the ability to drive DDM in a more user-friendly, strategic and insightful ways. Two key requirements are important here are:

1. Data visualisation: data on its own or in its raw form may be dull, hard to work with or understand. Data visualisation is all about bringing data to life. Visualising the data can help you understand it better, so you can explore key insights in a more creative and meaningful way.
2. Campaign management: a marketer’s dream is the ability to orchestrate ways to deliver more relevant one-to-one communication across channels. Through campaign-management software, marketers are able to plan and execute far more sophisticated campaigns based upon customer habits, preferences and behaviour in a more intuitive way.

Hopefully the above has now given you some more thought and pointers around the value of data. In my final columns on Five Steps to DDM, I will take a deeper look at data, targeting, response handling, and how to close the loop (cradle-to-grave syndrome).
Happy data mining!

Prakash Patel (@prakashpatel_1) is chief strategy officer at Fogg Experiential Design, a technically-enabled, digitally-led, creatively-inspired, data-driven and strategically-focused design company based in Johannesburg and Cape Town. He has over 25 years of experience in advertising and data planning, a passion for integrated marketing strategies, and believes that the holy grail of marketing has always been — and always will be — data. Prakash contributes the monthly “#3D” (Data-Driven & Digital) column to MarkLives.com, exploring how data-driven and digital marketing can add value to marketing communication.

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