Marketers are creative brains, who always think of new and unique ways to build brands and engage the audience. But when someone thinks to start a career as a marketer they never really think of the critical component of marketing – data. When we say data, we don’t mean just numbers, but also high-quality insights that inform people how to execute their growth and increase their brand awareness. Data-driven insights are key to doing this.
Simply put, data integration is the result of well-collected information from various data sources that were cleaned and sorted in a way to help businesses make the right decisions. You must be wondering how this is done. Well, if you follow these three steps, you can integrate your marketing data in a way that will result in a successful outcome for your brand.
Establish What To Integrate
The first step is to figure out which platforms to integrate. Ask yourself what are the key components of your business and if those data sources are going to be helpful for your growth. To do this, you can start between your marketing automation system and your customer database, or by using data connectors.
Sort Out Field Mappings
The next step and the most complicated one is field mapping. Data-driven insights are done through different fields, and if they are not mapped to each other, it can result in various problems across systems. You need to go through each field separately, determine the differences, and sync everything at the end.
Determine The Risks
Every marketer should understand and plan the risks when they are starting with this project. There are ways to ensure the safety and privacy of your data sources. You should always clarify to have a master record before, during, and after the process. You need to have a system of records with the main database, and in that system, you can have some child records, with other platforms. That way you can have safe and private insights.
The Bottom Line
Integrating your data-driven insights is not an easy thing. But it is an important process for every business to assure its growth. That is how companies like Airbnb, Lyft, and Ubisoft have grown so fast over the last few years. It is a true marketing superpower that helps brands with the creation of marketing strategies and other tactics to implement them. If you are looking for marketing success, then this is the key component for you and your brand.
