The age of Digital Transformation is over. The last great shift was about “going digital”. The next great shift is about “getting smart”.
AI, machine learning, and smart automation will drive 70% of GDP growth over the next decade. In this new “Machine Economy“, data will continue to increase in both volume and value, and many data teams are already struggling to keep up. But where do marketing teams fit into all of this?
Well, this exploding amount of data can actually bode well for marketers.
By leveraging important, meaningful data, marketing teams can get to know their audience better, personalise customers’ experience, and ultimately, meet the goals that are going to increase ROI. There is no doubt that data can be used to put together an effective brand strategy that fuels the overall growth of the brand.
That all sounds great, right? But where is the proof that these data-empowered strategies work?
To celebrate its 20th birthday, the travel company took personalisation to a whole new level. In one campaign, EasyJet used the travel history of each of its customers to create a personalised experience. They used historical customer data to do this, for example, looking at when they first travelled with the airline to make predictions about where they were likely to go next. They used highly personalised emails in the campaign, and curated copy based on 28 data sources. The result? The open rates from this campaign were 100% more than their typical newsletters, along with a 25% higher CTR. Impressive, right?
The beauty giant is all about personalisation – their website is set up to show the customer what they want. From product discovery tools to customised loyalty rewards, it’s no wonder Sephora is so successful. Their homepage displays recommended products to each customer, and the entire selection uses data based on their past purchases and browsing activity. In addition, they have a section on the homepage that shows its newly released products in the “new for you” feed of recommendations, personalising the experience even further. These are just a few of the data-empowered marketing strategies that have led to its success.
Under Armour is another brand that uses data at the core of its marketing campaigns. They take data from the their own app and fitness community to tap into customers’ behaviours and create their marketing strategies accordingly. Their online fitness community has over 200 million users, with an insane amount of data available – Under Armour gathers insights from users who have purchased health-tracking devices, as well as their activity in fitness apps, such as MyFitnessPal. So, when it comes to curating campaigns, the brand can, yet again, personalise the user experience – they use the data available to determine how often they should message the customer, at what times, and what products they should offer. Meaning that customer engagement is higher, as is the ROI.
And finally, of course, we have Netflix. The streaming service uses data processing software, as well as traditional BI tools, and open-source solutions, to gather and store information about their consumers. This helps the brand focus on what to promote to specific viewers – most notably the “Recommended for You” section. As a result, the service sees a high engagement rate with “Netflix Original” series and films – the service actually renews 93% of its original series! This directly contributes to increased revenue, viewership, and of course engagement.
What are you waiting for?
When used correctly, marketing analytics are an extremely useful resource that helps maximise your ROI, improves the performance of your campaigns AND results in happier customers. Of course, implementing this is easier said than done. Knowing what data to pull together, investigating what it’s telling you, and then drawing out actionable insights from it takes time and a lot of effort, if you do it manually.
Here at Cloud Cover IT, we can help make this process more efficient and productive by implementing TimeXtender. TimeXtender is a data estate builder that fully automates the data management process. That means no more time wasted manually collating high volumes of data from different sources and creating overly complicated reports. Instead, you can focus on using your newfound understanding of your customers to build meaningful campaigns that generate results.
If you’d like to learn more about TimeXtender, please email sales@cloudcoverit.co.uk .