Learn to Truly Leverage Your Data in Our Smart Guide to Data Activation

The overlooked gap in your marketing

Even though marketers only use 50% of their data in practice, their bosses have sky-high expectations for data usage and performance. 93% of executives expect that using more customer data in their campaigns will greatly impact their ability to be competitive. More customer data than ever before is being collected, but other major issues in data infrastructure are preventing the data from being utilized fully. Many marketing teams still have limited connectivity between channels. This leads to a fragmented customer experience that inhibits growth. For forward-thinking marketers, this presents a unique opportunity. It presents a great chance to let data activation revolutionize the way you market to customers.

To activate data in order to facilitate these experiences, you need a system that can capture, model, and manage raw data from any source, and out to any source. What’s activation you ask? Leaders in the marketing space use “activation” as a catch-all for describing the process by which customer experiences are informed by the fullness of customer data. This means every customer interaction across every channel is guided by a holistic, real-time view of customers, typically by way of a Single Customer View found in platforms such as the CDP, or Customer Data Platform.

4 tips for getting started with data activation

Recognizing you could have gaps in your data pipeline is the first and most important step, but the concrete steps to improving customer engagement with Data Activation can take time. Here are four tips to help get you started:

1. Surface the Martech Struggle: Data Activation requires technology, which requires cross-functional buy-in. Begin building a business case that outlines your current issues and what you believe will resolve them. Where are you currently fighting with your technology? Really dig into those pain points and don’t be afraid to think outside the box when it comes to what might solve them.
2. Identify Your Needs: There’s a lot of technology out there making bold claims, but be careful. Any technology or solution can’t truly enable data activation unless it provides a single customer view, predictive intelligence, scalable architecture, powerful recommendations, and a robust templating solution.
3. Demo with Intention: Insist on getting into the details. Ask for examples of how you can do complex use cases, especially when scaling to millions of customers in a short timeframe. Ask for customer references so you can confirm the claims are legitimate. Ultimately, a demo you can trust shows you more than it tells you.
4. Look for a Partner, Not a Tool: A good partnership will take you a lot further than a good price. Look for a team that’s made up of the right people: those who really believe in what they’re providing. Make sure they want to help you get the most out of their offerings, and that they can brainstorm new use cases to help propel your business forward. Solutions that solve for now are great, but you need tools that can scale and solve for now and later

More about our Smart Guide Series

Our Smart Guide to Data Activation is just one in a series of Blueshift Smart Guides that are available to access now. We created these guides to educate marketers about the topics that are critical to business success today. In this series, we cover top tools, like Customer Data Platforms, up-and-coming technology, like marketer-accessible AI, and so much more.

You can discover our full library of Smart Guides here, or chat with one of our martech experts to learn how data activation could positively impact your business.