Numbers are the answer! Atos Poland GDC

How to achieve it?

The main question of course is – what precisely do we understand by usage of the data about customers, especially in the context of the discussion about personal data security and methods of gathering and processing it by companies around the world.

Our hypothetical company doesn’t operate in vain. There are plenty of areas where the interactions between a company and potential customers take places. Website, social media, email, landing pages, SEO, SEM, e-commerce platforms – to mention the most recognizable. Those identified touchpoints generate enormous amount of data, and not only those obvious like first name, last name or personal data required to make a purchase. There is also additional information – what is the source of the traffic on our website, time spent on the website, visited subpages, does the visitor read the company’s blog, is the customer active on social media, what are interesting destinations for particular potential customers, does the customer prefer low-budget transportation… And this is only the tip of the iceberg of information we can gather through the above mentioned touchpoints. Why? To help our customer – even without identifying them – and give them a tailored offer.

To visualize the process, let’s take an example:

Our customer, John Doe, receives an initial mailing. For the purpose of this example, it’s enough to say we have his consent to receive information and to process his data – and the company doesn’t violate any legal regulations. If John Doe receives another ordinary mail, there is a huge chance he won’t even open it - just like 80% of other recipients[5]

However, if the mail is personalised, based on gathered data about John (e.g. his searches of hotels in a particular city), and we title the mail suggesting a suitable transport to this place – the chance he will not only open the mail, but will most likely go further in the customer journey.

But, there is no point in redirecting John to our website if we can’t instantly present him the content that meets his needs in the first place! We must know what John is looking for (what concrete mail redirected him to the website) so we could display the proper content.

The company is well known, but obviously not everyone has to recognize the name and scope of services – and definitely not everyone has to know our standards and our pride of them. If John Doe is a person who does not possess that information, in all likelihood he will look for opinions about our company – and what is better way to do it if not asking friends and peers?[6]

Being conscious of the above, we can – by predicting the intentions of our potential customer – redirect him to the right space – no matter if it’s either opinions displayed on our website, profiles in social media or comments in search engines.

John Doe, having a certain destination, having the offer that meets his expectations AND needs, has read opinions about our company and has returned to our website. He has no intention to search the details of a particular trip once more, so we need to make sure he will receive his information instantly.

Is this the end?

Obviously not! We can get even more from those interactions. Firstly, if for any reason John resigns at any point of customer journey, we would have this information – and we can try to identify the reason.

Secondly – and this is the path we want to implement as a standard, just like any other transportation company – John Doe might convert into a loyal customer, who will consider our company in his future travel plans.

How to put this all together?

Marketing automation – this might be the answer.

System that enables company to not only aggregate data from various touchpoints, but also use them for actual activities. CRM integration, social media management, mailing system, CMS for websites and landing pages – and limitless areas and dimensions for data analysis. And – these are just examples of capabilities of Marketing Automation solutions.

That’s why, when it comes to strategic decision making, creative ideas are appreciated, but decisions are made (or at least should be) based on actual numbers.