Even in a marketplace where a substantial amount of customer interactions happen in digital channels, it’s still difficult to form a complete understanding of your customers. While robust first-party data provides you with what you currently know about your customers at a segment level and how they engage with you, data enrichment can help you go deeper.
What is data enrichment and how does it work?
In today’s digital landscape, your organization has access to more forms of customer data than ever before. Chances are you already have a substantial database of customer information, including characteristics, preferences and geographical data. Every time a customer interacts with your brand, they create valuable data points that can provide you with intelligence such as:
- Content preferences.
- Preferred communication channels.
- Common challenges.
- Demographic information
Various analytics tools can show you how your customers navigate through your webpages, how they interact with your social media content, which emails they’re most likely to open and what topics they’re likely to discuss with your customer service agents. Plus, data onboarding methods can help you gain more benefits from valuable offline data such as in-store transactions and loyalty programmes.
What don’t you know about your customers' online behaviour?
A data enrichment provider can augment all of this first-party data with qualified consumer traits from third-party data pools to enhance your digital marketing strategy, optimize customer acquisition and transform loyalty and retention programmes. By integrating validated third-party data with your own, the data enrichment process provides a holistic view of your current customers and targets future similar customers.
Plus, you’ll better understand the behaviours they exhibit while not interacting with your brand, which could provide new and valuable segmentation data for internal activity such as customer insights or future targeting strategies.
What are the benefits of data enrichment?
Enriched data fills in the missing pieces of the puzzle so you can develop content that appeals to your buyers and help you find new similar customers — it's not enough to just maintain your business, you need your revenue to grow, not just with loyal customers and by increasing their value, but also with net new customers so you can begin the customer journey with them as well.
New and established inbound marketing funnels can also benefit from data enrichment. Asking for too many data points through a web form can be a risk — the more data information you ask for, the less likely people are to fully complete the form or fill it out truthfully. Data enrichment enables you to limit your data requests while still benefiting from a detailed view of your customers. This means you don’t have to worry about asking interest/behaviour questions because you can enrich your data at a later point. You can focus on getting key demo questions on forms instead.
Who needs data enrichment services?
Data enrichment can benefit every stage of your marketing and sales funnel. With a holistic view of your target audience, you can tighten your targeting to improve conversions, enhance the customer experience and earn brand loyalty.
Marketing and sales leaders can leverage data enrichment services in combination with first-party data in order to scale and sustain engaging campaigns. Considering that 77% of consumers have paid more for a brand that offers personalised services and experiences, it is more important than ever to tailor your marketing efforts through a better understanding of your customers.
When should you leverage data enrichment?
No matter how evolved your marketing strategy, you can leverage the data enrichment process to increase the value of your efforts. Brands looking to expand their offerings into a new market or market segments can benefit from the deep insights data enrichment provides. The process can give you a better understanding of your new market at times when you don’t have a lot of first-party data attributes.
Also, brands with large customer databases might actually benefit the most from enrichment because expansive databases are more prone to errors and data decay. For example, enrichment can update or validate existing customer records to account for recent changes in income, family status, job title and more.
What should you look for in a data enrichment provider?
A dedicated data enrichment provider will help you achieve the benefits of enriched data over the long term. Real-time enrichment will help you stay up to date with the latest validated information about your current and future customers.
Here are some questions to ask when choosing a data enrichment provider:
- How do you validate and certify your data?
- How large is your database of qualified user identifiers?
- Which markets and verticals do you support and do they line up with your growth plans?
- Is your data compliant with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and/or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?
- What does your future look like without third party cookies?
An effective data enrichment provider will partner with you to achieve your business objectives. Be prepared to ask questions about how the provider will help you to address the barriers preventing you from reaching and delighting your customers. For instance, if you’re looking for a solution to augment your account-based marketing efforts, ask if your provider can help you target users who own certain brands or who can influence buying decisions.
With the right data enrichment provider, you can develop a tailored path to purchase. Download our free guide to learn more about Eyeota Enrich enhances your first-party data.
