With all the advancements in marketing technology of late, more and more marketers are focusing on how to leverage data to improve marketing results. When marketers use data to guide marketing choices, it benefits the brand in several ways. Here are some of the top benefits you’ll experience when adopting a data-driven approach to marketing.

Save Time

Imagine what you could do at your agency if you had an additional 4-5 man hours per employee a week? That’s the power of using data technology to automate marketing tasks. When you automate mundane marketing tasks like monitoring KPIs, creating reports, and sending out automated emails, for example, you free up time to focus on tasks that really matter.

Reach The Right Audience

How many times have you hid an ad on Facebook or Instagram because it isn’t relevant to you? Have you ever automatically deleted an email or marked it as spam because you don’t know where it came from and it didn’t interest you? Have you been searching the web and thought how strange it was that the sponsored ads didn’t align at all with your search? This is what happens when marketers don’t use data to guide their marketing campaigns. Yes, the ads and emails reach an audience, but they don’t reach the right audience.

When you rely on data to guide your marketing choices, you are able to better identify who your target audience is, what their preferences are, what type of content they want from you, and even when they want it. This helps you increase click through and conversion rates.

Learn About Your Audience

It’s common to hear that customers are creeped out by data collection, but the opposite is actually true. Consumers are asking for more personalized experiences and are willing to offer brands data in exchange for more relevant shopping experiences.

The best way to learn about your audience, of course, is to collect accurate data about them. Through smart data collection strategies, you can learn where your customers are from, what their gender is, what shopping preferences they have, what they are interested in, what they might be prone to purchase in the future, and more.

Then, you can leverage that data to reach your customers in more meaningful ways. For example, let’s say you own a large travel brand. Chances are you have a wide range of customers that are interested in traveling to and from different locations. With the power of data collection, you can quickly learn which airports they typically travel from and where they typically travel to. Then, you can segment your email lists, for example, based on that information and send them updates about deals their home airport. This is much more effective then sending all of your customers all of your deals from every location and to every location. Without data, that type of email newsletter would get overwhelming.

More Cross-selling and Upselling Opportunities

How much of your revenue comes from existing customers? How much does a successful cross-sell or upsell affect your bottom line? The answer for most brands is probably a lot. In fact, selling to existing customers is much more beneficial than acquiring a one time new customer.

When you collect data about your customers for social media, search, email, or any other type of digital marketing purposes, it’s easier to match customers with the right product. What does this do for you? It increases the opportunities for current customers to purchase more products and more often with your brand.

For example, let’s say a customer is lead to your website by a targeted ad. Then, they fill their cart with a few products. For whatever reason, let’s say the customer gets distracted and forgets to complete the purchase. With the help of data, you can trigger an automatic email to send reminding them of what they have in their cart. Additionally, you can use technology to recommend similar products.

Not only does this result in a recovered abandoned cart sale, but it can result in additional purchases from automated recommendations based on data.

Are you on the fence?

If you’re on the fence about whether or not to adopt a data-driven approach, let the benefits listed above help you make the switch from following your gut to using strong data collection and analysis methods to make better marketing decisions. It will be worth it in the long run.

How do you know you’re a data-driven marketer?

Now that we’ve addressed how data-driven marketing will benefit your brand, let’s look deeper into how to know if you’re actually using data to make the best marketing decisions. This infographic will present the top 10 signs you know you’re a data-driven marketer. If all of these ring true, you know you using all the right tools and strategies in your marketing approach to yield results.

Source: 10 Signs You’re a Data-Driven Marketer by Campaign Monitor