There was a time when scientists thought there were only a handful of elements, and those were poorly understood. Now we know there are more than a hundred of them, and we understand what constitutes an element. Our greater knowledge evolved through experimentation and improved technology.
That’s true for marketing too. What used to be largely theoretical in marketing has been empirically tested, and just as a chemical engineer can make predictions about what will happen in the lab, marketers have more predictive power than ever before. Database services that incorporate predictive analytics and marketing automation are at the heart of marketing science today, so let’s take a closer look at four elements that comprise a truly visionary marketing strategy.
Unified Records
To be effective as a predictor of lead behaviors, a system first has to know which lead is which. Unified, complete profiles that start tracking individual lead data as soon as a prospect visits your website – even before you know that lead’s name – is central to making useful predictions about that specific lead and about your customer base as a whole. Database management processes that remove duplicate and invalid records from your lists while incorporating knowledge from multiple channels ensure that you get a holistic view of every account.
Attribution
Marketing technology that predicts the future has deep insight into the past. What decisions led your leads to convert? What influenced their decision-making process? Which marketing channels had the greatest impact? Algorithmic attribution that goes beyond snapshots of first-touch and last-touch to assign proportional value to multiple attribution sources give you a far more nuanced view of the way your visitors decide to become customers. First-touch and last-touch attribution still have important stories to tell too, but now they’re just a part of a larger narrative, one that becomes more detailed with data enhancement and careful tracking.
Marketing AI
Artificial intelligence is more than just a buzzword. It’s a wholly new way to integrate all the ways in which technology outperforms us – handling big data, rapid calculation, and relational knowledge, to name a few – with human ingenuity and creativity. As the “Internet of Things” gives us a much more complete look at potential customers, it becomes necessary to have more sophisticated technology to process all that knowledge. A database management strategy that makes use of AI to arrive at new marketing insights will outperform conventional marketing from the start, and it improves over time as the software learns.
Responsive Design
Creativity isn’t something people typically associate with computers, but responsive design lets software serve users more of what’s relevant to them. Chances are good that most of your site visitors now get there via a mobile device, and new hardware with enhanced capabilities comes out every year. Responsive design in email, website layout, and landing pages can future-proof your marketing activities, letting you not only see the future but live there.
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