According to a recent study from Validity, 44% of respondents estimated their company loses more than 10% of their annual revenue due to poor quality CRM data. Even more, the companies surveyed reported they lose customers, blow new business deals and delay revenue-driving initiatives like marketing and brand awareness campaigns thanks to subpar data.
The Data Gold Rush
The last decade has witnessed a rush on data. Every click, call, text, transaction — consumers provide vast amounts of data that could be used to create lasting value for brands and their customers. But too often, this wealth of opportunity goes wasted as untapped potential.
Most of this it is dirty data— out-of-date, incomplete, incorrect or duplicated. It’s coming in fragmented from a variety of sources and multiple clouds and it’s constantly changing, making it increasingly difficult to discover, manage and derive intelligence. This means many companies are missing out on amazing opportunities before they’re even aware of them.
However, the real reason isn’t necessarily the ‘dirty data’. The truth is, customer data will always be messy. The idea that it can be ‘cleaned up’ is a costly distraction. While the organization is busy trying to tidy the data, processes remain inefficient, employees continue having a heavier lift and customer experience remains clunky.
So, instead of trying to ‘clean’ the data, organizations need the right technology. They need technology that takes a flexible approach to gathering and matching data and can account for its ever-changing nature – allowing organizations to (finally) put their data to work.
The Wider Business Impact of Messy Data
Customer data is always coming from different sources and in different formats. And it’s constantly evolving as people move through life. Therefore, it’s natural for data to be disorderly. Brands that don’t embrace that fact suffer needlessly. The act of constantly trying to ‘clean’ their data takes the focus off the things that truly matter – teamwork, productivity, employee satisfaction, customer service and the bottom line to name a few.
The True Cost of Not Getting Identity Resolution Right
By wrangling ‘messy data’, brands continue to miss the mark. They end up treating their customers like strangers – and it’s costing them big. Consider this: When you have multiple versions of the same people in your database, you end up spending on duplicate marketing messages. At first thought, it may not seem like a big deal. However, on closer inspection, you’ll see that if you spend $10 million a year on targeted marketing but have a 25% duplication rate in your customer data, which is not uncommon, then you’re wasting $2.5 million – that’s a very big deal.
On top of being a big blow to the budget, customer service also suffers. Without a clear, unified view of your customer; you’re building marketing campaigns and providing service based on incomplete and possibly inaccurate information. If you can’t see your customers as complete people, it’s hard to make them feel understood. Even more, personalization suffers. Part of personalization is delivering your customers what they want when they need it, which means you have to know and understand those preferences. Duplicate data only muddies the waters. Nowadays, people expect good personalization. And if brands get it wrong, they’ll quickly move on to the brand that can get it right.
Don’t Fight It, Work With It!
When brands and organizations stop fighting against ‘messy data’ and start working with it, great things begin to happen for the business, employees and customers. Take a look:
For the business: Improve ROI from both technology and marketing
- Reduced programmatic on-boarding fees
- Improved advertising match rates and cost per customer acquisition
- Eliminate duplicate household direct mail
- Confidently target new, high-value audiences
- Not paying to acquire customers you already have
For employees: Allows you to work smarter, not harder
- Improved marketer productivity with direct data access
- Cheering for point & click segmentation
- Eliminating the analytics query queue
- Liberating analysts to focus on highest impact work
- Boosted confidence with transparent, record-level access
For customers: Feel known, supported and rewarded
- Relevant and more effective customer journeys
- Driving repeated purchases & growing average order value
- Boosted conversions with personalized suggestions
- Growing loyalty membership with personalized messages
- Measuring what’s working across precise sub-audiences
Identity Resolution for the Win
Identity (ID) resolution is the process of connecting and matching different data points across multiple devices and channels to form a unified view of a single customer. It allows brands to connect the dots between their ‘messy data’ to form a complete picture of an actual person. ID resolution holds the key to treating your customers like the unique individuals they are, setting the stage for happy, repeat customers and no wasted money on duplicate marketing.
That’s why getting ID resolution right is the cornerstone of any brand’s success. When all departments across the company have the same access to customer information in real-time, customers are guaranteed a seamless journey at every touch-point – whether that’s online, in-store or with customer service.
When it comes to the impending deprecation of third-party cookies, ID resolution emerges as a valuable resource. By building a hearty, privacy-compliant, first-party data set, ID resolution provides a buffer against increasingly strict privacy policies that limit the use of third-party data. And even more, it helps improve marketing performance and ROI too with smart segmentation, which helps brands cut down on redundancies.
However, ID resolution can be a tough nut for brands to crack. But, with the right technology that can provide a strong customer ID foundation, brands can build the most accurate and comprehensive view of their customers and grow their business.
Winning Customers’ Hearts and Minds
With the goal of inspiring everyone to run longer, faster and farther; Brooks always talked about putting the runner first, but it came up short on the insights needed to take action. Without a single view of the customer, the brand struggled to identify their needs and personalize effectively.
Data was stuck in silos and lacked both the accuracy and speed required for the team to move fast. The brand needed a unified view of the runner, so it could put its customer-centric mindset into practice and provide the right products and offerings.
By positioning Amperity, the only CDP that takes a comprehensive approach to helping brands use data to serve their customers at the center of their tech stack, the Brooks team created a Customer 360 that could be used across the enterprise.
It unlocked Brook’s ability to put its runner-centric mindset into action. By applying insights to its digital marketing efforts, Brooks was able to create different audience segments, run tests within its marketing communications and use personalization to put its best foot forward, ensuring runners’ needs were met. With ‘clean data’, every team from digital marketing to customer service and operations had the insights and tools needed to position the runner at the center of the strategy – fueling personalization and accelerating business growth.
“Amperity is crucial to our tech stack. In order for us to have a 360 view of the runner and then use runner data for analytics and marketing segmentation, a CDP is necessary. Our tech stack is always changing and very dynamic, so the ease of plugging in partners is also critical,” says Melanie Allen, Chief Marketing Officer at Brooks Running. [When it comes to metrics] we sit around the table and sometimes question, are these even real? Our click-through rate on paid search has gone up 260% since starting with Amperity.”
3 Data strategies to leapfrog the competition
Power the entire organization with a customer 360 view
Customer data isn’t just for marketers. After building a unified customer database, that data is then available to advertisers, marketers, analysts, IT operations teams and product developers. This is precisely what it means to be customer-centric — using your customer data to inform all aspects of the business, not a single channel or department.
When everyone shares the same understanding of customers, the business is equipped to provide the best experiences and the most impactful strategies for long-term growth.
Build a best-of-breed martech stack
Brands often think they’re gaining efficiencies by using a single technology provider as their end-to-end solution for collecting, unifying and actioning on customer data. But the hefty price tags, archaic business models, slow-moving teams and behind-the-curve tech negate any perceived benefits associated with using a single vendor.
Instead, winning teams build best-of-breed stacks. This gives them the flexibility to customize their ecosystem based on their unique needs, and it also allows them to cherry-pick the leaders in each category, even as they change over time.
Take a leap with new technologies
More often than not, winning brands are trailblazers, offering new experiences, products or ways of engaging with their customers. This will inevitably involve some level of calculated risk. Playing it safe when it comes to technology is actually just the opposite. A wait-and-see approach means losing competitive advantage and lets early adopters reap outsized rewards and create insurmountable leads.
Brands mitigate risks by hiring a forward-thinking head of IT or an experienced Chief Innovation Officer whose job is to understand and vet the latest innovations. They also avoid the trap of the DIY approach, opting for outside teams of experts when the problems are new and difficult.
How Customer Data Powers Today’s Enterprises
Marketing: Grow the business by winning new customers and keeping them. Orchestrate cross-channel journeys, enroll customers in loyalty programs and unlock marketing that delights customers with real-time experiences.
IT: Give other teams direct access to data for exploration in a single, merged Customer 360 database. Integrate new data sources and protect customer privacy.
C-Suite: Get a clear view of customer metrics that let you see how your business is really doing, like how many customers you have and how valuable they are to your brand.
Digital: Strategic marketing to personalize digital experience across web and mobile apps. Coordinate consistent touch-points and get a real understanding of ROI.
Finance: Forecast based on historical and predictive customer lifetime value. Use customer metrics for M&A analysis.
Customer Service: Give customers more personalized service based on real-time access to their full history of interactions with the brand, including special experiences for your best customers.
Products & Experiences: Plan and refine products and services based on how customers engage with your brand, anticipating needs and friction points.
Analytics: Build business intelligence dashboards, measure performance, run models and predictive analytics, strategize segmentation and find customer insights. Make strategic recommendations to help the business grow.
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