If you want a killer customer experience, start with an effective data strategy

Com­pa­nies seem par­a­lyzed faced with the speed and pow­er of dig­i­tal play­ers like Net­flix, Uber, or Airbnb and the horde of start-ups that are help­ing them dis­rupt the busi­ness of long-estab­lished play­ers. Beyond their veloc­i­ty and agili­ty, it is often their suc­cess at appeal­ing to cus­tomers with an expe­ri­ence rein­vent­ed using new tech­nol­o­gy that makes the dif­fer­ence. In a world where infor­ma­tion is becom­ing more trans­par­ent and more acces­si­ble and trav­els instant­ly from one end of the plan­et to the oth­er with social media, there is a bonus for the play­er offer­ing the cur­rent “killer app.” How­ev­er, behind this seem­ing­ly sim­ple, straight­for­ward suc­cess ulti­mate­ly hides a new data con­trol cul­ture. At a time where every­thing is dig­i­tal, com­pa­nies should urgent­ly re-exam­ine their data strat­e­gy and go on red alert if they do not have one!

Com­pa­nies have to catch up where they’ve fall­en behind in terms of data.

While writ­ing our book, Le Guide de la Trans­for­ma­tion Dig­i­tale [The Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Guide], with Vin­cent Ducrey, we were shocked to dis­cov­er that data is still very poor­ly used with­in large com­pa­nies: scat­tered data gath­ered redun­dant­ly; no back­up; unclean data that had not been updat­ed, ver­i­fied, or even used. The tools are often anti­quat­ed (when they aren’t sim­ply miss­ing) in an “IT Franken­stein” that is unsta­ble, hard­ly scal­able, in silos, and total­ly unfit for the real-time use of this key val­ue for the busi­ness. With the arrival of con­nect­ed objects, chat­bots, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and pre­dic­tive data, chances are this lag will become a fatal handicap.

Data strat­e­gy? Bet­ter under­stand your cus­tomers, know how to tar­get them, per­son­al­ize your mes­sages, and mea­sure your ROI

If you want to increase your effec­tive­ness in terms of mar­ket­ing, offer a cus­tomer expe­ri­ence equal to your com­pe­ti­tion and equal to the lat­est expec­ta­tions of your con­nect­ed con­sumer, start by tak­ing the time to build a sol­id foun­da­tion. Imple­ment­ing data strat­e­gy, tools, and gov­er­nance is the be-all and end-all of the com­pa­ny of the future.

It all begins with recruit­ing, retain­ing, and con­tin­u­ing to train employ­ees with the right skills: not many cur­rent mar­ket­ing man­agers have been trained to mas­ter the chal­lenges of data and algo­rithms. How­ev­er, this con­trol of data is becom­ing crit­i­cal. Regard­less of their line of work, the future of com­pa­nies rests increas­ing­ly on soft­ware devel­op­ment and data use. Com­pa­nies are all going to have to fight to attract the most skilled employ­ees by offer­ing attrac­tive wages, assign­ments, and resources. There is still a lot of work to do to become as appeal­ing as Google, Apple, Face­book, and Ama­zon or the start-ups from around the world.

You can bet that most large com­pa­nies are going to have a “Chief Data Offi­cer” to define a strat­e­gy and over­see the teams and their efforts on the sub­ject of data. In fact, these days, data is too often a top­ic man­aged by default and divid­ed up among the CIO, mar­ket­ing, CRM, and legal, with­out any clear leadership.

Once staffed, you have to iden­ti­fy, cap­ture, col­lect, stock, clean, and use the data. In short, trans­form this expo­nen­tial, mul­ti-for­mat del­uge of raw data into usable, use­ful infor­ma­tion. It is basi­cal­ly just a mat­ter of becom­ing capa­ble of track­ing cus­tomers through­out their jour­ney: from a con­sumer exposed to an adver­tis­ing mes­sage tar­get­ed online or offline, to a vis­i­tor, to a prospec­tive cus­tomer, or to a loy­al reg­u­lar cus­tomer via the brand ambas­sador. Your sys­tems’ agili­ty requires you to aban­don long, expen­sive, bare­ly scal­able ad hoc devel­op­ments in order to blend the best of the tech­no­log­i­cal com­po­nents avail­able and set up APIs to inter­face eas­i­ly with soft­ware and data from your providers, part­ners, and customers.

You also need to put the prop­er tools in place to bet­ter track, under­stand, and tar­get your cus­tomers: Social lis­ten­ing, SCV (Sin­gle Cus­tomer View), DMP (Data Man­age­ment Plat­form), CRM onboard­ing (link­ing the behav­ior and pro­file of uniden­ti­fied vis­i­tors to their cus­tomer files when they check out), and CRM in B2C. Or the Inbound strat­e­gy (cre­at­ing con­tent to attract and char­ac­ter­ize cus­tomer leads), CRM and “social sell­ing” (trans­form­ing your sales­peo­ple into expert sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives on social media) in B2B.

This char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and this pro­gres­sive seg­men­ta­tion (behav­ioral, socio-demo­graph­ic, etc.) then makes it pos­si­ble to use these insights and this tar­get­ing in qua­si-real time to:

- man­age your media buy­ing more close­ly, qua­si-auto­mat­i­cal­ly, and instan­ta­neous­ly (Pro­gram­mat­ic media buy­ing and Real Time Bid­ding) in con­cert with your DMP

- per­son­al­ize the expe­ri­ence, be it with adver­tis­ing mes­sages (make sure you have a DAM, or Dig­i­tal Asset Man­age­ment, and a per­son­al­iza­tion engine for your sites or your cam­paigns), the expe­ri­ence at the point of sale (by con­nect­ing your sales force to your offer and to your cus­tomers’ his­to­ries: clien­tel­ing), online (make sure you have a PIM: Prod­uct Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment to update your prod­uct cat­a­logue through­out your entire com­pa­ny), or by adapt­ing the prod­uct or ser­vice itself (for exam­ple, the musi­cal stream­ing ser­vice Spo­ti­fy offers a cus­tomized playlist each week based on the subscriber’s past tastes).

Towards cre­at­ing a Chief Per­for­mance Offi­cer position

Last­ly, mea­sure­ment will become a strate­gic con­cern. Mea­sur­ing bet­ter and faster than the com­pe­ti­tion will prove to be a key advan­tage for mak­ing deci­sions ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion and invest­ing more per­ti­nent­ly. You can even con­ceive of cre­at­ing a Chief Per­for­mance Offi­cer posi­tion in the com­ing years. This person’s role will be wide-rang­ing and crucial:

- Imple­ment­ing good mea­sure­ment indi­ca­tors (met­rics and KPIs) with ade­quate tools

- Test­ing and opti­miz­ing indi­ca­tors, actions, and mea­sure­ment tools based on good algo­rithms (A/B or mul­ti­vari­able test­ing, machine learn­ing, Big Data, and Arti­fi­cial Intelligence)

- Ana­lyze results (trans­form data into infor­ma­tion) for fast, tan­gi­ble actions at all lev­els of the organization

- Bench­mark this infor­ma­tion in rela­tion to direct com­pe­ti­tion and oth­er indus­tries’ best practices

The major play­ers of Sil­i­con Val­ley built a large part of their suc­cess on mas­ter­ing data, and their rev­enues con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence dou­ble-dig­it growth. What are you wait­ing for?

To find out more, join our Data Dri­ven Mar­ket­ing Track ses­sion at Adobe Sum­mit EMEA.