Whether you already have a marketing automation system to crunch the numbers for your analytics or are still in the process of upgrading, big data probably plays a major role in your company’s future. With it, you’re able to create accurate customer personas, get a better understanding of your audience, and manage omni-channel marketing campaigns.
Even organizations that have invested in marketing automation often miss out on one of its biggest benefits – its predictive capability. Big data becomes an even bigger deal when you use it to understand where you’re going. What you do with information once you’ve gathered it is what makes big data applications so exciting. Here’s how to take your big data tech to the next level by harnessing its full predictive power.
How Anonymous Data Drives Personalized Insight
Discovering more about your customers – both the ones you have now and the leads you hope to convert tomorrow – is a primary goal for your marketing team. With that knowledge, you’re able to send out relevant, targeted messages to every segment of your audience. But what do you do with information about the anonymous visitors to your site? Until the rise of marketing automation software, that information was just background noise to the signals of interest you hoped to pick up, but big data applications turn that information into useful knowledge about your audience too.
Tracking visitors anonymously gives you insight into geographical location, search sources, and content access. You learn about the successes of your paid and organic search campaigns. You find out who’s reading what on your site and how long they spend reading it. And you learn about your leads’ needs even before they give you information about themselves so you can anticipate those needs when they later share information. Marketing automation systems track site activity and can retroactively connect anonymous IP addresses with client information. When a visitor becomes known by supplying information for a white paper download or webinar reservation, you’re able to connect that lead’s behavior to previously anonymous activity and deliver more relevant content.
Removing Friction in the Sales Pipeline
If you know the paths your prospective customers are likely to take, you’re able to smooth the way for them, reducing friction and making transitions from anonymous prospect to known lead to customer seamless. When you’re proactive about removing obstacles before leads encounter them, you make buying decisions simpler. Find out where people are getting stuck along the pipeline, and you’re halfway to eliminating the snag.
Data helps you smooth the path for your prospects by showing you where any drop-off in interest happens. You might find, for example, your landing page is an obstacle. Delivering customized landing pages that have gone through A/B testing to find the right length, layout, and copy lets visitors flow straight from the media channel that sparked their interest to the action you want them to take. Knowing who’s dropping out of the sales cycle is as important as knowing when it happens; with insight into who’s leaving and when, you’re able to hold your promising leads’ interest without over-investing in those who will probably not buy such as students or competitors.
Test and Find Out
Every marketing move you make has a cost, so how do you predict which choices give you the best ROI? Multivariate testing gives you the answers within an afternoon if you’re running marketing automation software. With it, you’re able to see how large audience segments react based on how small, representative sample sizes respond to elements of your marketing campaign. Big data technology excels at making sense of torrents of information quickly, so you get real-time results for your A/B testing. Whether it’s a single email subject line or a redesigned website, A/B split testing tells you which way your audience is likely to lean.
Data-driven marketing isn’t just good for you. It’s also great for your customers when you’re able to serve them better by anticipating their needs. Predictive power is what makes big data an even bigger deal, so use those analytics to look toward the future, not just interpret the present.
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