Why are Customer-Centric Enterprise Marketers Prioritizing Customer Data Management?

Customer data management begins with resolving identities of your customers so that you can easily recognize them across devices and platforms, and offer the right message at the right touchpoint at the right time. In this feature, we make the connection between Identity Resolution, a critical component of customer data management, and winning CX, in the context of enterprise marketers.

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Why are customer-centric enterprise CMOs prioritizing customer data management?

Customer experience is the only true competitive advantage in what is increasingly referred to as the ‘experience economy’. Many elements go into the creation of a winning customer experience. We have covered CX and its components extensively on MarTech Advisor. One element that is the bedrock of creating winning experiences is customer data. It is the one source to really get to know and understand customers- not just what they buy, but how they prefer to buy, why they buy and when they buy.

While technology has made it possible, theoretically, for any company of any size or in any industry to deliver personalized and contextual experiences to customers based on this data, there is a huge gap between the theory and practice of being able to do so - especially when we add in the layers of persistence, consistency, scale and privacy.

And none are more concerned with consistency, scale and privacy than large enterprise marketers faced with the reality of millions of very complex interactions with prospects and customers across a plethora of devices, platforms, geographies, channels and touchpoints.

That concern has made customer data management a multi-billion-dollar industry in the martech space. Customer Data Management outcomes have been transformed by the emergence of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and Identity Resolution technology. It is safe to say that resolving the identity of your customer across the many devices, platforms and channels they choose to interact through is central to building a consistent and meaningful experience for them. It is also far more efficient and cost-effective to run campaigns to individuals when identities have been resolved, as this avoids duplications and redundancies in marketing messaging.

Before we further refine the strategic link between CX and Identity Resolution, lets remind ourselves of what it means to be a customer-centric marketer.

Definition of customer-centric marketing:

Customer-centric marketing means creating buying experiences based on customer preferences and behavior, rather than the other way around, i.e. trying to get customers to behave as the brand would like.  Customer-centric marketing focuses on the buyer’s journey, and tries to create value, engagement and delight at every stage of that journey, in order to emerge as the customer’s preferred – and sustained - choice.

For Enterprise Marketers, being customer centric is about knowing, understanding, acting on, and evolving with the 5 W’s of customers to create winning customer experience:

1. Who your customer is: her various identities, influences, persona
2. What she wants to buy: purchase history and patterns, segments
3. Why she wants to buy: buying journey, pain points, motivations
4. When she wants to buy: optimal conversion points in the journey
5. Where and how she prefers to buy: preferred platforms, channels and touchpoints of engagement, purchase and payment
    

Marketers need know the customer they are creating the experience for.

To create relevant experiences – i.e. to know the 5 W’s of the customer in the complex online and offline environment; marketers must stitch together the customer’s identity from multiple interactions. In other words, create a complete profile – a ‘golden record’ - of each individual customer. That means effectively managing customer data irrespective of its source.

Easier said than done.

The 5 Ds: customer data challenges for enterprise marketers:

The complex customer touchpoint landscape means each individual customer is producing disproportionate amounts of data on an ongoing basis. Success with the 5 W’s means effective navigation of the 5 D’s of customer data.

Customer Data Complexities in the Omni-Channel World

1. Data Deluge - too much diverse, disparate data from disconnected sources and devices
2. Data Drought - too little (first party) or addressable data captured and connected
3. Data Disconnect - inaccessible, siloed data and the need for connected, integrated data
4. Data Diligence - meeting compliance, privacy, regulatory and security expectations
5. Data Deployment - activating the data through intelligent campaigns, for optimal ROI​​​​​​
    

Creating winning customer experience depends on several factors, but customer data is central to success. Managing that data begins with knowing who your customer is, irrespective of which device, channel or platform they interact with you, online or offline, at various stages of their journey. Identity Resolution is a critical component of customer data management, that helps build a single view of the customer so that the engagement and the resulting experience is free from friction, logical, relevant, contextual and delightful.

If you are an enterprise marketer seeking to deliver exceptional customer experiences, then arm yourself with this unmissable eBook on Identity Resolution for Winning Customer Experience: A Guide for Enterprise Marketers  – now with a one-step download, exclusively on MarTech Advisor.  Get your copy today!

MarTech Advisor continues tracking all the developments in customer data management, and the latest in our lineup is this eBook- a practical guide to making a compelling business case for identity resolution in your organization.