How to Improve Efficiency and Reduce Data Waste

All the data in the world means nothing if you don’t know what to do with it. This is a problem many companies are currently facing. While they’ve collected a lot of customer data over time, they’re not using it to its full potential, or they haven’t integrated the data well enough to get valuable, actionable insights. Ultimately this leads to data waste and other unwanted consequences such as inefficiency, lost productivity, missed revenue opportunities and wasted ad spend.

Companies who are struggling to make the most of their data won’t thrive in the current environment, where understanding customers is becoming increasingly vital. Consumer behaviors are changing, and rising inflation is causing them to think more carefully about their purchases. To get through to a more cautious customer, marketers must rethink how they use data to get better insights. Below, we outline the three major data challenges that must be addressed to improve efficiency — and how your organization can overcome these roadblocks.

Data blind spots encompass several different challenges. A data blind spot could be a brand not making an important connection between different data points or receiving inauthentic customer data that leads to inaccurate insights. According to a recent Treasure Data survey of 500 marketers and 2,000 consumers across the United States, even though almost all marketers (98%) recognize that high-quality data is important for marketing success, a majority (75%) say there are data blind spots within their organization that impact their marketing efforts.

Integrating data to uncover the deeper, hidden insights is not exactly simple. Organizational silos exist in most companies. There are many types of customer data that companies collect from different sources. This includes transactional data, behavioral data and demographic data, to name a few. Different data sets come from a variety of sources, systems and locations, so integrating them accurately takes a lot of effort. A technology solution that can take over some of these time-consuming tasks helps organizations simplify this vast amount of data, eliminate silos and create meaningful customer experiences.

Inauthentic data is another huge blind spot. Customers are becoming more careful with their data, and many (41%) deliberately try to withhold their personal data from brands, according to the Treasure Data survey. It also found that many Americans (34%) avoid using their primary email address when signing up for brand emails.

These data points are just a few examples of how, when brands lose customer trust, the type of information that they receive becomes less reliable.