I recently led a discussion on how to embrace data to inspire better marketing at an event in London that brought together marketing leaders from many well-known brands. We all know about start-ups like Uber that are applying data in amazing ways to drive each interaction with their customers and prospects. What about the brick and mortar companies with legacy systems and decades of history? How do older companies adapt in this new world of data? 

When I was the marketing director of a global professional services firm with a team of marketers reporting to me, I was charged with driving revenue across commercial, government, and consumer markets in multiple countries. Our database contained a few million records, a homegrown email system, order systems, web forms, an online store, multiple websites, sales CRM, and more. We had lots of data, yet very little insight. 

For many, this describes their current marketing department. Today, marketers have more and more data, yet still struggle to gain actionable insights from it. 

Consider these statistics: 

• 90 per cent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone (Aureus Analytics)
• The social "universe," composed of every single digitally connected person, doubles in size every two years, and by 2020 it will reach 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion GBs, (IDC)
• Only 21% of marketing believe they are currently delivering relevant, personalised content (State of Salesforce)
• 6 out of 10 marketers cite poor or inconsistent data quality, or lack of data, as biggest challenge to creating personalized campaigns (State of Salesforce)

Given the wealth of data we can access, why are so many organisations still so bad at communicating with their customers in a way that makes them feel “known”? While data is everywhere, using that data in a way that is actionable and provides real business insights is still a major challenge.

Solid, clean, centralized data is the foundation for mature marketing strategies that are capable of segmentation, engagement, conversion, and analysis. What makes centralized customer information so critical now is the capability of CRM and marketing automation platforms. These now allow you to segment, target, and personalize your marketing on a real-time basis triggered by actions through multiple channels. This enables you to focus on your contacts as individuals using the information they give you, preferences they have, actions they take, reactions and even predictions based on others with similar profiles. Unless you have one view of the customer with centralized data, you can’t achieve this. 

For all marketers struggling with turning data into a clear course of action, here is my advice: 

• Crawl, walk, run. Most companies can’t jump immediately to Uber’s level of marketing data application. You can start though, by connecting your sales CRM and marketing databases so both teams have complete views of prospect behaviors.
• Look for quick wins. Pick a few activities that will have measurable and fast impact that you can highlight as you continue rolling out advancements (for example an abandoned shopping cart automation or a lead nurture campaign).
• Implement data governance strategies, such as:

1. Constrain data input. Standardize what users can enter into the database (specifically, eliminate free text fields) to move toward cleaner data.
2. Integrate the right data, not the most data. Pinpoint the desired outcome of a campaign and find the most relevant data sources to support it. Access to too much data is just as cumbersome as access to too little data.
3. Reducing bad data is only half the battle. The other half is keeping it up-to-date. Trusted third-party data sources that consistently update customer information can reduce the manual burden on employees and limit errors.

• Hire next generation marketing talent. Marketers of tomorrow will need to be able to be both creative and analytical and the very best will find ways to be inspired by data.
• Everything leads to the customer. An integrated system for single view of the customer is vital. 93% of marketers said this year they are going to be focused on integrating disparate marketing applications to gain a complete view of the customer.

 Learn more tips in our recent report on how the best marketers are creating success with Salesforce, or reach out to us with your marketing questions.