Data-driven marketing: How companies create added value from data

Data has long since become the most important resource of the information society. They help companies analyze customer movements or support them in making decisions about new products and their marketing.

In times of comprehensive networking, data is generated in huge quantities and from a variety of sources, from production to traditional administration to social networks. If companies collect and analyze this data, they can launch targeted and personalized marketing campaigns on this basis - and largely automatically. This data-driven marketing is made possible by modern technologies such as cloud computing, real-time data processing and artificial intelligence.

However, data-driven marketing means more than just the use of technology. As a holistic concept, it has a lasting impact on the corporate culture and the entire value chain, which means that in case of doubt, it fundamentally changes companies. This makes it all the more important to proceed thoroughly when implementing the concept. To this end, there are the following five steps that can be taken.

1. formulate business case

Companies need a business case in which they define at which points which data should support their decisions. Not all data helps with all decisions, which is why it is critical in advance to describe the use scenarios and knowledge expectations in concrete terms. The next steps can be derived from the definition and use case.

2. focus on the quality

The fact that data is available in large quantities might tempt people to pay little attention to its quality. But the opposite is necessary: Data-driven marketing can only be successful with data that is available in sufficient quality. Ensuring the right quantity and the necessary quality is therefore an indispensable step on the way to data-driven marketing.

The preparation of data includes the consolidation of master and customer data as well as the inclusion of further information such as transaction data from ongoing business or external data from social networks. By providing "right data" or "smart data," the volume of data can be limited and the quality of the data improved. This increases the efficiency of their use.

3. provide the right technologies

Cloud-based databases can process large volumes of data quickly. But only artificial intelligence is capable of extracting new insights from them. Algorithms trained with machine learning, for example, are able to recognize correlations hidden to the human eye in large volumes of unstructured data very quickly and thus provide new insights for decision-making. Companies should start evaluating the use of AI as early as possible; the technology for this is mature and powerful enough.

4. build competencies

However, data-driven marketing is still a matter for specialists even when AI has already provided valuable assistance. For data-driven business models, every company needs the appropriate specialists: IT experts who collect and prepare data or model processes; data scientists who program and train algorithms; data specialists from the marketing department who ask the right questions of the data and draw the right conclusions from the AI-supported analyses. The technical expertise for these activities is usually already available; companies can build up the technical skills through internal training. In addition, companies increase the acceptance of data-driven business models and the use of modern technologies among their own workforce through such internal solutions.

5. define pilot projects

If you have the necessary data in good quality and qualified employees, it is best to start with a small, manageable pilot project in data-driven marketing, for example with a single campaign. This allows companies to gain experience, build and adapt the necessary digital infrastructure, and sharpen internal expertise. All of this helps companies with further projects, which they should plan for at the start so that they can roll out the proven technologies and methods for data analysis throughout the company. After all, it's not just marketing that will benefit from the initial experiences, but the entire company - all the way up to the boardroom.

"As well-intentioned as it is, traditional customer care with its conventional methods is no longer nearly enough, because the relationship between companies and customers has changed radically," explains Uli Wolter, Managing Director at Macaw Germany. "Customer demands have grown massively and competition is fiercer than ever before. Companies would do well to rethink their attitude towards their customers: they need to put the customer at the center of their actions and develop a proper customer culture. Data-driven marketing is an essential tool for this."

The Digital service provider Macaw supports large enterprises with solutions and services in digital marketing and e-commerce, data and AI, cloud and integrated enterprise applications. Macaw specializes in software solutions from Microsoft and Sitecore.