Companies are collecting more data than ever and for good reason.
According to a report from McKinsey, data-driven nurse database organizations are 23x more likely to acquire customers and 6x more likely to retain customers. This is one of the biggest marketing challenges.
A 2018 survey of US decision-makers by Verndale found that data and analytics were the most important emerging technology for enhancing the customer experience.
92% of marketing professionals see personalization as a “crucial” element of the customer experience.
The ever-increasing amount of data that companies collect puts them in a position to deliver a better experience to each of their customers and simulate 1-on-1 experiences through marketing automation.
But the increased data collection comes with challenges of its own. As companies collect more data, tasks that used to be simple become more complex. Sending a newsletter broadcast out to your email list becomes increasingly risky to your brand reputation as your popularity grows. The stakes are raised. Data errors, irregularities, and improper formatting threaten to break the personalization veil and tarnish your brand in the eyes of interested prospects.
Let’s take a look at some of the most common challenges marketers face:
Connecting Disconnected Platforms
Maintaining a Single Customer View
Avoiding Too Much Focus on Data Expansion
Data Quality and Cleanliness
Tracking the Right Data Quality Metrics
Your Marketing Operations Data Swiss-Army Knife
1. Connecting Disconnected Platforms
In the last decade, we have seen an explosion in martech software availability. That explosion in new tech has led to some of the biggest marketing challenges.
It seems like every day there is a new tool launched to a shower of industry hype. That hype is present for good reason, too — the average company’s marketing tech stack today is several times more powerful than what the same company was likely using a decade ago.
What does this mean? Migration, and lots of it. Both in terms of companies moving to new platforms as well as migrating and syncing data between them.
This means that companies with a bit of history are likely to have several systems (some of them likely legacy systems) strung together with what amounts to digital duct tape and glue. Those old systems and platforms may have an array of scripts, processes, and custom development attached to them that make them too difficult for a company to realistically leave behind.
Now they’re faced with the problem of connecting those older platforms and systems to the shiny new platforms that they so desperately want to use.
