“Information is not knowledge.”
Data is used throughout our lives to inform almost everything. And data will provide one of two things: confusion and paralysis or intelligence and clarity.
Many people have so many different sources and streams of data that the collective result is often conflicting information, paralysis, and even doubt. Let’s call that unintelligent data, even if it’s spoken with power buzzwords and spiffy charts.
What is the difference between intelligent data and unintelligent data?
Two Variables: Data Integrity & Data Context
Data Intelligence comes from data with high integrity, where audits and multiple verification layers provide transparency. The prime example for marketers is their own first party customer data. Your own customer data is verifiable as it is in your possession and can be matched back to actual transactions and even customer interactions. Data with low integrity is everywhere, mostly collected from “virtual clouds of mobile IDs and cookies” that are unverifiable, and these data sources provide little transparency for a reason. The number of vendors selling “trust us” data that you can’t verify is rising quicker than the price of Diet Mountain Dew, which is, as a side note, skyrocketing.
Data Context is also critical. Just because data has high integrity, doesn’t mean it has application to your needs. Data Intelligence isn’t fully transferable between verticals, brands, geographies and even brand life cycles. It isn’t even fully transferable inside a vertical. Take Golf for example: Top Golf has a unique set of behavioral data distinct from the golf courses in the same city. Trying to “stretch data” across verticals and categories is indeed a stretch. Every brand has its own unique customers, products, and infrastructure that produce unique data points. As a marketer, the data that has the best context is always your own customer data. For in it lie all of the past behaviors that built your brand.
Bottom Line
Trust your data to grow your future.
Stop guessing and start Knowing with blu.
In an ever changing marketing landscape, one thing remains paramount: being able to identify customers is the most basic requirement for direct marketing. Customer-obsessed marketers need to leverage the power of online identity resolution starting now. Marketing spend needs to be stewarded at the highest levels, because not knowing who you are marketing to is no longer an option. It’s time to stop guessing and start KNOWING. At blu, we give marketers the power to find (and get to know) the right people in the right places at the right times. We provide the vision and insight you need to identify your best customers; to target the people most likely to be impacted; and then focus on the best ways to be seen, heard, and understood by the people who matter most — YOUR CUSTOMERS.
Chad Stubbs
Driven by a passion to connect people with innovation and excellence, Chad Stubbs launched Reflex Blu in 1999. His “creatalytical” vision of leveraging creative and analytic excellence is at the heart of blu’s continuously innovative culture. Chad has been the strategic lead on countless brands over the past 20 years, and he still gets a thrill out of building profitable customer journeys for the brands we serve at blu.
