How can you take your Marketing Automation from basic to advanced?

In this blog series, I will walk you through the 5 key strategies to help you better utilise and optimize your programs leveraging the power of data.

One of the most important aspects of elevating your marketing automation strategy is understanding who you are targeting, what data you have available for segmentation, and how you will action it in a marketing automation platform.

The first step is to understand what data you need and what the relationship is between the data objects. For example, in the automotive industry, you will have the buyer;the main contact record and the car models they can purchase. You will need to think through what attributes you will need to collect from the buyer (i.e. age, buying timeframe, address, financing situation, etc). Then understand if there are any additional data objects required and how these objects relate back to the main record. For example, you may have custom data objects that hold information about all the test drives, the dates of the test drives, and the make and model of the car that was driven. You can relate that custom object back to the main contact record for segmentation purposes. You’ll also need to think about the objects’ respective data attributes that could be used for personalizing the experience. For example, cars have accessories and factory options that can be used to upsell a buyer. Do you want to include any of these data attributes for personalization in your program?

The data source, integrity and completeness should always be considered when evaluating the data. As the data will be used in a variety of methods and potentially synched with your CRM system, it’s crucial you have an understanding on the quality of the data being brought in and what impact there might be on your overall segmentation or lead routing process. If you are collecting country ISO codes, which are internationally standardized codes that represent countries using a two-letter code, but your CRM system is using the full state name, you will not be able to route your leads to the correct channel for follow up. If you’d like to segment or score based on buying timeframe but are not collecting and storing the data, then you will need to think through how you will collect that information over time.

In the next post, we’ll discuss how you can layer additional insights onto your base data model.

Can you deliver on what your marketing has promised? Using a data management platform can help improve your advertising accountability. Get our Guide to Advertising Accountability to see how accountability can help reduce costs and improve ROI.

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