Monthly Archives: April 2016

If you’ve ever wandered around our blog and landed yourself onto my blog bio, you’ll know that I am a marketer. My handle on industry insight is pretty good (if I do say so myself), but it’s not the same as getting out there and getting feedback from customers themselves—that’s where our sales reps enter the scene.

I chatted with three of our most senior retail sales reps—with Ecommerce platform, software integration, and enterprise-level retailer experience—and recorded their insights to share with you. In this blog post, you’ll learn:

• How frequently you should cleanse your data
• What retailers are currently doing to manage customer data
• What technologies retailers are investing in

What is the mobile phenomenon in retail?

What we’ve found over the course of the last three to four years is that more purchases have come over mobile than ever before. At least 45 percent of the time, shoppers are using their mobile devices to make educated decisions, do research, and purchase items quickly and easily. And they want to do it on their terms.

The vast majority of people are shopping on mobile devices now, and between iPads, iPhones, and Androids, people are so accustomed to using their phone that it’s not just a piece of equipment, it’s an extension of themselves. You have, for the first time ever, a generation where the use of technology as an integral part of everyday life is the norm. In fact, 80 percent of all babies today will be born to millennial mothers.

Innovators, connectors, and creatives dispersed throughout the city of Boston for yesterday’s first annual MassTLC NewCo Boston event. Attendees toured the offices of members of the tech community, understanding the ideas, tools, and people that make these organizations exceptional. In reflecting on what I learned throughout the day, each session came back to something that we live and breathe by here at Experian Data Quality: it’s all about the story you tell.

What was GSI Commerce? GSI Commerce was the Ecommerce and payments platform acquired by eBay Enterprise a number of years ago. The great thing about GSI for its customers is that it had feature functions inherently built into the platform. So their retailer customers didn’t need to think about their add-ons, because GSI did a good job of handling it for them. Some examples of their add-ons were address validation, tax calculations, etc.

Today is National Telephone Day, serving as a day to celebrate the first telephone. While thinking of that first telephone, I look down at the mobile phone in my hand, an item I would be close to powerless without. I think of the growth and innovation around telephone technology and how today’s reliance on these objects compares to the time of their inception in 1876. I believe the evolution of the telephone has a similar story to something we are growing more dependent on every day: data quality.

That’s right, retail marketers. I’m calling you out. You all say you care about better customer data; you say you want to really understand your customer base; you may even give both pinky toes to get to the unicorn that is the single customer view. But here’s the thing: I don’t see people stepping up to actually invest in the things that make those wishes a reality.

This year’s Enterprise Data World conference was jam-packed with sessions covering big data, data governance, data management strategies, data ethics, and many other related topics that help organizations make the most out of their information. I was fortunate enough to be among the energetic conference goers. Here are five key takeaways from EDW that will help you embrace data in your company.

A bright, but brisk, Boston morning saw me at the Hyatt Regency for MediaPost’s Online Media Marketing and Advertising (OMMA) event where the day was chock-filled with all kinds of subject matter marketers would geek out about. Right off the bat, I could tell that there were five clear themes for today:

1. Brands should be like Cupid and win the love of their consumers
2. The Concept of Interruption to the consumer experience
3. A lesson in authenticity by b.good
4. Marketers are taking ownership of their data

And if you’re thinking that there’s no way I can relate this back to data and Experian Data Quality, well oh contraire, because everything always relates back to data and today’s marketers and advertisers are keenly aware of this fact of life.

Upon leaving ProductCamp Boston on Saturday afternoon, I was left with one thought. I’m not sure if it was the venue, being at the Microsoft NERD Center, or the energetic volunteers bustling to bring the event to life bright and early on a sunny but cold Saturday morning that did it. Or perhaps it was the speakers, the inspirational stories they told of what and how they were making things happen. And it may have been the conversations that I had with a record number of attendees and businesses, who shared their roles and experiences in the product marketing space.