Eighty-five percent of B2B marketers feel they can get more out of their marketing automation platforms *. But that is only possible if the data processed in it has a clear structure. Effective data management is the foundation of your marketing success.
Marketing Automation is a fantastic way to automatically send necessary customer information on the one hand and on the other hand to play individual content on different channels. But a prerequisite for a successful marketing automation strategy lies in the quality of your content and your data. We have already explained the first one here and here. Today I would like to discuss the second with my colleague Ilona Jaskolka.
Marketing Automation and Marketing Performance stands and falls with data management.
What is meant by data management?
The data management in the true sense covers all processes and measures to define, structure, collect, organize, store and process data. It also includes a regular review and evaluation of the data and the derivation of recommendations for action.
In the first step, data management begins with the definition of the data structure, the definition of which systems interact with each other, and where and in what form the data is collected. Many marketers are aware of why the topic of data quality occurs regularly in marketing automation surveys.
According to an Ascend2 study , the most difficult implementation area of Marketing Automation integration is data management. A survey of insider marketing has meanwhile asked companies about the four success factors of marketing performance. Among the four factors, data cleanliness as well as visibility and reporting were mentioned. For 40% of the companies surveyed, it is a challenge to clean records. Another 9% are aware that their data is in the silo, unstructured and therefore hardly usable.
This means that every 10th company can not use its data at all and even have problems merging related records. Most companies (55%) use data only for reports, but not for advanced analytics. Other surveys also show that successful companies can leverage their data because they are structured and can even use predictive analytics and modeling in all (11%) or some (48%) marketing areas.
Data management is important and complex
So it can be concluded that companies are well aware that data is fundamental to successful marketing, but that preserving a clean database is fraught with some difficulties, especially when various unstructured data has already crept in.
When is a "spring cleaning" of your data worthwhile?
If you have a lot of unstructured data
Unstructured data is "digitized information that can not be assigned anywhere because it has neither metadata nor taxonomies." So a system can not do anything with this data. Under certain circumstances, such data sets can also entail risks if, for example, they contain sensitive information. If they are not categorized, they can not be managed in compliance with data protection laws.
If many of your data is incomplete and you have problems completing it
Personalization comes first when it comes to marketing automation. But this can fail even with the smallest deficits in your database. So it is enough, if not all your contacts contain an assignment for the salutation and already appears instead of the individualized " Good day, Mrs. Schmidt ", the little popular "Good day Mrs. / Mr. Schmidt".
If too many doublets have accumulated
Not every system can handle different spellings or different e-mail addresses for the same contact name. Since in many companies in particular the sales department has manually entered contact data for years, it can quickly happen that small spelling errors or different address data provide for duplicate entries.
If your data is outdated
Contact details are not set in stone. It can always happen that certain contact persons have changed the company, the address or e-mail has changed or a wedding provides for a "new" last name. In an individual case, that's not bad, but outdated data often accumulates and can often be laboriously identified and updated.
Automated processes are often lacking here to identify so-called "hard bounces" (if an e-mail address can no longer be contacted, more about this here). On the one hand, such data can damage your sender reputation and on the other hand obfuscate your evaluation. Of course, if you contact a lot of people, but they have outdated contacts that are no longer active, that obviously falsifies the results of click and open rates.
If the double opt-in is missing
At least since the Basic Data Protection Regulation is final, the topic of the double-opt-in for automated e-mail messages plays a major role. But many companies still have various contacts without DOI for different reasons and do not know how to deal with them.
If you already collect data in different places, but you can not use them
In many places companies ask contact data. But can you access this resource for personalized, automated communication? Do you know in which system, at which point you find what information? Does marketing, sales and service use the same database? Or are you still dealing with individual data silos?
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