Article

How to adopt a 360° view of your profiles

(Without getting a stiff neck!)

The current context is unprecedented. Months of lockdown have gone by, and brands are on the verge of making up for lost time. They are soliciting their clients/potential clients base in a very substantial way. To be visible, they need to have good, consolidated, useful, secured and enriched data. More than ever, these data have to meet a need for agility and responsiveness. With sparse, fragmented and siloed client information the time has come to adopt a unified client vision, able to bring together all the information from a single profile into a tool.

How to adopt a 360° view of your profiles

MULTIPLE DATA SOURCES

It’s a fact that companies have developed many data sources to collect information on their clients/potential clients. Whether it’s done through the web, at a point of sales or using applications, there are multiple sources: the client order history is housed in an ERP tool, the interaction history in a CRM, the client journey is accessible online, claims are part of the customer service solution, and so on.

At the same time, business areas are becoming more complex and more client oriented. Moreover, data are siloed in unreconciled databases, which doesn’t allow for their optimal use. 

This leads to the emergence of incoherent information systems, and therefore to irrelevant marketing messages, based on client journeys that are not unified. For example, channel mishaps: the client performs a search on your website, puts together a shopping cart that they abandon, then decides to buy products at a point of sale. Two days later, they get an automatic e-mail message about reviving their shopping cart, which is no longer relevant.

MULTIPLE DATA SOURCES

UNIQUE VISION AND MARKETING AUTOMATION

Conversely, adopting a unique vision allows for clean and structured data that is quickly useable through a marketing automation tool, able to progressively evolve according to a company’s needs. 

In this example we see that the store and app sources feed the SCV database, which is directly connected to Actito. In the Actito datamart, there are profile tables, order tables and order lines that integrate in-store purchases. If the company then decides to open an e-commerce site, they can add this as a source for the SCV. Next, there will also be e-commerce purchases in Actito. (The order table can specify a source field to identify in-store purchases and online purchases).

This agility is made possible by Actito’s simplified architecture. At the center of the rich model is the profile table, which links a unique identifier known in the SCV and in Actito to each profile. All the data a marketer wants to use for their communication will be linked to the profile using this unique identifier. The reconciliation of Actito’s upstream data avoids getting duplicates, history loss and conflict between data sources. Through campaigns Actito can use them to interact with the profiles on all channels.

UNIQUE VISION AND MARKETING AUTOMATION

STEER YOUR CLIENT JOURNEYS BETTER

In a marketing funnel during a classic purchasing journey, there are different profile typologies and the actions associated to each of these steps. By having a 360° view of profiles, a marketer is able to:

-  Use the profile shift from one step to another (visitor => potential client => client, etc.).

Use shift factors. In other words, the different actions that have made a profile become a potential client, client, ambassador, etc., and the different channels.

Marketing messages become more relevant, which helps globally steer and measure the profitability of the action taken for each profile typology. 

Example: managing exclusive segments in Actito 

Thanks to SCV implemented upstream, a marketer can use all the profile data in Actito. They have at their disposal the web visit data made by the profile, online and in-store purchases, etc. To the right of the image there’s the exclusive segment created with the subsegments. Here, there are the visitors, potential clients, one-time clients, multi-purchase clients, and the ambassadors. In Actito, a marketer can decide to create a shift matrix and use it as a trigger for their automatic scenario. Here for example, the scenario is activated once the clients in the ‘multi-purchase clients’ typology move to the ‘ambassadors’ segment. Given the value of these loyal clients, a marketer can decide to present adapted content such as ‘thank you for your loyalty, here’s a voucher worth 30 euro’, through the text message channel (costlier and at a premium).

STEER YOUR CLIENT JOURNEYS BETTER

HOW TO IMPLEMENT A 360° VIEW?

There are five steps to successfully implementing an SCV:

1

Start from the reality of the data  Background

Start from the reality of the data

Data quality is not often well perceived at most companies. For example, contactability data (e-mail, postal address, phone number) are often missing for all of the database profiles. When they are there, they can also be incomplete or duplicates, within the same base as elsewhere (inter/intra databases duplicate rate). To start you need to have in mind the state of data collected channel by channel in order to implement rapprochement mechanisms.

2

Get attached to the meaning of the data  Background

Get attached to the meaning of the data

It’s the definition you give to data. For example, an accounting client will be an invoiced profile once a salesperson defines it as a profile having received an invoice in the past months. To start from a collective and shared database, you need to ask key concepts upstream about what is a client, a potential client, etc.

3

Adopt an iterative approach  Background

Adopt an iterative approach

The idea is to chop up the initial problem into simple elements in order to avoid heavy projects with tunnel vision. Go for short projects and quick wins that quickly show their value. 

4

Think about the project in its entirety Background

Think about the project in its entirety

A project to set up a unique vision cannot only be initiated by Marketing. It needs to include a real company-wide approach that includes all client-related departments: Sales, Customer Service, Support, etc.

5

Take market reality into account Background

Take market reality into account

There is no magic solution to unify data. To start the project, you need to have quality data at your disposal.