Here's the thing about: Being a Marketer in a data-driven world
If you are reading this, you probably also feel “data-driven” has been beaten to death.
But that doesn’t mean we’re not still reliant on the concept.
Hi 👋 I'm Jell, a marketer with a thirst for rich user experiences, and in this series, I want to document the knowledge I've gained over the last decade as a dev-turned-growth marketer.
If you find my notes useful, I'd love it if you DM me so we can dive deeper into what YOU are working on, and I would love to be your rubber duck. 🦆
If you find what I'm spewing is totally fake news, also DM me so I can correct my beliefs and learn something new from you! 🙇🏼♀️
Now let's talk about "the thing" in this inaugural post.
The thing is:
**66% of consumers expect brands to understand their individual needs. (Salesforce)
When you are trying to develop your brand, personal or otherwise, your audience needs to feel like you are speaking to them individually and not like they are just at the receiving end of a megaphone.
Imagine yourself walking down a busy street filled with a myriad of stores, and as you walk by, a gym owner shouts, "Hi there, we have the best workout program here that is perfect for you, female in the 25-30 age bracket!"
Now imagine yourself walking down the same busy street and hearing another gym owner shouting, "Hi Jell, we heard you enjoy rock climbing! Did you know that we offer yoga classes designed by climbers for flexibility? We have 3 spots left today!"
Which gym might pique your interest?
The other thing is:
62% of consumers say a brand will lose their loyalty if they deliver an un-personalized experience. **(Segment)
Using personalized data to influence dynamic and automated decision-making for people will always win over generic messaging because we are human. These “data points” are all human interactions, experiences, and preferences. The sooner you realize that humans are emotional, not logical, the sooner you can begin to design moments (and messages) that tap into those emotions.
So, where do you start?
As a savvy marketer, you need to understand your marketing data pipeline. The “pipeline” is your data infrastructure. It is fundamentally tied to accelerating your product innovation, optimizing for budgetary concerns, surfacing customer insights, and building agile operations to outmaneuver those in your competitive landscape.
The pipeline can be broken down into three sequential stages: the sources, the storage, and the destinations. First, you will need to know all sources from which you'll capture your customer data points. Second, you'll need a service or database that stores these data points. And third, and most crucial to a marketer, is knowing the destinations in which your data is to be used. These tools will most likely be your responsibility and will be managed by the marketing organization. And this is where you'll make the magic of personalized communication happen.
The last thing I will mention today:
Only 14% of organizations have achieved a 360-degree view of the customer. (Gartner)
Now that you have identified your pipeline infrastructure, your next order of business is to create a buyer journey utilizing relevant data tailored for your audience that belongs to different segments of the customer lifecycle.
You need a single source of truth that will be a hub that links and synchronizes the information about your customers—the “Customer 360” view. Oftentimes you will find this table in your data warehouse, and this is where you can find all the “events” and “attributes” required to generate your personalized, dynamic campaign.
Before I go, I’m going to leave you with some example emails where I believe I’ve identified a specific trigger, personalized message content, and likely conversion events.
Terminology:
Trigger event
This is an action that will cause the email, push notifications, SMS message or an in-app message to deploy to that user.
Dynamic content
This is a piece of customer information you can use to create personalized elements of your campaign such as sender and recipient name, individualized subject line, personalized body, and even dynamic, relevant images.
Conversion event
This is how you will measure the performance of your campaign. What do you want the customer to do when they see your email? Is it to Register for a webinar? Is it to come back to their cart full of products so they could complete the purchase? What is the metric that you want to track?
Now let’s look at some visual examples.
Discord
Trigger Event Name:
signup_form_completed
Primary conversion event:
friends_added > 0
Secondary conversion event:
session_start = true
Tertiary conversion event:
ios_app_downloaded = true
or
android_app_downloaded = true
Dynamic content:
first_name = "Smiles"
last_name = Davis
Framer
Primary conversion event:
team_settings_button_tapped = true
Dynamic content:
first_name = Smiles
last_name = Davis
team_name is not null
team_avatar is not null
folder_button_tapped > 0
team_member_count > 1
The data points shown above belong to you, the individual user, which means we are much more inclined to engage when we feel that the brand is speaking to me, Jell (or Smiles Davis).
Now I want to know what is blocking you from accessing the data needed to craft and launch a deeply personalized communication today?
- Jello
