Effective Customer Data Usage 101

In today’s data-driven marketing landscape, most organisations hold a wealth of customer information, but many are not leveraging this data to its full potential. Your customer data usage, often referred to as First-party Data (1PD), can turbocharge business decisions across various functions, especially in Advertising.

Why does your customer data matter?

Having worked with businesses of all sizes and industries across the globe, we observe many common data challenges that undoubtedly limit advertising campaigns from reaching their full potential.  

Imagine sending the same marketing messages to all your customers regardless of their demographics, backgrounds, lifestyles and preferences – it is out of the question why such a marketing campaign might not yield the best responses and conversions from your potential customers. Research shows that personalisation in marketing can reduce churn rates by up to 10% (source), or lead to a 19% increase in purchase likelihood) from Display ads  (source), making it the default best practice for marketing campaigns large and small.

In simplest terms, the main role of advertising is to send your expertly crafted messages to the right audiences. However, for businesses with complex customer journeys, crafting personalised messages can be challenging without proper data management. Inconsistent data collection, outdated customer profiles, and a lack of user segmentation often create blind spots, hindering platforms’ ability to understand and target your ideal customers.

How we leverage your customer data (Responsibly)

• Measure campaign effectiveness and fuel business decisions: We analyze data to understand how campaigns perform across different audience segments and provide valuable insights to marketing teams.
• Attribution modelling: We track and model user journeys to see how various advertising placements influence purchase decisions.
• Optimizing Campaigns: We use data to constantly improve ad campaigns and reach the right audience at the right place and time
• Investment Planning: By combining historical audience performance data with future trends forecasting, we can strategically plan advertising investment.
• Finding Valuable Segments beyond your data: Where authorised, we partner with ad tech and consumer data platforms to identify audience segments with similar characteristics for targeted advertising.

Common 1PD Management challenges we often see across our clients:

Many businesses struggle with effectively utilizing first-party data (1PD) for advertising campaigns. Here are some common challenges we frequently encounter:

• Limited understanding of how 1PD can be used for advertising in general

• Inconsistent and insecure data collection practices: A lack of a standardised and secure approach to data collection and sharing across various channels (website, email, social media) leads to fragmented, potentially inaccurate and non-compliant data. 
• CRM Shortcomings: An outdated or inadequate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can create a bottleneck for 1PD utilization. Limited segmentation capabilities within the CRM or the lack of a single source of truth often confuse the interpretation of audience-specific performance data
• Difficulty segmenting existing data: Failing to segment data based on specific business goals and advertising campaign objectives leads to generic, unfocused campaigns and untailored messages.

Responsible and effective usage of first-party data is an ongoing commitment, especially with evolving privacy and data regulations across industries. The effective usage of first-party data not only helps minimise advertising blind spots but also unlocks more powerful, up-to-date customer insights that unlock sustainable growth for your business.

Ready to take the next step? Our ADMATICians are here to help ensure your data is handled securely and effectively, while each allocation of your advertising efforts is fueled by valuable customer insights. Get in touch with an ADMATICian today to start working with us!