Taking Your Company to the Next Level with Data-Driven Marketing

If you’ve had a chance to check out some of the exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com over the past cou­ple of weeks, you know that data-dri­ven mar­ket­ing has been a hot top­ic on many mar­keters’ minds. With more tech­nol­o­gy at their dis­pos­al, many organ­i­sa­tions are cap­tur­ing cus­tomer data, but what to do with it all? Uncov­er­ing action­able insights from the over­whelm­ing amount of data is a huge chal­lenge; still, there’s no doubt that data-dri­ven strate­gies pro­vide many prof­itable oppor­tu­ni­ties and ben­e­fits to an organization.

CMO.com had the chance to sit down with Jim Berra, CMO of Roy­al Caribbean Inter­na­tion­al, for an exclu­sive inter­view. Berra shared a bit about how his com­pa­ny uses data to iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth. A Roy­al Caribbean cruise is, of course, all about the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, and data helps Berra and his team to under­stand which parts of the expe­ri­ence are res­onat­ing most with cus­tomers. Ana­lyz­ing data in this way helps the com­pa­ny spend mon­ey more wise­ly. Berra also gave some insight on his “fail fast” mar­ket­ing philosophy.

Neil Evans, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor for Occam, shared how to uti­lize data to bet­ter dri­ve mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. Accord­ing to Evans, organ­i­sa­tions that want to accu­rate­ly mea­sure per­for­mance of their cam­paigns need to not only gath­er infor­ma­tion about cus­tomers, but also ana­lyze and under­stand it. He sug­gest­ed look­ing at infor­ma­tion gath­ered and con­sid­er­ing “where it comes from, and when and how you receive it.” Refin­ing the use­ful infor­ma­tion and shred­ding the unwant­ed attrib­ut­es will help you to put togeth­er an accu­rate cus­tomer view, which will help you to devel­op the shape and struc­ture of your next campaign.

For many organ­i­sa­tions, the ulti­mate goal of data acqui­si­tion is per­son­al­i­sa­tion. Ben Salmon, Founder of Attribut­e­ly, shared his thoughts on the “anato­my of a per­son­al­i­sa­tion pro­gramme.” Per­son­al­i­sa­tion begins with record­ing every­one who vis­its an organisation’s web­site, but Salmon chal­lenges mar­keters to keep data acces­si­ble and define four key ele­ments for each piece of data. Once data is ana­lyzed and com­pared, the final piece of the puz­zle is to deliv­er per­son­alised con­tent to the customer.

Mon­i­ca Savut, Senior Research Man­ag­er at Econ­sul­tan­cy, shared some impor­tant lessons on data-dri­ven mar­ket­ing from key mar­ket­ing lead­ers. Mar­ket­ing goals are a high pri­or­i­ty for top-per­form­ing organ­i­sa­tions and many are using data-dri­ven strate­gies to move for­ward in their jour­neys toward dig­i­tal matu­ri­ty. Tech­nol­o­gy and col­lab­o­ra­tion play impor­tant roles, as does the inte­gra­tion of mobile mar­ket­ing strategies.

Romek Jansen, Founder of Board­view, shared an area where data and clear goals can be vital­ly impor­tant. Because agile mar­ket­ing teams often out­per­form tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing teams, many CMOs want to adopt agile mar­ket­ing strate­gies. Accord­ing to Jansen, many mar­ket­ing depart­ments need to become more val­ue dri­ven than task dri­ven. Becom­ing an agile CMO means devel­op­ing clear goals and com­mu­ni­cat­ing those goals to the team. Agile CMOs empow­er their teams, cre­at­ing val­ue for both the organ­i­sa­tion and the cus­tomers they serve.

We hope you’ll engage with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com and let us know what you think.