This is the second part of The State of Salesforce Success Series. In this installment, AJ Bellarosa, Global Director, Digital Experience, talks marketing trends that have everyone talking now — and, of course, how capitalizing on these trends can help you get closer to your customers.

93% of marketers surveyed in this year’s The State of Salesforce Report stated that integrating data and driving visibility across Sales, Marketing, and Service is critical to gain a complete view of their customers.

Now more than ever, customer data across Sales, Service, and Marketing must be accessible and actionable in order to optimize the digital experience consumers have with brands.

Current digital marketing methodology dictates the needs for a strategy that does four things: finding the right audience, using the right channel, and delivering the right content — all at the right time. To determine a strategy for your organization that ticks off all four boxes, you need data. Data determines channel, audience, content, and timing. Mature digital marketing organizations recognize that a data strategy is required in order to bring a sophisticated and disruptive digital campaign to life, and to achieve maximum engagement and lift.

Why Marketers Need a Data Strategy
With an intelligent digital marketing strategy, you can:

• Mitigate risk by understanding what’s working and what isn’t by testing campaigns and monitoring performance prior to scaling. This will allow marketers to achieve their goals through a phased approach and exploit tactics they know are working.
• Increase 1-to-1 personalized content that connects with target personas by leveraging customer data.
• Gain a 360-degree view of the customer by monitoring campaign performance and capturing customer data in a centralized system of record.
• Understand the consumer on a deeper level in order to anticipate their needs in the future and improve brand loyalty.

How to Begin Planning Your Data Strategy

1. Partner with IT.
   Digital Marketing teams cannot survive without the support of their peers in IT. Collaboration and partnership is the key to a successful campaign execution and data governance.
2. Think of marketing as a science.
   Adopt the scientific method by determining a hypothesis, testing it, and validating it through performance monitoring before making significant investments and scaling your strategy. This approach results in a higher probability of campaign ROI.
3. Build a system of record.
   Be sure to build a system of record for your consumers in your CRM platform and integrate it into your marketing technology. This is the best way to gain a 360-degree view of your consumers and to more effectively market to them in the future.

Download The State of Salesforce Report for more insights on how the best marketing teams use Salesforce.