[Podcast] How to Use Marketing Data for Better Engagement & Conversions

With so much media competing for customers’ attention, it’s no wonder that marketers struggle with engagement. This is particularly true when it comes to email marketing – the inbox is clogged and messy, and filled with junk content that isn’t useful for customers.

The key? Using marketing data and technology hand-in-hand to power personalization that wows customers.

TowerData CBO Phil Davis joined marketing guru Doug Morneau on his latest podcast to talk about just that: How marketers can use their data for better engagement and conversions.

Listen to the Real Marketing podcast.

Here are some highlights.

How can marketers make the most of their data?

Marketers need to do two things to make the most of their data. First, they need to ensure they have clean data. Working with a clean database of good, deliverable emails will ensure you are sending to real customers and avoid hitting toxic data.

Second, marketers need to ensure you know enough about your customer to personalize content. Personalization hinges on having a complete, well-rounded persona of your customer.

Give an example of how one customer used Email Intelligence.

The genesis for what became Email Intelligence was the work we did with one of the big daily deal companies. If you remember, many of these daily deal companies only offered one deal per day when they first started.

This company in particular struggled because they did not personalize the communications around their one daily deal. For example, they often offered a spa service, such as a massage, manicure or pedicure. Rather than personalizing and segmenting, the company sent the same email to their entire list because they knew nothing about the person behind the email address.

We worked with this company to append gender and marital status to their list. Now, they knew if you were male or female, and if you were married or single. They also realized that all of their previous email copy was written to speak to women.

After gathering the data, the company began personalizing. When speaking to a married man, for example, they would write something like, “You may or may not want a manicure. But, we know your wife might be very interested in it. Why don’t you treat her with this certificate?”

They had 100x improvement in conversions on that segment.

But wait – isn’t personalization difficult?

Personalization is the Holy Grail for marketers. So is the notion that every person will get a tailored email, tailored customer experience or a tailored postcard.

But for many marketers, this sounds overwhelming and impossible. They are probably hyperventilating as we speak. What I would say to those marketers is to take note of and use the tools and data you have. Personalization is the endgame, but there’s a spectrum of personalization. First, start with finding the three or four fields that you think can make a huge difference for you. Then, segment your list, and personalize at a manageable scale.

What are you excited about with TowerData in the next year?

What I am most excited about is the fact that our tools just keep getting better. We’re also working on building more integrations into our partner ecosystem – such as email service providers and marketing platforms – so that our clients can turn the data on with ease.

Listen to the entire podcast and subscribe to Real Marketing here.