Data exists throughout organizations. Wherever you’ve captured a name, a postal address, a phone number, or an email address—you have valuable marketing data. The problem often isn’t having enough data, but rather, having data accessible and ready to use.
Does this sound familiar? You have an email address in your ESP, a name in your CRM, and an address in your transactional system, but bringing that data together is causing your team major challenges. This data is almost useless until all three pieces of data are integrated together and are accessible to your marketing team. More often than not, organizations don’t have the ability to integrate the data together into one central location to allow marketers to access the data.
If you have run into challenges with scattered, incomplete, redundant, or nonnormalized marketing data you could probably benefit from a marketing database.
13 benefits of a marketing database (and the challenges it solves)
1. It makes data accessible and actionable.
If you have data you want to use for marketing but can’t get to it easily a marketing database can help you access and use it across your marketing efforts. You want this data to always be ready to act on for marketing purposes. With a marketing database, you can ensure data is ready to be activated whether for a year-long multichannel campaign, or for an on-the-fly strategic touch.
2. A marketing database integrates all your data into one platform.
Where is your marketing data? In your ESP, CRM, DMP, MAP? Or in offline sources, operational databases, transactional systems? Your data for database marketing is everywhere—in multiple places—separated and fragmented, and to get the most out of it you need it all integrated into one place. Using a marketing database integrates your data in a single platform, making it easier to use.
3. It helps you execute multichannel campaigns.
Being able to use the same data for campaigns across multiple channels can be challenging without a single source of truth. With a marketing database, you can use the same marketing database to execute multichannel campaigns, across email, direct mail, mobile marketing, and more.
4. Having a marketing database simplifies data management.
If you feel like you’re able to run successful marketing campaigns, but pulling data for targeting, selecting audiences, or analyzing data at the end always turns into a large cumbersome project then a marketing database could help. This database should help you save time and make dealing with data easier so you can make better decisions and run more effective campaigns.
5. You can say goodbye to duplicate records.
You’re not alone— having duplicate records is a pain point many marketers face. If you find yourself wishing you could quickly de-duplicate at the unique business, employee, email, phone level—all at the click of a mouse, it’s time for a marketing database.
6. Marketing databases make ABM campaigns more effective.
Without a marketing database, getting to the data you need to run ABM campaigns with precision targeting, highly filtered data segments, and personalized messaging to make the biggest impact is extremely difficult and time-consuming. If you centralize your data in an easy-to-use platform, it’s easier to drill down to the specific data points you need to reach your highest-value prospects.
7. Start accurately tracking and scoring your leads.
Tracking each marketing touch is almost impossible without a strong marketing database. With a marketing database, you can keep tabs on which leads were reached through which channels, when they received the outreach, what content or messaging it included, and if the prospect engaged.
This promotion history is helpful for your team to see what marketing efforts are moving your leads down the pipeline but can also be invaluable for aligning with your sales team. If you can show your sales team the past engagements your prospect has made with your marketing outreach, they can use that information to craft a more personalized sales message that’s tailored to a prospect’s specific needs.
8. You can make data-driven decisions and layer in additional data points.
Having all your data in one place means you can layer on additional data points you may not have been able to before, like firmographic or intent data. Once you have all your data in a marketing database you can run predictive modeling to drive your marketing strategy.
9. A marketing database allows your marketing team to own data.
Let’s face it. It’s a pain to have to go to your IT team anytime you need data for a campaign. Not only that, but they’re also busy with other projects and can't always help you right away. Establishing a marketing database can greatly reduce or even eliminate your dependence on IT for marketing data, audience selection, activation, and analysis. Freeing up their time and giving your team more control over marketing data and campaigns is a big win-win.
10. You get a better understanding of your data to build audiences.
Get a clearer view of your data and build out your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). With a marketing database, you can analyze and compare your customers and prospects to identify your best customers and look-alike prospects to reach across your campaigns.
11. Efficiently gather and analyze campaign data and optimize future campaigns.
If you ever find yourself at the end of a campaign unsure what to do next, a marketing database can help you make sense of your results and make plans for your future strategy. With a marketing database you can organize your data so you can accurately measure the effectiveness and response rates of your marketing campaigns, learning from each campaign, and then refining future campaigns based on these learnings.
12. Improve data hygiene so your data is always accurate and up to date.
"My data is a mess." We hear it from B2B marketers time and time again. Wrapping your head around data hygiene is difficult when your data is spread out all over the organization. By bringing all your data together in a marketing database, you can normalize your data and develop a data hygiene process to make sure it stays accurate and up-to-date.
13. Seamlessly automate campaigns with organized ready to use data.
If you want to identify opportunities and run automated campaigns but you are unable to do so using your current data and infrastructure, a marketing database is the perfect solution for use cases that call for daily trigger campaigns. Being able to automate certain campaigns can help you drive engagement and free up your team’s bandwidth for other projects.
Getting started with a marketing database
Start with a trusted and experienced data partner. Anteriad has been expertly integrating data for over 25 years and is here to help you establish an effective marketing database. Many marketing database providers claim excellent data integration and identity resolution. But do they fully integrate all of your marketing data? Do they truly excel at identity resolution? Anteriad does.
We know that a marketing database must be developed to support your specific data integration needs. Our implementation approach includes an in-depth discovery process, intricate marketing database design, and database update processes tailored to your marketing needs and the nuances of your data.
