In Search of a Single Customer View

How many programs do you use to collect customer data? The more solutions you have, the more complex analyzing data and using it to find actionable insights becomes. It’s difficult to tie all the data together to create a holistic understanding of a customer.

According to Ensighten, only 10 percent of marketers have successfully grouped data together from email, social, web, and in-store behavior. Additionally, just 18 percent are using a single customer profile for most of their marketing applications. Leveraging one platform to get a single view of your customer is important for creating engaging experiences for customers not just across channels, but also across stages in the buying cycle.

What is a single customer view?

A single view of a customer provides an exhaustive picture of them, including purchase history, site visits, email and social engagement, and mobile app usage, connecting information from disparate sources. The ability to see all interests and behavior in one place allows marketers to build a complete profile of customer behavior and where they are within the funnel.

Benefits of a single customer view

There are many advantages to having all customer data in one place:

• • Brings together data from different sources

A Boston Consulting Group survey found that 83 percent of companies cannot link data across consumer touchpoints. Tools with a single customer view aggregate data from all interactions, providing marketers with an understanding of how they relate to one another and what messaging resonates the most.

• • Offers a more targeted, personalized experience

Knowing customers on a deeper level gives marketers the ability to have unique, one-on-one engagement with them. Delivering messages that appeal to who they are and what they want will enhance the likelihood of success.

• • Understands the impact of marketing efforts

Various factors prompt a customer to eventually make a purchase. Aggregated data lets you see the particular steps a customer took leading up to a transaction and how engaged they were with certain content, allowing you to refine your strategy on an ongoing basis.

• • Streamlines internal processes

The Boston Consulting Group survey found that 68 percent of marketers relied on manual processes, lacking automation capabilities for their day-to-day tasks. Perhaps you want to find out what a person bought in order to recommend additional products; with a single view, you can see exactly what was purchased when, rather than having to contact other departments to get the information you need.

What to look for in an aggregated customer data solution

When vetting solutions for amassing information, you want to ensure it has all the capabilities you need to succeed. The program you choose should:

1. Support all marketing functions.Marketers use multiple platforms every day, and if you select a unified solution that doesn’t incorporate all of them, it won’t be effective. Pick a tool that truly gives you one single view of all customer and source information.
2. Scale with your business. The objective for any organization is to continue growing and evolving over time, and the program you select to manage customer data must be able to bolster that growth.
3. Have around-the-clock support. Even with one solution, drawing the line from one source to another and using data to best inform your marketing strategy takes practice. Find a solution that includes a team that helps you create the best experiences and drives success.

Visibility into all customer information in one centralized program lets marketers do their job more effectively, and therefore provides customers with more relevant and personal brand interactions. With the recent announcement of Maropost for Commerce, our customer engagement platform combines all the marketing and commerce data you need to understand and better serve your customers. Contact us today for a free demo.

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