Tag Archives: Big Data

Big data, analyze, get personal and win

Big Data is the magic word now-a-days in marketing and sales. Gather everything you can and benefit from all the knowledge we gain about our customers. But do we? How do we manage the avalanche of information we gather? According to a recent survey by SAS and SourceMedia 21 percent of the respondents say they didn’t know enough about it, 15 percent don’t understand the benefits of big data and 9 percent say they lack data quality in existing systems. Some believe that the more intel you gather the greater the benefits, but it’s not how much you gather, but it matters what you gather, says MultiChannel Merchant (MCM)  in their executive summary about Big Data and Database marketing.

The meaning of big data can be tough to decipher. You need to start to remember that data is not about numbers but about customers, says MCM. Your customer is supplying you with huge amounts of very useful information, so called first grade information. Think of email addresses order histories, click rates etc.

When this information is integrated with inventory information, revenue management systems and buying history, you will be able to create  customer-specific offers that will not only create a personalized message that reflects shopping habits and preference, but can also help business goals and increase revenue.

The road to the big data success is not about shifting through piles and piles of data. The focus should be on returning customers, the frequency of their purchases and their behavior patterns.

Get to know your customer

Once that is set, look at that data to uncover new insights about these specific visitors. This can help you generate ideas that will increase engagement about your brand, the products you sell and your website as a whole.

The best thing to do with the enormous amount of data, is to figure out what matters most to your organization. With all that information, create an aggregate data source that is fed by your best analytics. Decide also whether it’s best to use technology or a person to compile all this data sets.

Another important thing is to store all the data in one place. So everyone has access to the same source and uses the most up-to-date data. It needs to become the one true data source.

Take a small piece

And look at just a small piece of the pie. When homing in on a specific aspect of big data it might produce it’s best results. For example: big data might reveal that for some reason visitors in a specific region could be more prone to abandon their cart. But by examining the data further, you could learn that it could be because they live in a closer proximity to a traditional brick-and-mortar store than the rest of your visitors, or they prefer different payment options or generally do not hit the free shipping threshold offered.

It’s also important to get data in real time, so quick decisions can be made. You can easily identify what is working and what not. It makes it easy to tweak your operations.

Big data is important for the entire organization. Not only can it be used to boost sales, but your marketing department can use it to identify and engage your customers on specific grounds. Big data makes it possible to personal address your customer.

Big data is not just about harnessing information to boost an online sales experience; it can be used for catalogs and in store. A detailed understanding of what’s going on in your company can help managers forecast staffing needs, address customer service issues and evaluate how things like merchandising, promotions and product placement impact sales conversions. This intelligence not only leads to better and more profitable decisions in individual stores; it can also help merchants measure brick-and-mortar performance within the context of broader multichannel strategies.

Marketing advantage

With big data technology, marketers now have the tools to identify every visitor to an ecommerce site, as well as the ability to see exactly which mouse click got them there. This new tactic is also allowing marketers to deploy their messages in a much more personalized manner.

And people like that. A recent survey has found that customer-centric marketing—the ability to  engage consumers in one-to-one conversations across the customer lifecycle and all touch points—increases buyer readiness, engagement and sales activity.

According to the research study of 1,100 consumers, 40% of respondents claim they buy more from retailers that comprehensively personalize the shopping experience across channels. Results revealed that consumers increasingly reward customer-obsessed retailers. Nearly 60% of  consumers indicated that personalized product recommendations make it easier to find the products they are most interested in and provide a valuable service. More than half of consumers state website recommendations and emails personalized based on their past browsing and  shopping behavior is desirable to receive.

Simply put, concludes MCM, when big data is implemented across the channels, retailers realize 100% increase in purchase frequency, a 50% increase in average order value and a 25% increase in conversion of cart abandoners to buyers.

This Executive Summary was published before on MultiChannel Merchant

Big Data Marketing

Fred van Westerop, districtmanager Northern Europe at Teradata, talks about Big Data Marketing.

CMOs Will Outspend CIOs on Technology by 2017

How do today’s marketers truly view their ability to harness and leverage big data to produce measurable results?

That’s the question posed by the team at Teradata. And the answer may be found by diving into the extensive new Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey 2013.

The global results offer an in-depth look at some key issues, including marketers’ perceptions of how their companies use data to guide marketing decisions, perceived barriers to using data to drive marketing, and where marketers’ expect their organizations to place data-driven priorities over the next couple of years.

State of Marketing #8: Should We Care About Big Data?

Big data discussions focus on the enormous amount of information available to businesses thanks to the social web. While adoption is low, the opportunity for companies and nonprofits to serve customers with specific offerings is irresistible. However, doubt remains as to its long-term impact for businesses.

The Other Data Challenge

recent post, I discussed the importance of big data in enterprise-level marketing. As both consumers and businesspeople increasingly use digital devices and online channels to access information, make purchases, and interact via social networks, the volume of data regarding these activities grows exponentially. Hence the term big data.

Many marketing and technology thought leaders believe that big data constitutes a treasure trove of information about customer actions and preferences that can boost the effectiveness of marketing and thus drive improved business performance. They argue that capturing, analyzing, and extracting insights from big data are now critical components of competitive advantage.

While I contend that big data has been over-hyped to some extent, I also believe that maximizing the potential of big data should be a high-priority strategic objective for most large enterprises.

Enterprise marketers must also recognize, however, that big data is not the only data-related issue that must be addressed to create a world-class marketing operation.

Read More

Creating a Next Generation Marketing Organization

George Bailey, a senior advisor to Sony and a MarketShare Advisory Board Member, addresses the struggles many marketing organizations are having with todays data explosion, and the secrets to successfully integrating marketing analytics.

Why Big Data Isn’t a Panacea

As people increasingly use digital communication channels to access information, execute business transactions, and interact via social networks, the volume of data regarding these activities grows exponentially. This massive and growing volume of information is now being called big data, and few topics have received more attention in marketing and technology circles over the past couple of years. According to many pundits, big data can dramatically improve the quality of business decision-making generally and the quality and effectiveness of marketing in particular. It can enable companies to develop valuable insights about what current and prospective customers want, what competitors are doing, and how markets are changing.

The hype surrounding big data has been huge, and many prominent voices have been effusive in describing big data’s potential benefits. Recently, though, several articles and blog posts have attempted to provide a more balanced view of big data. The authors don’t dispute the importance of big data or the value of using data to support business and marketing decisions. However, they do identify some of the reasons that big data isn’t likely to be the “silver bullet” that the hype suggests.

Here are brief summaries of two of these recent commentaries.

Lithium)—In this blog post, Dr. Wu begins by stating that data is only as valuable as the information and insights we can extract from it. He then argues that data and information are not synonymous and, more importantly, that more data doesn’t produce proportionately more information because of the redundancy that exists in nearly all data sets. Dr. Wu also argues that not all information will provide insights. He contends that a substantial amount of the information in most data sets is not interpretable and therefore cannot produce insights. And, of the information that is interpretable, some will be irrelevant noise that cannot support valuable insights.

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Across people, platforms, channels, screens, processes

Big data, smart data, little data. Data is everywhere; it powers our daily lives. As consumer media consumption continues to shift digitally, marketers are faced with a new set of challenges in reaching their audiences with the right message, at the right time, and through the right channels. Marketers ability to collect and analyze data big, small, social and otherwise is needed to help create great customer experiences. This discussion will take a look at the ways marketing is adapting across people, platforms, processes, screens, and channels because of this surge of available data.

Big Data: Who owns customer and budget?

Though frequently at odds, marketing and IT executives agree that harnessing Big Data is imperative to building a customer-centric corporate culture, SAS.

They also agree that a lack of CMO/CIO alignment, rigid silos, unclear responsibilities, and a lack of leadership impede an organization from using Big Data to its full potential, the survey of CMOs and CIOs found.

Big Data is important to achieving a customer-centric culture, according to the study:

  • 40% of marketers and 51% of IT executives said its critical for improved decision making.
  • 36% of marketers and 23% of IT execs said data drives the ability to personalize customer experiences.

Below, additional findings from the CMO Council study, titled Big Data’s Biggest Role, Aligning the CMO & CIO.

Access to in-depth data, and the ability to translate it into insights, is a competitive advantage according to 70% of marketers: 30% say it is critical, and 40% say it is part of the overall picture.

However, most respondents view the flood of incoming data as part obstacle and part opportunity: 61% of CMOs and 60% of CIOs say so, admitting they have a long way to go still in using Big Data properly.

The main challenge, according to 52% of marketers (and 45% of IT professionals), is that functional silos block aggregation of data from across the organization, making it difficult to truly achieve customer-centricity:

Moreover, 39% of CMOs say the corporate culture is not aligned around the needs of customers.

A likely explanation for the lack of total customer focus is that no clear ownership of the customer exists. Among marketing executives, 18% say that ownership rests with the CEO, 17% say the CMO, and 19% say sales. IT professionals assign ownership to the CEO (20%), CMO (19%), and sales (17%).

Organizations that report they have achieved total partnership between CMO and CIO also have clearer ownership of the customer.

In such organizations, marketers (24%) and IT professionals (30%) say the CEO owns the customer. Furthermore, marketers and IT executives in total partnership organizations are highly satisfied with their companys ability to engage the customer (42% of marketers, 31% of IT execs).

Read more: 

Big Data Event for Marketing Operations Professionals

Big Data is the next big thing in marketing. Weve devoted quite a few articles to the subject as well. But many marketers are still struggling to fit this new development into their Marketing Operations. How do you make sense of big data? When is it useful, and when is it a distraction? And how should you be preparing?

On December 13, 2012, MOCCA, the association for Marketing Operations professionals, will host the event Whats the Big Deal About Big Data?. Here marketing professionals will have the opportunity to get together and prepare for the challenges that big data pose.

From the program:

In this session, well share trends in both data management and applied analysis for marketing organizations to help operations leaders define their requirements as well as their opportunities.

For more information and to register for this free event, visit MOCCA. . .