Amp Up Your Marketing Campaigns with Data Integration
by Andrew Lisa
If your business is marketing, you’ve probably heard the term “data integration” thrown around as if it’s some magic pill that will take your social marketing campaign to the next level. But if different marketing campaigns are created by different teams – specifically if there is a separation between digital and traditional schemes – then how much capability do you actually have to unify silos?
Data integration tools can help you organize scattered, far-flung data.
Data Integration Tools and the Power of Automation
When I first read the article “How Data Integration Tools Can Turbocharge Your Marketing,” I was surprised at how much emphasis was placed on data integration tools. But even though automation can never replace a unified strategy business-wide, it is true that only integration tools can manage the masses of big data that are required for true integration.
Cloud Integration
With more and more businesses and individuals storing much – or in many cases, all – of their data on remotely hosted cloud servers, that data needs to be synchronized with on-site data at your physical location. This – if nothing else – is cause enough to invest in data integration tools.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing is essential in a world dominated by smartphones and – increasingly – tablets. Data integration tools can help you glean valuable information not only from traditional mobile marketing strategies such as SMS, but also from apps.
Purchase History and the POS Example
So if it’s true that your social marketing tools aren’t worth anything without the data integration tools to back them up, then how are separate data silos broken down into actionable content? The answer is purchase history.
Take the example of a business using its POS system to track which customers redeem coupons and how often. With data integration tools, the amount of useable data is dramatically amplified. Instead of just knowing who redeemed and when, the entire life cycle of the coupon can be tracked. When they redeemed it, how they redeemed it – even when they first opened it can all be analyzed.
Demographics: The Big Payoff
It’s obvious that so much marketing is based on demographics. But what may not be so obvious is that age/gender/income/whatever-based polling creates mountains of data that is simply not possible to sort into actionable research without data integration tools. Not only can automated tools sort this information, but they can help you cross-reference it against actual purchase and repeat-business data.
Real-Time Marketing
If your social marketing tools don’t enable you to engage in real-time marketing, then you’re not engaging in genuine social marketing. When branding and marketing is scattered across multiple teams and multiple departments, real-time cohesion is simply not possible without the aid of automated tools that can harness far-flung information into a cohesive, useable chunk of data.
Your mobile marketing strategy will get a boost from data integration.
It’s not possible to gain real, actionable data from scattered, un-connected silos across several departments without the use of data-integration tools. Your social marketing campaign relies on real-time information and a complete data picture. In other words, you need data integration, which can’t be achieved without data integration tools.
Andrew Lisa is a freelance marketing writer. Follow him on Twitter.
NOTE: For job seekers and entrepreneurs working on a smaller scale, integration of all you do similarly empowers your marketing and branding effort to attract the right job or the Smooth Sale!
Read Addtional Strategies and Techniques:
Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results, Sourcebooks
