Today you hear alot about big data, but is anyone really using it to create business actionable intellegence? In today's fast paced social market marketers should look at customer behavior from different perspectives and understand behavior both in the past as well as in the present to drive positive results in the future. Understanding the historical, recent and as-it-happens customer data helps the marketer to create relevant and truly compelling offers that drive conversion in the moment. In other words, don’t give customers a reason to leave the site.
In order to go from the deluge of data to actioable ideas it is important to understand the differences between historical, recent and as- it-happens customer data. In the retail world it is critical in order to move forward from gathering insights to taking meaningful action on those insights.
I start with the Four R's of Data Relevance:
- DATA RECENCY How current is the data from the time of the event and how important is it to know what is happening immediately?
- DATA RETENTION How far back does the data set go and how critical is it to know what the history of the data provides?
- DATA RICHNESS How much information about the visitor profile is available and how does this help the decision-making process?
- DATA REALIZATION How will the data be used or consumed? Will it be used to develop reports, dashboard or drive marketing programs? Will it be consumed through APIs, or extracted for used in a data warehouse?
The Four R’s become important to the online retailers as they adopt digital intelligence to drive results.