Author: Randy Antin / Source: Entrepreneur Tune in April 7 and find out how to provide stellar customer care with social media in our fre
Tune in April 7 and find out how to provide stellar customer care with social media in our free webinar. Register Now »
Few companies can connect the dots when managing their massive amounts of customer information. According to research by Econsultancy and Ensighten, only 10 percent of marketers have successfully aggregated data from social, web analytics, customer purchase history and in-store visits and sales.
Even the necessary centralization of that data is becoming more difficult. In a recent CMO Council study, 44 percent of marketers said they believe data aggregation is crucial for completing their picture of the customer experience. Even if an organization stores, collects and aggregates all of its own site’s data, it still has a limited view of consumer behavior.
Most marketers don’t observe customers’ online activity beyond their own sites. According to Teradata, 87 percent of marketers believe data is a valuable yet largely underused tool.
Now is the time to start unleashing its full potential.
A lack of aggregation harms consumer relationships
Without a holistic view of the customer experience, conversion funnels are inefficient. Marketers who truly know their customers can better cater to their needs, convert them and then identify opportunities to upsell and cross-sell them.
For example, if an online retailer knows a customer liked a specific product on Facebook and made a similar purchase before, it can provide personalized messaging and product filtering on its site and provide relevant promo codes. Customers are getting used to this type of customized experience thanks to suggestion mechanisms such as those on Amazon and Netflix. Failure to analyze data properly leads to a lack of accurate customization options, putting the user experience at risk.
I’ve learned that aggregating data is a fundamental step toward understanding customers. At Gap, I worked with various teams and agencies to combine paid search performance data with in-store retail purchase activity from our customers. Matching in-store transactions to paid online search activity allowed us to properly measure ROI regardless of where customers purchased and see how our online activity boosted in-store sales. Then, we expanded customer outreach by focusing on programs we may have shied away from previously.
Now that I’m at Jumpshot, my team uses clickstream data to set up KPI touchpoints across the internet. In today’s cookie- and pixel-driven digital world, it’s easy to measure reach, impressions, clicks and the resulting conversion events on a company’s own site.
But what about companies such as Intel that primarily…
COMMENTS