ICS Blog RSSFive Ways to Create a Data-Driven Marketing Culture
A recent blog post really helps to reinforce a core ICS discipline that we dialogue with customers about all the time: Data-driven Marketing. I guess the thing that I would like to reinforce from the article is that getting started in this process doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor. While the article references extremely solid yet costly software platforms, a simple step such as a customer profile can provide a significant amount of customer insight and be extremely cost effective.
While there are a lot of solid solutions available today, I will take our MarketSmart Insight Consumer profile as an example. Priced at less than $1,000, you can profile your customer data against over 20 key consumer demographics / psychographics. The profile also creates a penetration index for each element … comparing your customer base to a random population sample.
While it is hard to imagine that such a small investment can make an impact, we have proven the value here time-and-time again. An additional benefit is that typically you will find that this investment will also have a shelf-life of two to three years.
Increased customer insight can improve your targeted marketing performance in the following areas:
- Reveal key areas of marketing opportunity: High penetration index areas can be excellent marketing sectors to target
- Make your offer / creative more relevant: By gaining a clearer picture of what your customers look like (all too many times clients think they know, but are incorrect), you can align your marketing to be more relevant and effective.
- Improve targeting performance: Once again, high penetration index areas can provide extremely valuable intelligence for targeting purposes. For example, set up some tests for your next prospecting campaign that target based on your strongest index areas.
I thought the blog post was an excellent and succinct overview of the path we have taken many clients down. With today’s technology, you don’t have to be a multi-million dollar organization to take steps in this direction. Give us a call if we can provide some advice in this area for your organization.
