Where content, brand awareness and campaigns used to fuel your day, your role has magically transformed from promotion (and heading up the Department of Pretty Pictures and Crayons) to being the growth engine for the entire business. In addition to advertising and creative messaging, you are now charged with being a psychologist, behavioural and data analyst, and first-class (but respectful) digital stalker and future-see-er. Along with it have come the responsibilities of keeping up with internal business expectations, offering a competitive, compelling and immersive customer experience, budget prioritisation across marketing activities, and finding the tools you need to help you deliver.
While you may hope that marketing talent always outs, the application of sheer hard work and imagination alone will not help you succeed when you are provided with poorly maintained (and often non-compliant) customer data. Like many things, the quality of work you produce is directly reliant on the quality of data you are expected to work with. Yes, it’s the old ‘rubbish in, rubbish out’ situation.
Without the right technology, it’s impossible to create the unified customer data profiles you both need to succeed at your respective jobs. And if sales and marketing don’t succeed, then neither will the business.
Working with disparate data sources and a one-dimensional view of your customers will not support your ability to work cross channel (email, SMS, chat and more). Neither will it help you maintain strict data compliance and privacy requirements, or utilise the wealth of information and market intelligence offered by analytics, AI, machine learning and more.