E-commerce leaders like Amazon and Netflix have set a high bar when it comes to unifying customer data. Kathy Macchi, Co-founder and Executive VP of B2B Marketing Consultancy Inverta, believes all companies now need to consider how best to unify data to create exceptional customer experiences.
Focus on relevant data
A single view enables a seamless, positive experience for current and potential customers. The challenge is assembling all you know about your customer in one place and being able to take action based on that knowledge. More data does not necessarily equal more insight, so marketing and sales executives must decide what intelligence they really need. Just because you can track, gather and analyse data, doesn’t mean you should.
Build a single view
Focus on data which will allow your teams to have something relevant to say or an offer that benefits the customer. Start by making an inventory of your sales and marketing tools then decipher how each technology fits into your strategy. What’s missing? Which tools should you keep, and which should you sunset? Do they serve your go-to-market strategy? Are they well-adopted? Map all the data flows and integrations to build a single view.
Share the vision
Get buy-in early on from marketing and sales about what they will do differently to support and grow your customers with a single view of the account. Build a shared vision and a mutual plan of action. Impactful metrics and dashboards will allow the teams to understand how overall customer health is improving, and to drill down along the customer journey.
Read Kathy Macchi’s full Viewpoint in Account-Based Growth by Bev Burgess and Tim Shercliff, published by Kogan Page
