The myriad options for consumer data collection available to marketers has grown rapidly with the introduction of new technologies. When combined with more traditional methods of acquiring data, two main challenges emerge.
The first resides in your customer and prospect databases. Online customer data collected at the point of sale can vary greatly, making it difficult to accurately link data back to a name and address creating a partial view of the customer. It’s critical that marketers find data sources that successfully link e-mail addresses, IP addresses, and mobile numbers to a name and address. This ensures demographic, behavioral, and transactional data necessary to drive marketing is properly linked.
Matching and identifying consumers based on their purchase patterns is an area where marketers should exercise caution. A good data provider should understand the nuances of consumer privacy related to marketing. They should understand and abide by new restrictions around data collection and permissible use. These best practices are necessary with emerging sources of data and new uses of that data.
Choose a good data partner who is an industry leader in data best practices and privacy compliance and will respect consumer privacy while enabling effective marketing outreach. Using geo-summarized versions of data allows marketers to best target consumers by leveraging the information without going to the consumer or household level if restricted by channel limitations or regulations.
The 360-degree view of a consumer is obtained by combining a series of on and offline data points taken over time. An isolated online experience gives a marketer one real-time view. When combined with other data sources, the picture tells a very different story.
Collecting on and offline behavioral and transactional data for use in connecting with customers and prospects via preferred channels of contact is where marketers will experience the greatest successes, and where consumers will receive the most relevant offers, via preferred channels, at the preferred time.
