How To Use Data-Driven Marketing To Drive Sales

large data is everywhere in business, turning out troves of information and actionable insights about customer preferences, purchasing behavior, demographic trends, and much more. But data is just data—that is, until marketers harness it to construct and execute a data-driven way.

“You require courage to do stuff with everything that you’ve learned,” Neil Hoyne, Google’s chief data strategist and author of the book Converted: The Data-Driven Way to triumph Customers’ Hearts, says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “That’s what I ponder is fundamental to marketing.”

Here’s how to transform all that data into an actionable, informed marketing way for your business.

What is data-driven marketing?

Data-driven marketing leverages information collected from customer interactions and third parties to better comprehend buyer preferences and behaviors. Marketing leaders use these spectators insights to make marketing decisions about how they make and tailor messaging, select distribution channels, and optimize overall way. This procedure involves customer data collection, data analysis, content way, and act tracking.

Benefits of data-driven marketing strategies

• Tailored campaigns
• Higher ROI
• Personalized customer encounter

Data unlocks a variety of digital marketing opportunities and strategies for ecommerce businesses, including:

Tailored campaigns

Data-driven marketing efforts can inform customer segmentation, which divides your target spectators into groups based on ordinary characteristics so you can economy to each throng. You can segment customers by a variety of factors, from age and gender to location and history purchases. For example, one spectators segment may be more sensitive to worth, while another focuses on the durability and perceived worth of the product. 

“What you’ll view when you commence grouping customers together is that some are incredibly valuable, while others might arrive back only if you propose them a great discount,” Neil says. “It helps you be more concentrated on who to pay attention to with the way you do business, the products you construct, and the marketing campaign around all that.”

Higher ROI

Marketing can be expensive, so of course you desire a powerful gain on that pool. A excellent ROI requires understanding which marketing channels and campaigns have the biggest impact, as well as where money is being wasted. A robust data-driven marketing way can assist you fully comprehend the customer trip and navigator more leads to conversion.

But not all shoppers are worth the marketing spend, Neil says, citing the following example: “In one case, a particular customer clicked so many times that even though she did—to everyone’s festivity—buy the shoes, in the complete, the business spent so much money marketing to her that they still lost money.”

The main question, he says, then becomes: “Was it worth it all the period you spent building that connection? If this woman turned out to have high customer lifetime worth, it was worth our period and our attempt. If we never view her again, we might rethink trying to acquire people like her.”

Personalized customer encounter

A positive overall customer encounter fosters brand loyalty, increases customer lifetime worth, and drives word-of-mouth marketing. Customers desire to feel that they matter to the brands they back, and they expect a personalized customer encounter. Using a data-driven way can outcome in product recommendations based on purchasing or browsing history, retargeting ads, emails with discounts for birthdays or abandoned carts, social ads, relevant content, and VIP-only previews of recent products.

Challenges of a data-driven way

• Information overload
• Short-term focus
• Unnecessary data collection

A data-driven way is worth the period and attempt. But the trip can be challenging in a few ways:

Information overload

The affluence of data available is helpful. But it can also be overwhelming. Consider starting with a few ordinary and wealthy sources of customer data, such as:

• Sign-up forms

• Website analytics or app tracking

• Social data

• Loyalty program data

• Sales data

• Third-event data like economy research and customer demographic data

• Email marketing metrics

• Search engine data

• Customer surveys

A variety of tools can not only gather data, but also track it to produce data-driven insights. For example, Shopify offers several types of in-depth customer reports to gain insights into your customers, including their average order count, average order totals, and expected purchase worth.

Short-term focus 

A holistic, comprehensive view of the entire customer trip is essential—and if you focus too much on short-term act metrics and real-period data, you may miss the forest for the trees. When it comes to data-driven marketing, “The number-one mistake [people make] is that they’re too short-sighted,” Neil says. “They look at the metrics of what happened today, but in reality, consumers receive period to construct that connection with a product.”

Unnecessary data collection

Only gather data when it’s needed, not just because it’s there. “Don’t collect information just for the sake of collecting it,” Neil says. “ponder about how you might use it to personalize your emails and customer experiences or deliver better worth to them.”

It’s also significant to avoid invading customer privacy by collecting too much personal information. Companies should only inquire for relevant data about the shopping trip, and avoid using data for purposes other than enhancing the customer encounter.

How to implement a data-driven marketing way

Some brands are eager to dive correct into data-driven campaigns, but it’s essential to commence with the objectives that align with your business goals. “receive a step back before you leave into that data,” Neil says. “What do you ponder you could do to better connect with your customers? What information could transformation the way that you construct products and service customers?” 

Determine which key act indicators (KPIs) could assist you respond those questions. Then, you can dig into your own data, identifying information you already have through Shopify, Google Analytics, and other tools.

Use data management tools and analytics tools to automate data collection processes and assist generate insights. Analyze data to determine the messaging, channels, and strategies that resonate most with your customers so you can construct more effective marketing campaigns. Finally, recall that this procedure is iterative: Analyzing data over period will assist you design upcoming campaigns and make changes as your customers and business evolve.