Last year’s BRITE/NYAMA Marketing in Transition Study reported that 45% of marketers say they are unable to use data effectively to personalize their marketing efforts. Given that 36% of marketers also noted that they have plenty of customer data but cannot figure out how apply it to their marketing activities, the personalization challenge makes sense.

4 insights_personalization To help marketers get their arms around big data and better understand how to leverage it to create the relevant online experiences consumers expect, Colton Perry, Monetate’s VP of partnerships, offers a sneak peek at some of the pointers he will present during Wednesday’s webinar, “Hitting a Personalization Home Run With Data.”

To get better at personalization, Perry encourages marketers to:

1. Get to know the different types of data available, and distinguish the types that can be acted on to improve a website visitor’s experience.

2. Focus on the intersection of the different data types. Each type of data offers unique advantages in creating a more comprehensive, timely picture of a website visitor. Marketers want to understand these advantages and build their personalization strategy around the interaction of all data types to develop more relevant messaging for customers and prospects.

3. Think of the application of data to marketing objectives as part data science, which is automated and supports tactics, and part data intelligence, which is not fully automated and supports the overall strategy for personalization.

4. Be helpful, not creepy, by applying data with a light touch. Pursuing personalization from a purely tactical perspective can lead marketers to use overt practices that might turn customers off, such as referring to the exact products they researched on other websites. Again, adopting a strategic approach to the use of data allows marketers to present a more thoughtful and subtle messaging that enhances both individual experiences and the overall relationship with customers.

To learn more about data integration and segment discovery in order to power your personalization marketing goals, register for the webinar, “Hitting a Personalization Home Run With Data.” Perry will be joined by Tyrone Anderson, VP solutions engineering and business development at data management platform BlueKai, who will help break down the differences between first-, second-, and third-party marketing data.

Consumer Needs & Wants image courtesy of Shutterstock.