How Brands Can Turn Data Into a Growth Engine

From music services that anticipate listeners’ moods to maps that predict the fastest routes, smart technologies once considered futuristic have become commonplace—thoroughly changing consumers’ expectations of how they interact with products and services. In a world of price and feature commoditization, experience has often become the primary differentiator and driver of growth for brands.

The need to deliver emotionally resonant and contextually relevant experiences has only deepened during the pandemic—a time of rapidly changing market conditions, regulations, and customer expectations.

In this complex and fast-moving environment, trust has become paramount for brands. It’s the primary ingredient in building customer loyalty, which can help businesses grow revenue and reduce churn, according to Deloitte research on customer-led marketing. Building trust among millions of customers depends on an organization’s ability to automate smart decisions at scale, in real time, based on personalized data—all while respecting privacy through transparent policies and enhanced customer choice.

Yet even as data and automated decisioning have become more critical to business differentiation and growth, many brands struggle with foundational issues—data from too many sources, disconnected technologies, inefficient decisioning processes, and inability to understand customers’ wants and needs.

Deloitte has identified five trends that can help experience-focused brands build better data and decisioning mastery, which can lead to accelerated, sustainable growth.

Bring Customer Data In-House

Thanks to dynamic experience engines and data-driven marketing platforms, brands can orchestrate end-to-end, omnichannel, personalized experiences for consumers. First-party customer data is now the most valuable asset for brands to deliver the types of in-the-moment, relevant experiences consumers expect—and core assets should never be outsourced.

Yet, too often, data provided by and about a brand’s customers is scattered across external agency and vendor platforms as well as across tools managed by disconnected departments or teams within the enterprise. To solve this issue, many brands are bringing first-party customer data—and the skills required to manage it—in-house. To enable in-house teams, many brands are building custom data management tools and consolidating vendors and systems to help reduce complexity and build connectivity.

To drive competitive advantage, brands can create and execute a comprehensive, enterprisewide customer data strategy that maps out goals and key performance indicators, needed capabilities and technologies, and near-term opportunities.

“Faced with marketplace changes, competitive pressures, rising consumer expectations, and shifting regulations, forward-thinking marketers are building adaptability into their operations.”

Create Connected Experiences

The most effective customer experiences are often informed by the past, are relevant in the moment, and anticipate future customer needs. Seventy-five percent of customers surveyed in a Deloitte study on emotion-driven engagement said they expect brands to know their purchase history, and 52% said they want companies to know how satisfied they are with products purchased.

Providing coherent experiences requires connected data about customers—and customer data platforms (CDPs) are designed to serve that purpose. A CDP consolidates first-person customer data in one system, helping organizations make decisions and create connected experiences across all consumer touch points.

Coherent customer experiences can also require coordinated operations across sales, marketing, advertising, service, product development, and other functions. This means collaborating with leaders outside of the marketing organization. For example, two-thirds of customer experience leaders surveyed in October 2020 said IT is involved in customer experience data management, up from 54% in September 2019.Adopt Agile Methods

Agility has become a mandate for marketers in today’s disrupted world. Faced with marketplace changes, competitive pressures, rising consumer expectations, and shifting regulations, forward-thinking marketers are building adaptability into their operations.

Data and decisioning mastery are critical to this agility. A well-implemented, unified CDP can help organizations identify new customer microsegments, gain real-time insights into the most effective ways to engage those audiences, and adapt campaigns on the fly. In addition, advanced AI tools can enable brands to model lifetime value, propensity, churn, and more—in the moment, based on the most current data.

To get there, CMOs should collaborate with CIOs and CTOs to leverage talent and tools across the enterprise. These efforts can help an organization evolve its products, services, and prices to meet rapidly changing customer expectations.