data driven spam
October 30, 2014

Data-driven Spam is not an improvement, please stop it!

By Paul Laughlin

Have you experienced the frustration of receiving data driven spam? It can be so much more irritating than comms that are obviously not intended to be personal or relevant.

Just being better at targeting your messages or executing them more efficiently, will not protect you from it being spam. if you get it wrong, there can be a big price to pay

The forgotten component, in too much data & digital marketing ‘innovation‘, is understanding your customers (their needs & what they view as relevant).

I came across this great article from Mark Cameron, which I feel nicely articulated how CMOs need to wake up to this risk.

The CMO’s next challenge is to stop brands becoming data-driven pests | Marketing Magazine

Data-driven marketing can often just mean very smart spam, a surefire way of undermining value in a brand, writes Mark Cameron. Don’t be that guy. The marketing industry has completely reinvented itself over the last few years. In fact, it is difficult to think of a discipline that has had to deal with so …

I hope you enjoy this article as well. In line with some comments I made when reviewing ‘Marketing Payback’, I fear that today’s marketers have become captivated with digital/mobile/social/omni-channel capabilities and taken their eye off the ball of some marketing basics.

That applies just as much to the need to really know your customer as it does to being able to accurately measure the effectiveness of your marketing.

Customer Insight Leadership will be needed more than ever to address the failures that are bound to result from over-inflated expectations. Just as, in the past, data warehouses and CRM systems rarely lived up to their promise – we are just beginning to see the same with platforms for social & mobile marketing.

But all these capabilities have the potential to be relevant to customers lives, if you put the customer first and our guided by what you need to know from them first.

Do you agree? Please share your thoughts on this challenge…