Why Data Integration is the Future of Marketing
Marketers are already working with a daunting amount of data, but it’s only just the beginning. IDC estimates that, by 2020, the digital universe will reach 44 zettabytes, making the life of marketing professionals even more complicated.
There are a number of factors fueling this data influx. One is that information is more easily accessible due to the rise of the Internet of Things, and another is the advent of tools that can harness and aggregate huge quantities of data, which humans are not equipped to handle.
To take advantage of the influx of customer data, marketing technology companies have responded by creating platforms to collect data and transform it into actionable insight. In fact, there are nearly 4,000 marketing technologies available today, which all offer information on a different piece of a prospect’s profile.
Because of this, integration of data sources and marketing technologies will be crucial for companies, whether B2B or B2C, to successfully deliver relevant customer experiences and drive accelerated sales revenue.
A primary challenge that teams face is the sheer amount of data marketers being collect through a growing number of marketing technology applications. With any number of solutions being used at any given time by any number of individuals, data sources often become siloed, so big data analytics tools are unable to discern what data is important and what data isn’t relevant to a particular prospect. Separate teams often pull analytics produced by various applications without sharing or cross-referencing datasets from other apps.
These disjointed efforts can make it nearly impossible for marketing and sales teams to get the whole picture and tailor the strongest and most relevant content for each prospect or existing customer. If organizations are unable to identify the best leads or most promising existing customers, communication breaks down and marketing can become unaligned with sales. This results in irrelevant or unused content, and redundant efforts from both teams.
This underscores the benefits of integrating data into one tool or dashboard that can analyze all data and surface the most relevant information. Integrated data sources provide marketers with deep, detailed customer insights, allowing them to create segments that can be directed into marketing tracks that provide them with more personalized content. This level of insight provides a better customer experience from both marketing and sales. And, of course, superior customer experience leads to customer loyalty and increases cross-sell and up-sell opportunities that ultimately boost bottom-line revenue.
However, data integration is only the first step. Organizations also must integrate their marketing technologies to create a cleaner, more manageable tech stack that drives real revenue impact.
