• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, February 11, 2015

Data can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be.  The fact is, most marketers were trained in marketing, which is more akin to psychology than it is to economics or mathematics.  That was the case until the last few years.  Now marketers are being tasked to be psychologists as well as mathematicians, technologists, statisticians and more.  Pretty much the only job we don’t have to do is technical development -- but just you wait, because that can’t be far behind.

Data and all the discussions that come with it can be boiled down into two dimensions that are actually quite simple. The first dimension -- what you do with the data -- refers to using data to inform your interactions with the customer on the front or  back end. 

On the front end, I’m referring to targeting and personalization of message or content.  If you know something about the audience you are speaking to, then you can customize the way you speak to them and you can eliminate the people you're not interested in.  Targeting creates efficiency by making every dollar you spend work harder on your behalf, while personalization enables every interaction to be more relevant, therefore driving (hopefully) higher performance and a stronger ROI. 

On the back end, you can read data to create measurement that you may not have previously had access to.  This means coordinating both your measurable metrics along with those aggregated from other channels, like retailers and third-party measurement tools. 

For example, for a CPG marketer, the front end translates to targeting moms with a household income of $125k or higher, with 2+ kids.  It means personalizing the message based on the life-stage of those kids, either infant, toddler or older. That targeted consumer either drives a sale or not, and if marketers sell direct then they use that data stream. Those who sell through a retail channel would work to gather that transaction data and stitch it together with upfront data to close the loop and create a clear line into ROI.

The second dimension of data arises when you determine what the data is going to tell you, which informs your decision-making about speaking to the consumer.  If you can integrate behavioral information with social sentiment data and merge that together with customers' buying patterns, then you create a highly relevant, actionable profile that can be used for targeting, modeling, personalization and more. 

The only difference worth calling out here is the element of modeling, which takes your targeting and really explodes that into the market.  The more you can model, the more targeted your prospecting can become, and the more likely you are to be efficient at driving new customer acquisition.

Data dimensions create a tool that enables you to identify and prioritize your data needs, which then guides the tactics you choose to implement in your marketing strategy.   Since the majority of your tactics are being fueled by data, and the rest are inevitably headed in that direction, it seems this is a worthwhile exercise -- don’t you agree?