There's always an element of risk in business, but data-driven marketing strategies allow organizations to be less cautious when launching new marketing and advertising campaigns.
As a market research company, we understand the power and magnitude data can have on a business. Heck, we write about it every day on our market research blog.
But I was curious to hear from other business decision-makers to learn their real-world data-driven marketing examples and the benefits they find from implementing these strategies.
Below you'll find quotes from marketers of all industries and experience levels. Feel free to take their ideas and incorporate them into your own marketing initiatives.
You won’t regret it!
What is Data-Driven Marketing?
Data-driven marketing is the process of creating marketing and advertising campaigns based on real consumer insights as opposed to intuition or assumptions alone.
Remember, data can be incorporated into all aspects of business decision-making. We talk about this at length in the blog post, What is Data-Driven Decision Making (And Why It's So Important).
For Jon Fee, the SVP & Head of Global Marketing at Salesforce.org, his day starts with coffee and data. Only after reviewing his dashboards will he turn to email and Slack – and for good reason.
Fee says that his most successful year was driven by two things:
- A diverse leadership team
- Data
Let’s dive into more of the benefits and real-world examples of how today’s business decision-makers are implementing data-driven marketing strategies.
Benefits of Implementing Data-Driven Marketing Strategies
1. Make Strategic Marketing Decisions
Data should always be at the core of any strategic marketing decision; it enables you to use information about your prospective or active customers to inform and implement personalized media and creative strategies.
The benefit comes from being able to target the right customers, at the right time, on the right media network with a relevant message.
Quote provided by Bethany Pigott, Head of Client Services at Hallam
2. Create More Personalized Connections
One of the most compelling benefits of data-driven marketing is the ability to create more personalized and consistent connections with consumers.
By understanding consumers’ habits and preferences, advertisers can curate campaigns that will resonate with their audiences, not only increasing ROI but improving a brand’s relationship with their consumers as well.
Melyssa Buerge, Senior Associate of Sales Development at MNI
3. Allocate Marketing Budgets for Increased Profitability
Data-driven marketing helps you allocate your market budget more profitably by being able to respond faster to market changes in volume and price and thereby outspending your competition in a smart way.
We use email marketing, sales funnel, and CRM software and track our most important marketing metrics including CAC and CLV.
We review our top metrics daily and then drill down if needed and adjust marketing spend if needed.
Martin Luenendonk, Founder of FounderJar
4. Rely On More Than Gut Instincts
To put it simply, data-driven marketing is at the heart of everything we do at Disney Codeillusion.
Sure, like most brands, we have hunches and theories about who our key customer segments are, what product features and benefits will matter most to them, and what messaging and/or creative concepts will resonate.
However, it is crucial that you let the data do the talking and dictate what key strategy pivots or evolutions can and should be made - you must validate your hunches and be prepared to deviate from them when the data tells you otherwise.
Amanda Windsor, Head of Marketing, Disney Codeillusion
How to Use Data to Enhance Marketing Strategies
Data is a critical component of any successful marketing strategy. Hard and soft data, big and small data, quantitative and qualitative -- no matter how you look at it, marketers must use both to find digital multifamily marketing success.
Here are a few real-world examples of how today’s marketers are incorporating data in their marketing and advertising strategies.
1. Email Campaigns
We use data in social media, email marketing, content creation, and other processes. But now I'd like to draw attention to using the data in email marketing.
We found that the high number of subscribers doesn't always bring high engagement, conversions, and even deliverability. It's very important to notice what your platform is telling and keep your database clean.
Here's what I mean...
When I look at our database, I see that we have around 3,000 contacts.
But if I exclude low-quality contacts such as:
- Unsubscribes
- Bounced contacts
- Contacts with no professional email addresses
- Contacts with no subscription consent
- Contacts with low engagement
- Contacts that are more than 2 years old (aka not fresh)
It turns out that our actual base is much smaller.
Even without expensive and complex tools, we could gain a lot of insights on the quality and quantity of our contact base, simply using our CRM/email marketing tools (we use HubSpot).
This small change - actually making our base smaller - helped us save on expensive monthly subscriptions and send emails only to those who actually open and engage with our content.
I am sure this will motivate more companies to clean their database and don't spend money on "dead" contacts.
Aida Grigoryan, Content Strategist of Incredo
2. Inform Buyer Personas
We use data-driven marketing to help form our buyer personas and learn more about our target audience so we can create highly effective marketing strategies for ourselves and our clients.
Traditionally, marketing and advertising have been a hard-data world, but that is beginning to change. There is an increasing awareness of the value of soft data.
Without these insights, we do not know our customers, what is important to them, or what their biggest pain points are.
Soft data (or qualitative data) are the details that help you learn your target audience so you can better sell your product or service and meet your customer's specific needs.
By utilizing soft data, we have been able to increase our form submissions, generate new leads, and even grow our social media presence and email lists.
Jon Simpson, Founder and CEO of Criterion.B and Swifty
3. Better Understand Your Target Audiences Per Platform
We see that our top performing audience on Facebook and Instagram are gaming and Disney enthusiast adults looking to purchase our coding education programs for themselves.
However, on Google, our top performing audience are parents looking to purchase for their children.
When we launched our paid campaigns initially, we were focused on a handful of customer segments but have let the data and performance do the talking week over week and month over month.
We have honed in on the top performers per platform and have come up with dedicated strategies per platform to effectively reach, engage and convert these segments.
Additionally, from an organic social media perspective, we see that our audience skews older on Facebook and is a bit younger on Instagram, so we ensure that we create unique content for each audience on each platform.
The result?
With this approach, we see maximum engagement, interaction, and growth.
Amanda Windsor, Head of Marketing, Disney Codeillusion
4. Drive the Creation of New Lead Magnets
About a year ago, we saw that our top-of-funnel conversion point (free trial sign up) was performing well, however, the number of people who signed up versus the number of people who completed the trial took a drastic dip.
This data indicated that the free trial wasn’t compelling and engaging enough AND that we weren’t educating our prospects enough to keep them interested and intrigued by our offering.
The result?
We created a revised free trial that got straight into the coding curriculum and included additional Disney touches that users love.
Additionally, we extended our free trial automated email sequence to include additional emails highlighting key USPs, program features, and benefits to keep prospects motivated and engaged.
Our free trial sign-up to completion rate improved tremendously - as did our free trial sign-up to conversion rate.
Amanda Windsor, Head of Marketing, Disney Codeillusion
5. Determine the Timing and Length of Promotions
By analyzing historical performance during promotional periods, we’ve been able to hone in on top-performing days and promotion period durations.
For us, we look to launch seasonal promotions on Fridays and know that around 10 days max is our peak performance sweet spot.
We tend to see conversions 3x on the weekends, so given our 10-day timeframe, we’re able to have the promotion run for two full weekends.
We’ve validated that 10-days is the sweet spot because as we’ve seen significant user fatigue when something runs for 12-14 days.
Amanda Windsor, Head of Marketing, Disney Codeillusion
6. A/B Testing Subject Lines for Broadcast Email Sends
Open rates, click rates, and conversion rates will tell you the clear winner.
These data points will also tell you other relevant information about potential list fatigue such as if you need to create more nurturing-based content and/or revisit your segmentation strategy.
Amanda Windsor, Head of Marketing, Disney Codeillusion
7. Time-Testing Broadcast Email Sends
Open rates, click rates, and conversion rates will also tell you when your subscribers are most engaged and most likely to interact with your content.
Take these findings and apply them to campaigns moving forward.
Amanda Windsor, Head of Marketing, Disney Codeillusion
8. Drive Inbound and Outbound Search Engines
We use data-driven marketing to power our inbound and outbound engines; my sphere focuses mostly on inbound.
I use data to inform the majority of my content ideas as well as what levers to push on based on performance.
For example, data informs me which topics are most relevant to our audience and the problem(s) our product solved, and I'm able to use data to monitor which channels are most successful for content promotion.
The results?
Since I started, we've nearly doubled our blog traffic.
I've been able to trim a few unnecessary tactics and strategies, so that's given me some time and energy back to spend on what I know is working. With data, less is more!
Allie Decker, Head of Content at Kloudio
Recommended Reading: Market Research to Build Your Inbound Marketing Strategy
9. Inform Client’s Media and Creative Strategies
At Hallam, we use a wide variety of first- and third-party data to make recommendations to inform our clients' media and creative strategies and tactical plans.
This includes collecting readily available consumer behavior data, customer feedback, and sentiment analysis, and market trends.
The results?
Using data in this way reflects boosted advertising performance and an improved return on investment for our clients.
Bethany Pigott, Head of Client Services at Hallam
Implement Data-Driven Marketing Strategies with Drive Research
Inspired to rely on consumer data to drive your marketing and advertising strategies? Drive Research can help.
Our full-service market research firm often conducts customer surveys, ad concept testing, PR surveys, focus groups, and other methodologies to enhance marketing and advertising campaigns.
To learn more about our services, contact us below!
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Emily Carroll
A SUNY Cortland graduate, Emily has taken her passion for social and content marketing to Drive Research as the Marketing Coordinator. She has earned certificates for both Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
Learn more about Emily, here.
