Data analytics helps you to determine how, why, what, and when trends for your customers.
The information you gather daily is enormous; however, so half the data analytics battle is understanding what you need to focus on—and what is less important to note. (A topic we pretty much covered in the first of this two-part blog series.)
1. Use Automation to Deliver Truly Personalized Experiences
Simple data segmentation based upon easily defined demographics, such as gender and location, won’t give you the upper hand when it comes to user experience.
For example, Facebook has over 50 gender identity allocations to date. You can be male, female, two-spirit, or a whole host of other identities. Identity is a personal—sometimes fluid—choice and understanding the nuances of each is essential to delivering that stellar customer experience you’re after.
Keeping track of these huge changes (and the multiple new categories for segmentation of your data) is nigh impossible—if you’re trying to do it manually.
Marketing automation software, however, can tap into your customer relationship management (CRM) software and learn new customer trends for you. The reports generated will help you to develop significant insight into the most niche of customer bases.
2. Implement Shoppable Media
Customers want things provided to them on a plate. They don’t want to leave the site they’re on to find the product they’ve seen advertised on another site.
That’s where shoppable media comes in. One click on an Instagram post, for example, will add the product directly to a user’s cart—without having to leave the app.
Use the data you gather from your shoppable media elements to determine more precise segments to target. You may find that only a certain age group or gender responds to your adverts, for example. This will help you to tailor your content to improve future sales conversions.
3. Don’t Forget to Be Human
Chatbots and marketing automation-triggered emails are incredibly useful for answering common questions from customers in no time at all. You don’t want your customer to feel like a second of their time is wasted, so there is a place for bots and artificial intelligence in your strategy.
However, it’s important to do two things.
First: Learn over time. Too many businesses “set and forget” their automations, whether it be bots or marketing automation. It’s very rare that anyone can pinpoint the correct language, rhythm, and cadence for communications the first time out. For that reason, you need to test, adjust, and learn as your automations are continuing.
Second: Always have a human form of contact too. This isn’t just about delivering great customer service when the bots don’t have the answer. Speaking to customers in real life provides a depth of qualitative data that is often missing from data-driven strategies.
Real conversations with your customers will help you to define the parameters of your automated elements too.
You can use this information to improve your automated elements—such as introducing more natural speech patterns to your emails—to ensure customers feel more valued at the same time.
4. Go for Quality Over Quantity
Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, recently stated that follower counts are “meaningless.” That’s why an update in November 2018 moved the focus away from follow counts; the number isn’t as important as the quality of engagement.
The rise of micro-influencers on social media is another great example of the “quality over quantity” marketing approach. Online personalities with fewer but more engaged followers are making big bucks for brands because customers trust them.
Instead of desperately attempting to claw followers from anywhere and everywhere, your data analysis focus should be on how many of those people are engaging with your brand.
5. Start Smart
When you discover that there are many ways to improve your marketing success with things like automation, it’s easy to miss the importance of data you already have.
The best way to start a new data-driven marketing strategy in 2019—that’s guaranteed to improve your profits without increasing your annual spend—is a research project.
For that, you need the experts. You need people who know what to look for in your hoard of data, and how to use what you already have to develop the building blocks of your strategy.
This is something we’ve helped many big-name brands with—and we can help you too. Contact us today to talk through your data research and analytics needs and get started on the best year your marketing team has ever seen.
Learn more about Austin Williams’ digital marketing services, including paid search, search engine optimization (SEO), paid and organic social media, and programmatic media – complete with tracking, analysis and reporting (because we’re all about outcomes).
Contact us to see how our strategic approach can give your brand the digital edge.
