At a recent Marketing Live, I joined a panel moderated by seasoned martech practitioner Satya Upadhyaya, Former VP Campaign Optimisation Marketing Capability and Change at Citibank, NAB, with Tim Armstrong, Director of Digital Capability and Data at Nova Entertainment.

Together, we unpacked the current martech landscape, including understanding the challenges and opportunities of creating a data-led marketing strategy.

Building a data-led marketing strategy

With the rise of online channels and the proliferation of customer touchpoints, marketers are inundated with zero, first, second and third-party data, Upadhyaya says. “How can they effectively build an audience-led data and channel strategy?” he asks.

It’s important to point out that first-party data is the only party now. If you’re not thinking that way yet, you should be. When it comes to building a channel and audience-based strategy, marketers should look at their KPIs. They are the guiding light that will drive the success of an audience-led channel strategy.

Every business is different. For example, you could look at the phase of the consumer lifecycle, whether it’s from awareness to acquisition, onboarding, engagement, conversion and retention. Then, you map the current state.

The first thing you’ll likely notice is gaps in your strategy. They are probably blocking you from achieving your KPIs. Once that’s identified, it becomes obvious where you should be investing by channel and campaign to get as close as you can to those KPIs. That’s a longer approach, but it is a channel and audience-based strategy.

There are high-value customers, and you must figure out how to identify them and understand what drives them to find more of them. Then, you need to be able to predict and determine what’s driving churn. You can have a DMP (data management platform), MDM (master data management) or CDP, but knowing who your high-value customers are will help you acquire the best customers. And predicting churn will help you retain and create more customers.

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Metrics matter

At Amperity, everything we do maps back to three metrics in a business: net profit, customer acquisition cost and net revenue retention. A platform must have drivers and levers that influence those three metrics. As a vendor, we love being involved early on in the discussion with our customers. We’re there to help them see and experience the entire value of the technology.

When it comes to phase one, immediate implementation value is important. Let’s not overcook the implementation. No one likes being in an implementation process for 12 to 18 months without seeing time to value. Then, you must decide how to phase out the rest of the initiatives.

Regarding strategy versus implementation, as a vendor, you must have a chain of custody. You need to be responsible for the outcome, whether you’re working with a systems integrator or you have a partner implementing the technology. You can’t just wipe your hands free and walk away, saying, “Oh, you bought the software. Good luck for the next three years.”

You have to make sure that you’re there day in and day out, helping the customer understand how to use the tech and then, helping the implementation partner along the way as well. If that’s not happening, it’s a broken system. But when it does happen and that relationship is off the ground, there’s nothing better than having a brand by your side, advocating the use of your technology.

Why CDPs are worth the hype

A customer data platform (CDP) helps unify customer data. It takes data from every source inside your organisation, whether that’s point of sale, eCommerce, CRM (customer relationship management) web behaviour, etc and brings it together, so you can understand who the humans are behind the data.

That gives you the customer 360 and insights into your customers that are useful to the business like the last purchase to power the next best recommendation. This data can then be shared with other departments like IT for analytics or marketing for communications. It’s unified, unlocked data.

The last piece of the puzzle is unleashing that data with integrations into downstream systems. Remember, it doesn’t matter what tools you have or implement if you don’t have a clean foundation of data to start with. Good data powers good marketing.

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About Amperity

Amperity delivers the data confidence brands need to unlock growth by truly knowing their customers. With Amperity, brands can build a first-party data foundation to fuel customer acquisition and retention, personalise experiences that build loyalty, and manage privacy compliance. Using patented AI and ML methods, Amperity stitches together all customer interactions to build a unified view that seamlessly connects to marketing and technology tools. More than 400 brands worldwide rely on Amperity to turn data into business value, including Alaska Airlines, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Endeavour Drinks, Planet Fitness, Seattle Sounders FC, Under Armour and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. For more information, visit amperity.com or follow us on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.