The fact that you can’t do big data strategies and data-driven marketing on your own is the only drawback. Large amounts of data can only be gathered and used with the assistance of one or more outside technology providers. Which one should you choose, and can one technology replace another? By contrasting the three key competitors in the market—marketing automation, loyalty programmes, and consumer data platforms—this article is committed to providing you with a straightforward response.
Data-Driven marketing: what is it?
In a nutshell, data-driven marketing is all about developing a customised marketing plan based on client information. In other words, data-driven marketing is when you use churn prediction to determine the best course of action for a certain client segment, then target those consumers with tailored emails and offers.
Practically speaking, there are many ways to carry out data-driven marketing. However, there are three distinct pillars that must be included in your approach in some capacity:
insight into the consumer, so you can anticipate their needs
A timely message that will pique buyers’ interest
An alluring offer that motivates buyers to take action
A data-driven marketing plan can be implemented via customer data platforms, marketing automation, and loyalty programmes. And to what extent? Well, that depends on the strategy used by each business.
What are the differences between customer data platforms, loyalty programmes, and marketing automation?
Businesses frequently strive to find an all-in-one service provider when they initially start out with data-driven marketing in order to cover everything from data collection to communication and rewards. Let’s first look at what customer data platforms, marketing automation, and loyalty programmes are good at before addressing if this is conceivable (or even worthwhile).
Platforms for Customer Data
There are several ways to define CDPs, but in data-driven decision making, a customer data platform is in charge of gathering customer data and organising it into unique customer profiles. In order to provide a comprehensive customer perspective, data is gathered across all channels, including online and mobile engagement as well as in-store transaction data from the POS.
A CDP’s use of superior machine learning algorithms and AI predictions to determine the optimal course of action based on the data is one of its other key advantages. This enables companies to develop more sophisticated categories based on complex data, such as customer preferences or past purchases. Customer Data Platforms are therefore very effective tools for predicting turnover.
Automation of Marketing
Marketing automation, which executes your strategy, is at the other end of the data-driven marketing strategy spectrum. Execution is the key to marketing automation; it gives you unmatched freedom when it comes to designing and running newsletters, emails, and other digital communications.
Furthermore, using marketing automation solutions lets you A/B test various messaging for a segment. As a result, you can test different email text draughts to see how your audience reacts. Finding the appropriate tone for each segment in this way gives you priceless insight and aids in the improvement of your personalisation approach.
The Synergy is the Secret to Data-Driven Decision Making
The truth about data-driven marketing is that you should be asking, “How should I use all three to maximise the value? ” rather than “Which of the three is more significant than the others?”
Without a question, combining all three at once offers the greatest advantages. While surprise and pleasure birthday mailings can be improved with a gift, such as extra points or a discount on the customer’s preferred product category, loyalty programmes, for instance, promote survey participation, which can then be fed to the CDP’s algorithms.
A combination of tools is also the most practical from a development standpoint. No matter whatever vendor you choose to work with, they’ll most likely have the integration you require right out of the box because the makers of loyalty programmes, customer data platforms, and marketing automation technologies have worked hard to enable a vast network of integrations.
The Following Step
After all of that, it’s up to you to put together your ideal group of CDP, marketing automation, and loyalty programme vendors. We’d be more than pleased to demonstrate our technology as a pure-play loyalty provider focusing in headless commerce and omnichannel solutions. Simply schedule a demo or send your RFP our way.
stumbled upon this article when looking for loyalty programme suppliers? To make things simpler, use this helpful comparison worksheet!