Are you REALLY leveraging individualised insights?

Teradata Connect 2015 finished less than a month ago in the inspiring Wembley Stadium. The speeches have sparked so much interest it has made this Connect one of our most successful in the last ten years. This year, a key theme was evident throughout the majority of the presentations: the need for companies to understand and optimise the customer journey through “individualised insights” – a strategy of which many marketers still don’t get the real value.

Marketing has to become more of a connection with clients, rather than a univocal communication made of bulk campaigns.  Omni-channel marketing is the new black, only through the integration of online and offline channels it will be possible to start a real, relevant and valuable conversation with consumers.   

Marketers are overwhelmed by a vast number of requests and requirements coming both from inside and outside their companies – LT and clients respectively want to know: which data is essential to collect? And once obtained, which should be used for a good marketing campaign? How do you recognise how many and which pieces of data need to be labeled as “individualised insights”? As Lisa Arthur, Teradata Marketing Applications CMO, reiterated in her articles on Teradata Applications blog, “individualised insights are made possible by data-driven marketing, the strategy of collecting, connecting and analysing large amounts of online and offline data, so that cross-channel insights can be used to create interactions tailored to each customer, at his or her point of need and in real-time”.   

In a scenario that sees

- 247 billion emails sent every day around the world

- 5 billion smartphones in 2017

- 50 billion connected devices

- 4.5 billion of social users¹  

It is important that brands are ready to accommodate the increasing number of leads, but most of all, are able to engage and keep their audience loyal and engaged. Consumers are more and more connected and aware that the power is in their hands. Through Omni-Channel Marketing it’s possible to track users’ activity both online and offline and act upon consequently, as well as offer a consistent and valuable experience to all clients thanks to data. Even well established brands own a vast amount of data but are not able to integrate and use it appropriately. This can be due to a lack of appropriate technology or dedicated teams. Rusty Warner, Principal Analyst serving Customer Insights at Forrester Research, has listed some useful tips helping you to succeed in today’s Marketing ever-changing environment:

- Define a real-time strategy based on customer needs

- Align customer-centric resources and business processes

- Collaborate on your firm’s business technology agenda

- Establish a foundation for data, analytics, and measurement

- Integrate enterprise marketing technologies²

Once knowledgable teams, technology and channels have been integrated into a company, Lisa Arthur underlines how marketers should see the future of marketing campaigns, defining a precise difference between mere “personalisation” and “individualisation”:

- Individualised insights are intimate: Marketing is leaving the era of broadcasting mass messages to audiences, and now has the technology to enable brands and consumers to develop partnerships and – in the best-case scenario – create the ultimate, intimate customer experience.

- Individualised insights integrate all relevant data: personalised marketing doesn’t require much data. You don’t need much sophistication to add a name to the top of an email or send out a “Happy Birthday” discount. However, to deliver more relevant and timely interactions – e.g. knowing that a customer prefers free shipping as opposed to a discount or reaching out via SMS when a customer nears one of your brick and mortar locations, you’ll need to tear down silos, integrate all the touchpoints, analyse all the data and then act on those insights.

- Individualised insights give customers want they want, not what they expect: Mass personalisation is polite and there’s no doubt that customers now expect you to know them at this very fundamental level. Individualised insights take your marketing campaigns to a completely new level. With individualised insights you’re able to give customers what they want, not just what they expect. Your customers want you to understand their preferences and behaviours, and they want you to use those insights to deliver meaningful, timely interactions.   

It’s in this context that Teradata Marketing Applications enables marketers to be consistent across digital and off-line channels, provide relevant and engaging content, deliver value at the appropriate time, and spark continuous cycles of interaction. Everything is made possible thanks to individualised insights. 

When the customer, brand and marketer are aligned, the customer experience is optimised, and you can move far beyond mere personalisation to true individualisation.    

This article is a summary of Teradata’s newsletter “Inside Digital Marketing”. If this article was forwarded to you as a recommendation and you wish to receive further marketing news yourself, you can subscribe here.  

¹ John Timmerman’s "The four essential truths of real-time customer engagement"

² Rusty Warner’s "Making Real-Time Contextual Marketing A Reality"