Big data is becoming even more important for businesses, in practically all areas of business development and management. By the end of 2017, 53 percent of companies were either using or intending to use big data for major decisions, with increased representation in telecom and financial services industries.
But data isn’t just about making more accurate financial projections or understanding how your customers are using your products; it’s also about understanding the best way to reach and communicate with your customer base.
The prevalence and prioritization of data is already starting to reshape brand messages, and that transformation is only going to get more pronounced from here.
High-Level Trends
Data is starting to redefine the most important concepts, priorities, and strategies for an overarching campaign:
- The role of analysis. Marketing departments that were once flush with creative types and visionaries are now bringing in more data analysts ”a position that’s experiencing high growth over the past few years. Data analysis is becoming more crucial for success, and businesses are recognizing it by rebalancing their teams and bringing in the experts capable of asking the right questions.
- Audience targeting. Data is also helping companies recognize who their real target audience is, and what that audience likes to see. Demographic data has always been publicly available through the Census Bureau and other organizations, but only now do companies have the tech and resources to make the most of these data (especially when combined with other sources). Understanding the motivations, behaviors, and buying habits of a consumer can drastically change the message you create for them.
- Medium usage. Similarly, data is pointing companies in the direction of new mediums and platforms for customer communication. With existing data, companies can sacrifice the mediums lagging in performance in favor of newer, more provably beneficial ones. In addition, companies are gravitating toward platforms that allow them to collect more user data overall, to fuel even better insights on customers and interactions.
Ground-Level Trends
Data is also affecting the specifics of each message being sent out to customers:
- Keyword selection. Precise data can help you understand how individual words can affect the effectiveness of a given message. You might find, for example, that a text message containing the word exclusive gets 15 percent more engagement than a comparable text without it. After aggregating these data, brands can use these words as the foundation for future headlines, ad copy, and individual messages.
- Personalization. Data is also providing companies with the opportunity to segment and personalize their audience messages. With dozens of email marketing automation platforms, companies can easily tailor their messages to the individuals receiving them, tweaking everything from the greeting to the signature to make sure it’s optimized for the person reading it ”and no one else.
- AB testing and experimentation. The driving demands for more data are also pushing companies to perform more AB testing and experimentation in general; each new messaging experiment can lead to new revelations about the efficacy of a certain messaging angle or wording. If you’ve gotten an email or seen an ad from a major brand in the past few years, you can bet it’s the end result of several dozen experiments.
- Machine learning and chatbots. Companies are also incorporating customer data into interactive chat bots ”the automated programs that can talk to customers on your behalf. Though this is a technology still in its infancy, it represents a bright future were big data automatically shapes the types of conversations that brands can have with customers. For example, a chatbot may be able to reflexively adapt to accommodate a human user’s mood and disposition, then use the data from the interaction to improve other interactions in the future.
Are your messages currently informed by data, or are you relying on your instincts and creativity to craft them? The middle ground, combining human insights with detailed objective analyses, is the sweet spot for effective message creation and distribution. If you haven’t yet adopted at least some data gathering and analysis into your marketing and communications strategies, now’s the time to get involved ”or else your competitors might get a significant edge on you.
