Marketing Data Management 101: Challenges and Best Practices

Data Integration

Data integration refers to the process of collecting data from multiple sources and organizing it accordingly. This helps achieve consistency in the data, reducing the chances for errors. There are many ways you can go about data integration – ETL (extract, transform, load), API integration, manual integration, and so on.

Data Refining

Once you have all the data in one place, you have to analyze it for errors and inconsistencies. This will help you get rid of unnecessary data, free up space, and reduce costs. You can do it manually or using fraud detection software and then standardize the data formats for use and store them safely.

Data Enrichment

Data enrichment involves adding more value to the data through supplementary internal data or third-party data providers. The goal is to improve the context of the data – what it’s used for, what it means, and how it can help you in creating marketing campaigns.

Data Stitching

Data stitching means connecting fragments of data for full visibility. In many cases, organizations keep their data in several locations, and despite how clean it is, this can prevent them from using its maximum potential. That’s why all data should be combined to form one full picture, which can then be used to create customer profiles, for example.

Data Mining

Data mining is similar to data stitching in a way, except it uses more advanced techniques to read and contextualize data for research purposes. Through the process of data mining, businesses can identify trends and patterns in their marketing and make sound decisions.

Integration Problems

You may find data integration quite challenging, especially when coming from multiple sources. If you run a larger enterprise, your data is likely spread across different marketing platforms that aren’t connected. This can lead to delays in information delivery, trouble accessing data for certain employees, authorization issues, and so on.

You can fix this problem by implementing an integration solution that lets you synchronize your data and store it in one place. Besides storage, you’ll be able to retrieve data for analysis and get insight into KPI performance in real time.

Data Compliance

Data sourcing can be complicated when getting information about your audience. The way you collect user data must be done in a way that doesn’t compromise the integrity of the data and also follows strict user data regulations.

Following data protection laws like the GDPR is vital for maintaining a good business reputation and complying with the law. This not only helps you avoid fines but also protects your brand name, instilling trust in your customers and making them feel secure.

Scalability

As your business grows, you’ll require more space to store your data, which will ultimately require budget allocation. Your monthly expenses will increase one way or another, so finding a cloud solution with enough capacity to handle your data needs is your number one priority.

The sooner you accommodate your data needs, the better. This means no compromised data or complete data loss, which could otherwise hurt your marketing efforts.

Data Usage

Your marketing team consists of people with many different roles, and some of them may not require access to user data. Managing each team member’s access to data can be complicated and time-consuming.

However, setting different data access levels is the only way you’ll safeguard sensitive information. Whenever implementing a new work management platform, make sure you sort what each employee can see and edit within your framework.

Data Quality Retention

Errors can happen during higher-scale data collection. Issues like incomplete, irregular, or outdated data can give you false information and hurt your business. Ultimately, you may come to the wrong conclusions and launch ineffective campaigns, hindering your marketing efforts.

This makes data upkeep vital for any business. Regular data cleansing and updates will help you stay up to date with audience insights and KPI success, leading to smarter marketing moves.

Set Your Marketing Goals

Data management is complicated, and you can ease some of the burden of sorting through pages of data by focusing on the most important parts. Ask yourself questions like:

• How well are my current campaigns doing?

• Do I have a good conversion rate?

• Are my KPIs pointing towards a good ROI?

• Should I make changes to my existing marketing strategy?

The answers will help you identify issues you may be facing in the marketing department, and it’ll be easier to sort through the data you need.

Pull Data from Various Sources

To make sure your marketing strategy is effective, you should be analyzing all data coming from your campaigns. This includes ads, emails, site visits, social media engagement, CRMs, and any other resource you could use.

Identify Good from Bad Data

You shouldn’t be looking at raw data when analyzing the effectiveness of your campaigns. Instead, you need to sort your data appropriately and check for:

• Errors

• Missing values

• Inconsistencies

• Duplicates

• Irrelevant and outdated information.

Also, make sure the sources your data is coming from are trusted, relevant, and up to date.

Train Your Employees in Data Usage

We mentioned the importance of how data is used and how the way you use it can affect your business. To avoid any issues, make sure to provide adequate training for your employees, where you’ll show them how to access and utilize the data to their advantage.

If you use any marketing data management platforms, you should have a tutorial on how they’re used to avoid mistakes.