In today’s world, people want things to be easy. Whether it’s shopping, researching products, or hearing about products for the first time, they want everything to be seamless. Yet for many, the process is still fragmented. How can you connect the dots so that your customers receive a consistent, relevant message regardless of the channel? It starts with having complete data.
There are three data types you can draw from:
First-party data
This is the data you own. It includes your mailing list, your email list, customer data from your point of sale system or CRM, and anything else, including data gathered from social media interactions with your company.
Second-party data
This is data you rent, purchase, or exchange with another company. This might be from a noncompetitive company with which you have a strategic relationship.
Third-party data
This is data you gather from third parties, including websites and social media.
What does this look like in action? Here are some of the places an airline, for
example, might mine data to define its target audience:
- Members of its loyalty program
- Customers who frequently purchase travel online
- Consumers in the market for travel credit cards (sourced from a third-party data provider)
- Customers or prospects exhibiting high engagement with its monthly newsletters
- Consumers posting/tweeting about travel credit cards
Gathering and consolidating this data not only helps the airline define a highly targeted audience, but also more closely customize and target its messaging.[1]
Once this data is gathered, you can clean it up, analyze it, and fill in any gaps. Then you can begin incorporating it across marketing channels to provide customers with a seamless, personalized experience.
