Integrate your CRM data… then what?

February 12, 2016

You do know that data collection is crucial but the question then arises how you will actually use the massive amounts of data that you are collecting!

Be careful what you wish for…

Often I find that businesses don’t consider the implications of joining data together. Once you start joining data from different data sources and channels, you end up with so much new data that suddenly it’s hard to work out the best way to action it.

‘Data freshness’

Almost every medium-to-large company today has its own data warehouse, or is in the process of setting one up. These projects are not small – they typically span a couple of years and involve significant investment. Often, the end product or uplift is uncertain, so the question to ask is

How will you actually use the massive amounts of data that you are collecting?

‘Data freshness’ is a term I think we will hear more often. If the data isn’t put into action quickly, it soon starts to become obsolete. By avoiding the temptation to dig into all of the data at once, and instead selecting already approved campaign techniques with more intelligence and automation, it is possible to significantly improve results and, therefore, return on investment.

Data integration is essential

Many businesses profess to already be doing this: they are already sending abandon cart emails, pre-purchase emails, personalising the website based on last visit or basket contents, and working with display retargeting. Great news! But while this may all be true, if they are not doing all this with a combined data set in the first place, results will be skewed and the customer experience will suffer: The person you target with your “first purchase discount” may already be a customer. The person whose email address you have captured for an abandon cart email, has already signed up to your newsletter. The customer to whom you sent a club membership offer has only ever purchased discounted items, and therefore has a relatively low lifetime value.

Joining your CRM-data with online behaviour is not, and should not be, a big project, and applying that new data set to existing campaign technology can – and should – generate a significant uplift.

This article was originally posted on our partner Innometrics' site.

Check out more about how our client Copenhagen Airports is working with data, using the Innometrics Profile Cloud technology.