Marketers, breathe a sigh of relief—we truly all do have the same challenges, and no one is doing it perfectly. This sentiment came to mind during The Future of Data, a recent Brand Innovators roundtable I moderated. All panelists were from household names across industries and share the goal of protecting and preserving first-party data and building a complete view of the customer.
While each of their journeys is unique, we heard some recurring themes on how to successfully build or evolve an enterprise data strategy to better understand and engage with audiences:
1. Teamwork is essential
A senior marketer at a beverage company built a task force including IT, analytics, marketing, and other departments in her team’s quest to understand the data and technology they have access to and what they are used for to minimize duplication. Doing so helped them to identify not only where they could build and enrich, but also expose potential problems that they could actively mitigate. “There can be a lot of landmines out there that are hard to uncover and become very costly.”
2. Speak marketing, not data
In keeping with the theme of cross-team collaboration, many speakers highlighted the need to “speak marketing, not data.”
An analytics leader from an outdoor clothing company shared an anecdote from his experience. His marketers were resistant to the idea of sending customers post-purchase emails that included recommendations for products similar or complementary to what they recently purchased, similar to emails sent by big box retailers. The marketers felt that sending an email with products auto-populated into a template didn’t fit their image as a leading name in adventure clothing. To get internal buy-in and a more brand-appropriate approach, he and his team learned to build models that create activity interest versus product interest. By presenting products in a context their audience segments would identify with—hiking, skateboarding, mountaineering, etc.—consumers could start to identify the company’s brands and products with activities they love.
“What we get is a brand love story. We market to people most likely to engage with us, and then hopefully they buy the stuff,” he said.
3. Create a data-driven culture
This advice may sound obvious, but like any aspect of company culture, everyone needs to embrace being data driven in order for it to take root.
A senior marketer at a luxury brand addressed this challenge by creating five charts inclusive of the metrics that matter most to the executive team and stakeholders. When everyone has access to the same data and agrees on success metrics, they’re able to speak a common language and can help champion the right things.
Enabling teams to collaborate more closely and leverage the same data takes infrastructure that protects data fidelity and consumer privacy while facilitating access. No matter where you are on your data strategy journey, LiveRamp can provide the infrastructure and control to support your needs. For more on how LiveRamp works, reach out to us now.