Consumers always are connected to mobile devices and are spending more time shopping online. Progressive retailers are keeping pace with these tech-savvy browsing and buying strategies by embracing real-time marketing, which requires ongoing data collection and analysis.
As many as 90% of Best-in-Class companies have marketing analytics initiatives in place, versus 69% of “Follower” companies, according to an Aberdeen Group report, titled: Building The New Database Of Intentions With Real-Time Marketing Analytics.
Aberdeen Group surveyed 135 B2C and B2B marketing professionals regarding the ways their companies are leveraging customer analytics to deliver more personalized and relevant marketing campaigns. To better quantify the gap in capabilities and strategies, Aberdeen identified the key differences between top-performing “Best-in-Class” companies and other “Followers.”
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The study found that 61% of Best-in-Class businesses deliver outbound offers customized to specific marketing segments, while only 49% of other companies have this capability. Best-in-Class organizations also are equipped to disseminate outbound offers to specific individuals (48%), which is something very few Followers (26%) can do.
“While a number of ‘traditional’ marketing analytics approaches can be used to support personalization,” the report indicated, “including analysis of transactional data often correlated with demographic information. Best-in-Class companies are more likely to complement these sources with a number of behavior-based capabilities.”
Aberdeen Group compared Best-in-Class companies and Followers regarding the types of data they collect to fuel real-time marketing efforts. These information streams include:
- Internal transactional records (91% vs. 76%);
- Internal customer records (83% vs. 82%);
- External data sources of customer information (55% vs. 37%);
- Customer sentiment data such as Net Promoter Score (55% vs. 27%);
- Customer interaction data such as contact center notes (48% vs. 38%);
- Unstructured data such as emails and reviews (41% vs. 28%);
- External data sources of customer behavior (41% vs. 26%);
- Social media data (41% vs. 18%); and
- Clickstream data (38% vs. 22%).
There is a clear difference in the variety and velocity of data that Best-in-Class organizations and Followers collect and access. This may be attributed to the fact that more advanced businesses are implementing robust solutions that help them gather and analyze data more efficiently. For example, many Best-in-Class companies are using predictive analytics (58%), customer or marketing analytics solutions (55%), and customer segmentation tools (50%); Only 41%, 38% and 30% of Followers, respectively, use this series of solutions.
“The complexity and opportunity for marketing analytics may seem daunting for some organizations,” noted Trip Kucera, Senior Research Analyst, Marketing Effectiveness and Strategy at Aberdeen Group. “But new technologies have emerged to make sophisticated data analytics more affordable and approachable.”
Click here to access a complete version of the Aberdeen Group research brief.