What is Data Marketing ?

For two decades, the extraordinary digitalization of society and the development of artificial intelligence have revolutionized marketing. In this digital universe, the consumer is akin to a list of data that it is a question of knowing how to capture and process in order to anticipate and meet their expectations while humanizing the processes. Small zoom on data marketing.

1. A little history on Data Marketing

Identified as a target to be aware of, the consumer has long been at the heart of the concerns of the inlayers. However, it was in post-war America that the business community first understood the value of data. It is all about knowing the "housewife of 50 years" or any other segment of the population to offer suitable products and generate the act of purchase. It is time for investigations and the brands will then establish customer files that they will endeavor to enrich by all means.

New Information and Communication Technologies (NICTs) will greatly increase the potential of databases. From 1997 the expression "Big Data" appeared in the digital library of the ACM (Association For Computing Machinery). The arrival of the Web in homes in the 1990s, the generalization of mobile connection tools and the explosion of e-commerce in the 2000s will give this quest a whole new dimension. Every day millions of potential customers connect and surf the web from site to site. The markers quickly saw the opportunity to know everything about their targets! Programmers or developers are tackling the task of providing IT tools capable of capturing, analyze and classify all the data left by internet and mobile users on the web. Since 2010, relying on the exponential development of artificial intelligence and machine learning, big data has become a reality. Its realization has de facto given birth to a new form of marketing, data marketing or the use of data that is now digital for commercial purposes.

2. Data marketing how it works

2.1 Definition

Data marketing, also called data-driven marketing, designates the branch of marketing that relies on the use of consumer data. It uses as finely as possible the data of its targets recovered on the Web and social networks to transform these prospects into customers and improve the relationship with them (CRM). To do this, data marketing relies on data management platforms: big data platforms are designed to capture, archive, manage and use data. In the digital age, data marketing is imposing itself on companies at the same rate as digitalization is progressing in all areas of the economy, that is to say by forced march! Concretely, this marketing generated for and by digitalization allows companies to adapt the message to the target and deliver it at the right time! Brands that intend to live and develop on the web as in the physical world cannot today ignore a big data solution and a strategy allowing them to extract acquired data "the substantial marrow" from their campaign marketing. More than a new branch of the sector, data marketing is gradually establishing itself as themarketing 2.0 . The digital revolution applied to marketing.

2.2 Use and challenge

Precious and even vital for businesses, data is at the heart of all concerns. If big data platforms have technically responded to the need for data collection, its archiving and use require technological tools and a strategy: data fabric and data mining. A transformation phase of the trial in which the issues and challenges to obtain the desired competitive advantage remain significant:

Collection: because it is able to rake very widely your Data Management Platform must learn quality. It is a matter of sorting out the waste data because it is of no interest and that which, once valued, will make the difference.
Create and nurture an ecosystem: within the company, data must feed a reactive operational chain capable of processing it and acting accordingly. Because its use is essentially transverse, its access must be as open as possible. High-performance visualization tools should enable all of the company's processes from R&D to feedback. In concrete terms, the data fabric must offer a direct and optimized connection from the ecosystem's terminals to the cloud that houses the company's data reservoir.
Increase and manage empowerment: machine learning now makes it possible to envisage using data in accordance with the strategy implemented by the data miner. An objective conditioned to a precise management of the artificial interfaces responsible for example of the customer relationship. The empowerment of the machine can give e-marketing a formidable efficiency as long as it is learned upstream to react correctly to the various requests from visitors to the company's site or its customers. DPM and machine learning must form an indissoluble couple for the best by banishing the worst!

Respect the GDPR: voted in 2015 by the European Parliament, the European Data Protection Regulation comes into force in 2018. Because big data is not intended to become a big brother, companies must strive to respect rules related to the protection of consumer privacy. A point towards which technique and ethics must converge. An important and permanent concern of the data fab which will have to ensure the regularity of its procedures and formalize them in order to be able to account for them.
360 ° vision and humanism: the valorization of the data implies a global consideration of what it tells. Context analysis, a 360 ° view around the data, is just as important as the latter. A point where artificial intelligence reaches its limits. Teams will have to learn to intervene where their humanity brings what the machine can never do. The precise identification of these phases of human intuitiveness alone constitutes a real challenge for any data fab!
Because the potential of data marketing is immense, those who carry it within companies have an equivalent responsibility. Responsibility towards the expectations of their management of course, but responsibility towards society. It is a question of responding to the ambivalence between the consumer wishing to be more efficient and the citizen concerned about his rights. An issue that far exceeds those of marketing!