By
Adam Graham
Marketing to customers in the digital age requires reaching them on their "channel of choice" in the proper context at the proper time. To do this effectively, you need a holistic, accurate view of your customer. However, a study, conducted in 2015, found that a mere 6 percent of the marketers surveyed have achieved a panoramic, single customer view. Without an integrated, cross-channel view of your customers, you cannot plan campaigns that offer the degree of contextual, consistent and relevant personalization that customers are increasingly demanding.
You cannot compile a single customer view by taking fragmented tidbits of data from separate touch points and attempting to compile them into a complete picture. One purchase, one tweet and one email from the customer do not tell you what you need to know. What about all of the other touch points? Has the customer visited your Facebook page, shopped in your physical store or interacted with your in-store kiosk? Does your customer access your website from his desktop computer or his smartphone? Did he visit your website to read your blog or search for product specifications? How long did the customer remain on each website page, and how many times did he return? How many orders has he placed, how much did he spend on each order and how often did he place an order? These are the types of questions you need answered if you want to create a single customer view.
You will face challenges when you move toward a single customer view. Marketers have identified the three primary challenges as insufficient data quality, siloed teams, and problems linking all technologies used. Fortunately, each of these issues can be addressed; although, it is normally best to break them into small, manageable pieces that can be resolved independently instead of attempting to handle the entire challenge in one massive push.