Unlocking the secrets of customer data

Customer data is at the crux of marketing success in the current tech-driven landscape, according to IT Web Business. We have departed from a time when only the most clever campaigns inspired customers to follow calls to action. There isn't a single popular platform that marketers must consider when planning and budgeting, there are several. The key to success is finding the one that will be most effective for each customer at a given time. And to ensure these efforts work, they need to verify that data quality is at its peak. 

The amount of email contact data in circulation is on the rise, according to recently reported figures from Worldata's Winter 2013 Price Index. Due to a spike in the number of accounts in use, there is now 26 percent more information available for marketers to harvest, Chief Marketer reported, highlighting findings from the study.

However, that data may not necessarily be helpful if marketing firms don't have a reliable technology partner or data quality tools to verify email addresses, IT Web adds. On average, 20 percent of contact information stored in a database decays as customers get new phone numbers, move out of their residences or change their names. 

"If you have standardized data feeding into your data warehouse, you can dramatically improve business intelligence, because data can only effectively be used for analytics when it's cleansed, standardized, validated and enriched," Julian Ardagh, CEO of Effective Intelligence, told the source.