Lessons for a data-driven approach

Axel Schaefer, senior manager, strategic marketing, Adobe Marketing Cloud EMEA and Aseem Chandra, VP, AEM and target business from Adobe give Danielle Howe their take 

The technology is ready, it’s companies that need to catch up

Axel: I think many companies haven’t yet realised the real power of data or what data can do for them. Many companies are moving slowly but steadily, but if you want to make a real difference [with data] you need to go into it boldly and commit to understanding it and pushing its capabilities to the limit – the technology is available already.

Aseem: I think the biggest issue that holds us back is the need to understand the technology. It’s not the tech that holds us back – it’s not even our imagination of what we could do with it – it’s figuring out how to do it.

Through data, marketing can become central to the organisation’s success

Aseem: You have to rethink the entire experience your clients have with your brand, and that’s including product, service, pre-sale, post-sale etc. I think it’s a huge opportunity for CMOs and digital marketers to make themselves far more important and far more relevant to the success of the organisation in future, because they already have a better understanding than anyone else in the business of what the customer does. If they can learn to step outside the boundaries of the traditional marketing function and connect the dots across the organisation to create a great experience, they come out looking like the winners in the organisation. I think it’s a really exciting field to be in right now.

Data science is for the whole organisation, not just marketing

Axel: Data science is not just about the technical aspect, it’s also about the democratisation of the knowledge that you have. How can other parts of the organisation leverage the insights that you’re getting? It could be your sales force, it could be customer services or it could be the marketing department. Everyone needs to be aware of what data science can do for them and their relationship with the customer. If you don’t talk to each other, the customer is going to buy from the competitor (and then we’re all screwed).

Your success with data-driven marketing depends on your organisation’s maturity, not its size

Axel: You need to have clever minds in the organisation that get it. You can start simple and you can start small. It’s not about huge numbers, especially in B2B. You can make it as complex as you want, but it really depends on whether you’re ready.

Aseem: If you have the infrastructure in place, you can start small and scale out or you can start big from the get-go, as long as your system is ready. I don’t think of scale as number of users or amount of data; you need to think about the level of insight you have about your users. Then you can find the insights that lead to better segmentation and lead to better conversion. To me, that’s what scale’s about; you can take a very large audience and start personalising from day one, but if you don’t understand that audience well enough you won’t get a very good outcome.

Data scientists need to understand the customer too

Axel: I believe that having your [data scientist] sit somewhere with a customer focus (it could be marketing) is essential. Data scientists need to be able to translate the business’ needs into data structures or data challenges. That business understanding is really crucial. Data scientists have to have certain capabilities in their personality; logical thinking is certainly a very strong element, but then you also need the intelligence to apply it to the business.

Data-driven marketing is actually pretty creative

Axel: If you think about ‘data-driven marketing’, ‘data’ is just one part of it. The ‘driven’ part is the one that puts it into action. Think about what you want to do with the data. The digital world has actually enabled us to be so much more creative in terms of trying different variations, and finding out what works. There’s a lot of space in my eyes for creativity, if you apply it in automated ways.

Aseem: I think the creative part is equally as important as it has been in the past, but the data science skills are critical. That’s definitely one area from a skills standpoint where marketing needs to evolve.

There are three key rules to starting with personalisation

Aseem: First of all, you have to have good analytics and measurement; you can’t really personalise unless you have enough data to be able to know what to personalise against. Secondly, you need the ability to manage content in a very fluid way. If you have a website that was built 10 years ago, it’s probably running on a system that’s not really capable of being able to dynamically show content. So, when you’re developing a personalisation strategy you need to ask ‘can I actually execute it?’. The third key component is the intelligence. When you look at all your historical data and all your content, how do you bring the two together? Do you understand the user well enough? Can you predict what they’re going to want next? And can you assemble the content in a way that allows you to move them down the buying journey?

Data will completely change the way we interact with brands

Aseem: In the future, the amount of data that will be produced based on our interactions is going to explode. And the number of ways in which brands can engage their audiences will explode as well. With each new channel there’s more data and more information. So if you look ahead a little bit at things like virtual reality and augmented reality – and other interesting technologies on the horizon – they’re going to change the way we interact with brands and with businesses.

The key to the board’s heart is the CFO

Aseem: Marketing will be recognised when someone in your organisation takes the initiative of translating the impact marketing can have in terms the boardroom can understand. Once you’ve got the CFO to understand the value you can deliver, the rest of the c-suite will follow, because you’re talking in very mathematical, financial terms. To win the board’s heart, you’ve got to go through the CFO.