A lot of my network (and fantastic clients) are asking me about Marketing Data Strategy, whilst many of you will use data strategy for email and telemarketing, but often there are points that are being missed or overlooked. As this is the case, I’ve put down a few of the must haves of Data Strategy – whilst this is not the complete guidance, it does offer 7 useful points of direction to those who can wield it. Show the business, your marketing strategy is fit for purpose!

If you want more – why not reach out – to Connect Marketing

1)      ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and the TAM (Total Addressable Market)

It goes without saying that the most important part of data strategy is to know who your ideal customers are. Many confuse this point with target audience or all customers, an ICP is not someone who just buys your product or service, no. It’s those customers who continue to be investing in your product or service, those who will grow with your business and end up being the highest revenue earner – e.g. the top percentile of your customers. The tactics for ICPs – an ABM approach. The TAM however, will define the total volume of prospects the business will be able to reach, giving strategy the basis to work with. With the TAM defined, data segmentation, nurturing and messaging can be aligned to a strategy.

2)      Gap analysis

Many businesses will proudly claim that their data is awesome. Although, the best marketers will continue to work on the completeness, validity and accuracy of data, knowing it can be stronger and more intelligent. In this process, gap analysis is key in ensuring the business is reaching the right channels. Look back at your ICPs – do you have all of them? Who are your primary and secondary audiences – do you have all of your primary? Are you missing firmographics, phone numbers, emails, insights etc. This lands a top spot in strategy.

3)      Data collection across the business (sales calls, marketing emails etc)

When we talk about data collection, we don’t mean getting temps in to mine it. We specifically mean enabling the everyday sales, CS and marketing conversations and emails to be meaningful and provide profiling information. How many sales people put down the phone after being told the renewal date is “2 years away”, “we have Cisco in place” and “call back in 6 months time as there might be something then” – and NOT record this valuable insight? What about DDIs/mobiles on emails responses? (don’t forget GDPR/PECR)

4)      Using all collected data in everyday operation

This goes hand in hand with point 3, once the business has enabled the capture of intelligence on organisations, get them into the nurture streams for the appropriate call to action! The value of knowing when a renewal is up, a product is becoming end of life or whether you use the knowledge of a product to your advantage in a displacement campaign – it’s adding value to your sales and marketing efforts. So use everything to your advantage and work smartly. Example – 80 cold calls vs 20 intelligent calls, which sales member wouldn’t want this?

5)      Data hygiene plan or data purchase plan

We all know that people leave businesses on a regular basis, therefore we need to expect the degradation of all data to do the same. Or, perhaps we could find duplicates have found their way into the CRM through human errors. Even the most experienced marketing teams miss this crucial point out. In most cases data providers like those we work with can run health checks and hygiene checks which are inexpensive methods of cleaning data. This can often also show whitespace for you to bolster target areas. We all know summer periods are marketing dead zones, therefore it often makes ideal timing get your data checked, cleansed and re-hydrated for the new campaigns after the holiday period.  

6)      Propensity modelling

Whilst propensity modelling should almost be at the top here, it is extremely valuable insight to understand where, when and how your opportunities are being won. Using historic data in your strategy, you could direct marketing and sales into generating twice as many opportunities by honing in their targeting! It’s likely to show you exactly where to place your marketing campaigns, where lead hot spots are, where the best MQLs are being drawn in from and when the best time is to conduct your campaigns. Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking you need a data scientist to do this…

7)      Data segmentation

We see spam emails come in which frankly doesn’t have anything to do with our role, or even the business in that case. This is down to the lack in segmentation of data! This is the simple version, but let’s go deeper. Don’t just look at industries, size, job title, location… Look at seniority level, prospect age trends, likely trending hobbies, market insights (e.g. industry news) and more. You wouldn’t talk to a CIO like a junior and vice versa! Equally a Finance Director at a small law firm would have different priorities to a Finance Director at a 10k+ employee bank! Segmentation can get quite complex in nurture streams and campaigns, however often they are more successful from more targeted messaging! 

Fell free to reach out to me if you want more detail, 

Clive Penfold

Clive@connectmarketingltd.co.uk