For many businesses, data has become one of their most valuable assets. The collection, cleansing and analysis of data help many companies formulate and validate their digital strategies, campaigns, and profitability.

Having accurate and precise data is one way to ensure that you are making the right moves on your business, especially when making tough decisions. The more data your business collects, the better-informed stakeholders are to make positive decisions and take proactive action. From when to send email marketing campaigns, to figuring out the best content format to use on Meta – utilising data effectively helps you make strategic decisions to develop better relationships with your customers.

As data collection continues to become a bigger focus for businesses, (especially the collection of first party data), it’s important for organisations to focus on the data that is most relevant to your company and its overall goals and objectives. There are so many data points available today, which makes it important to think strategically about the data that will drive the biggest insights and outcomes.

So, how can your business put the data you have collected as part of your digital strategy to work?

At this stage of your digital strategy, you have already collected and analysed your research, and used it to outline your digital objectives, set your vision, and optimised your audience targeting. But you can utilise your data further and really put it to work within your digital marketing tactics. Starting with testing.

Testing, Testing, Testing

Data allows your business to make ongoing changes, whether it is within a campaign, project, website, or the actual products and services themselves. By taking a test and optimise approach, it allows you to evaluate what is working and what is not. It also provides you with the opportunity to make changes on the go, to ensure you keep your audience engaged.

Areas where you can test and optimise by using available data within websites, databases, and campaigns, include traffic and audience targeting, user experiences, messaging tactics and more. Data points to track in these areas include points of acquisition, behavioural and engagement metrics, conversion goals, and ROI.

Performing A/B testing (split testing) on a website also allows you to ensure the best possible engagement and results with your target audience. To A/B test a website, you can compare two web pages by showing two variants to similar visitors at the same time. By examining how users engage with each variation and rolling out the page that drives the best outcomes, you can effectively optimise the experience for your audience.

You can also utilise A/B testing in your email marketing campaigns, social media marketing campaigns, or anywhere you want to compare strategies online.

Create a Lead Scoring Framework

Businesses are now able to utilise their data to identify their most engaged customers, using a lead scoring framework. Lead scoring is a model built by you for your specific business. You measure users’ actions and determine their likelihood to convert into customers. A lead scoring framework gives each online user an overall value to the business based on the actions they take on your website and through email marketing.

These customers can also be valued on the amount of data they hand over to your business through forms or if they have a high value-added field, for example, a well-established business email address.

Lead scoring can be done with tools such as HubSpot, an inbound marketing and sales software. By fulfilling a lead scoring framework, the collected data can then be leveraged within paid media platforms to create lookalike and custom audiences to power efficiencies during campaigns.

Effective Email Marketing

To ensure continued engagement with your brand, your data can be put to work as part of your email marketing strategy. You first need to ensure you have the consent of your database to utilise their data. You’ll also want to ensure your keep your database as up to date as possible for optimum performance.

As mentioned earlier, email marketing is another key area to implement A/B testing. Whether you want to test discount codes, CTAs, subject times, or time of day – ensure you test one element of an eDM at a time to ensure accurate results.

Aside from A/B testing, you can put your data to work in your emails through personalisation – and we don’t just mean utilising first names in subject lines and introductions. Data also makes it possible for you to personalise the emails your database members receive, providing them with a customised experience that reflects their interest. Using pageview data, purchased products, and more data points, you can create email workflows that update your customers on topics they have expressed a clear interest in.

You should also keep track of emails that bounce, their open rates and click-through rates. This is important because it allows the database to be cleaned appropriately, ensuring your data is relevant and up-to-date, while also highlighting the most engaged users.

GDPR

While data is very important for businesses, it is critical you and your stakeholders are across both Australian and international laws regarding the collection and usage of personal details. As of May 25, 2018, businesses across the globe could be faced with hefty fines if they are found to be in breach of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which protects individuals who have EU citizenship.

GDPR is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of an individual within the EU, giving individuals greater protection and rights. According to the official EU GDPR website, “the aim of the GDPR is to protect all EU citizens from privacy and data breaches.” The new European law “applies to all companies processing the personal data of data subjects residing in the Union, regardless of the company’s location.” Under the new law, businesses must keep a record of how and when individuals gave their consent to host their personal data.

Australian businesses that have one or more of the following are required to obey the GDPR laws, according to Nixora Group:

• Has an establishment in the EU;
• Offers goods or services to EU customers (including accepting payments in euros);
• Monitors an EU citizen’s data for their behaviour, and that behaviour takes place in the EU.

If businesses are faced with a data breach that may pose a risk to individuals, they must notify them and a Data Protection Officer within 72 hours. If a company fails to notify those affected or not comply with GDPR laws, they can be fined up to 4% of their annual global turnaround or roughly $30 million AUD (20 million euro) – whichever is higher. Australian businesses should seek advice from their legal teams on this matter.

Conclusion

Overall, while data is one of the most valuable assets for a business, the way it is used and leveraged determines its overall worth. Utilising data to understand the nuances of your customer and creating personalised experience based on this insight across your advertising, email marketing and website are some ways you can use data to gain the best possible results for your business. Undertaking a regular data analysis also enables you to make informed decisions relating directly to your services, offerings and marketing activity.