New marketing channels and technologies pop up all the time, with growing volumes of information and data coming at us from all directions. Being a modern marketer today means having to handle, analyse and act on information from dozens of disparate sources, systems and channel. However, up until now one crucial piece has been largely neglected.
What about what’s happening in the real, offline world? After all, most of your customers’ activity still happens offline – 90% of retail sales, in fact.
Without offline data to tie all your web and social interactions back to real-life transactions and people, you’re essentially making important decisions with incomplete intel. This impacts everything from your ability to accurately measure how your online spend impacts offline behaviour, to personalising interactions with different segments of your audience.
The Key to unlocking the real world
Data onboarding is the service that connects online and offline customer data to digital applications and platforms in a privacy-compliant manner. Sounds like a simple enough idea, but the impact of data onboarding is immense!
Firstly, it unlocks smart audience segmentation across channels and devices, for consistent, seamless messaging. And on top of that, it also maximises the relevance of those communications for better conversion rates, while bolstering efficiency of your digital marketing activity as a whole.
Three major use cases for data onboarding
Control content visibility: What you don’t show visitors can often be as important as what you do! Ad suppression lets you withhold certain content from certain people, for a better customer experience and more cost-efficient campaigns.
Close the loop on reporting: Sometimes marketing content has an effect of delayed gratification – your customer might see an ad for your sunglasses but not purchase until weeks later when buying a birthday gift for a friend. Data onboarding allows marketers to analyse their spend across journeys and devices to get a full and accurate view of attribution.
Personalise and optimise: Data onboarding allows you to optimise your content even if your audience isn’t logged in.
Get on board with onboarding
As a modern marketer, you know that the experiences you create for customers are increasingly crafted, tested and delivered online – but that’s only part of the story.
Until we connect our offline and online worlds, we’re flying half-blind. Data onboarding is making massive inroads into helping deliver more targeted, personalised and measurable experiences in today’s omnichannel world.
It’s a smart way to make crucial decisions based on a fuller view of what’s going on, resulting in far more relevant marketing, and a better experience for both the consumer and the brand.
To find out more about how to solve your disconnected data problem, take a look at our recently launched ebook.