3 Signs You Need Real-Time Data

With Oreo’s Dunk in the Dark Tweet from the Super Bowl two years ago, real-time marketing hit the big leagues, popping up in blogs and newspapers everywhere. However, relatively few marketers have made the leap to leverage real-time data into their own campaigns.

Here are three signals that it may be time for you to start using real-time data:

You Want to Improve Personalization

As Alyssa Nahatis explains in MarketingLand, real-time data “enables companies of all sizes and types to reach their audience at the right time, in the right place and with the right offer.” Send real-time and triggered campaigns in response to your customers’ various actions, such as recent purchases, recent website activity or even events such as birthdays and anniversaries.

For example, InterContinental Hotels Group recently overhauled its systems to transition to a real-time strategy. As a result, every time a customer makes a booking, the customer receives a confirmation email that features individualized, custom offers and content. The result has been a significant rise in click-through rates and many new opportunities to close more sales.

You Want to Better Target Specific Customers

Marketers have a better chance of reaching the right person at the right time if they segment their list by geography, job title or other category. But sometimes customers don’t fit neatly into one category or another. Jeff Seacrist, Vice President of Product Strategy at Webtrends, warns that traditional segmentation often misses the mark. “Behavior is more important,” he explains. “And real-time behavior is the most powerful segmentation you can use.”

Use real-time behaviors to predict future behavior so you can drive targeted messages to the right customers quickly. U.K. clothing retailer AlexandAlexa uses real-time data to email customers a reminder of the products they’ve left in their carts, along with a unique discount code, within minutes. As a result, the retailer has seen an 11.49% rise in sales it would have otherwise lost.

You Want to Pursue Multi-Channel Campaigns

Customers interact with brands in many different ways: website, email, brick-and-mortar stores, just to name a few. Each of these channels gives you a single perspective on a multi-faceted, complex customer psyche. For many marketers, the insights stop there.

The beauty of real-time data is that you can finally pull together your insights to create a 360-degree perspective on your customer. By identifying patterns, behaviors and histories across channels in real time, you gain insights that will allow you to create superior customer experiences in every channel.

For example, Blue Pillar employed a real-time multichannel campaign to switch up its sales campaigns. Previously, the company used email as the first step in a rather lengthy new customer acquisition process. The email would introduce Blue Pillar to the prospect, then follow up by direct mail, phone contact and, eventually, in-person visits. Now, however, prospects are first contacted via direct mail and phone before a face-to-face meeting. A real-time email process closes the loop, allowing the company to personalize the email based on the outcomes of the in-person meeting. This timely, personal approach has improved the company’s overall success rate above 50%.

Leveraging real-time data may be the step you’re missing from your current email marketing strategy. Contact us today for a free trial of TowerData’s real-time data services!