Adobe Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, and other marketing users are accustomed to handling and manipulating large amounts of vital data. But in the day-to-day process of working in a marketing automation system, CDP, or CRM, it can be easy to forget that this data and integrations need regular check-ups. Rather than distributing this responsibility to several marketing team members, appointing a single expert to perform this task may be better. This, simply put, is the role of a data steward.
What Does a Data Steward Do?
A data steward plays an important role in data management and governance, as they help the organization leverage its data assets and processes to full capacity and avoid risks and costs associated with poor data quality and broken processes. They ensure the quality and fitness of your marketing data, such as contacts, accounts, and campaigns. They may also be responsible for ensuring the security and privacy of the data that an organization collects, uses, and shares. Their job duties include:
Defining and documenting data elements, standards, policies, and rules
Identifying and resolvingdata quality issues and conflicts
Monitoring and enforcing data governance practices and compliance
Educating and collaborating with data users and stakeholders
Data stewards also handle time-consuming but critical parts of data management, including but not limited to:
Data cleansing: removing or correcting inaccurate, incomplete, or duplicate data
Data normalization: standardizing the format or naming of data fields
Data enrichment: adding or updating relevant data attributes
Data integration: connecting and synchronizing data from different sources
Data analysis: measuring and reporting on data performance and insights
Improving Your Campaigns with a Data Steward
Given how important data is to every step of your marketing campaigns, it’s hard to overstate how important of a role the data steward plays. Ensuring your data is in expert hands will dramatically improve how that data is processed and used . The data steward’s contributions will help alleviate many of your marketing concerns, most notably:
Deliverability: ensuring your emails reach the intended recipients
Segmentation: reaching the correct, personalized audiences
Reporting: generating accurate and meaningful metrics and dashboards
Satisfaction: meeting or exceeding customer expectations and needs
Is Your Marketing Data in Good Hands?
As a marketing professional, you understand the importance of accurate, easily accessible data. But you also know that you don’t have the time to manage your marketing campaigns and handle the massive amount of information that needs to be secured, quality-checked, or funneled to the appropriate places. An Eloqua data steward can handle all of that. All you have to do is find an expert—and we can help with that. Contact us today to learn more.
Custom objects are a simple yet powerful part of Eloqua that can enhance the ways that you’re able to connect with your customers. While they may seem daunting if you have never worked with them, custom objects (often abbreviated as COs) can become your best friend as your marketing automation needs increase.
Why Use COs Instead of Contact or Account Fields?
When getting started with Eloqua, it can be tempting to want to store all customer data on the contact and account records. But this can cause problems as your business needs change over time. As your company grows, you’ll need to store more customer data and be able to reference it quickly. Today, we’re looking at four advantages that COs offer over contact or account fields.
1. Eloqua Custom Objects Can Hold a LOT of Data
Out of the box, Eloqua provides 62 contact fields and 18 account fields, and you can create up to 250 custom fields each for contact and account. This sounds like a lot, and it is. But you’d be surprised how quickly the custom fields fill up as you begin adding the data points that your company needs.
COs, on the other hand, can have up to 1,024 fields each. There is also no limit on how many COs you can create in your Eloqua instance. The only limitation is on the number of records across all your COs, which Oracle caps at 25 million.
2. COs Can Accommodate Data That Has a Many-to-One Relationship
You will often need to capture multiple records for a single entity, such as when a single customer purchases multiple products from your company. Using account fields to capture this information could work. However, if each product has a large number of data points associated with it that also need to be referenced in Eloqua, that quickly eats into the 250-field limit.
COs provide an elegant alternative because they can hold multiple custom object records linked to a single account or contact. You can use filter criteria to select the correct CO record for a particular campaign. Custom apps or add-ons, such as our Many-to-One Email app, can also help augment the capabilities of a many-to-one CO relationship.
3. Custom Objects Can Store Historical Data
Contact and account fields are ideal for storing relatively permanent data such as contact or business information. However, they are less well-suited to storing information that changes frequently. For example, when tracking campaign attribution, you can easily set up your system to overwrite the Last SFDC Campaign ID field, but what if you want to be able to see more than just the last touch campaign interaction?
COs enable you to store historical data, which is extremely useful for things like campaign interactions, event information, or form submission data. You can then draw on the historical data for lead scoring, segmentation, and more when you go to build a new campaign.
4. They Can Scale With Your Business Needs
As Eloqua instances grow, they increase in complexity. Having a data architecture plan in place ahead of time can save you numerous headaches down the road. COs are a great tool to keep your data organized. You can even set up a CO structure that mimics the data table structure of your CRM so that integrations are tightly aligned.
The Value of Eloqua Custom Objects
The beauty of COs is in their capacity and their flexibility. While it can be tempting to want to store all data on the contact and account records, especially if you are less familiar with custom objects, COs are often the better option. Incorporating COs into your Eloqua data structure now can save you lots of headaches down the road as your Eloqua instance continues to grow.
But for those less familiar with custom objects and everything they can do, we’ve got you covered. Our team is ready to provide the training and support you need to get the most out of your Eloqua data. Contact us today to learn more.
W. P. Carey is one of the largest diversified net lease REITs, specializing in the acquisition of operationally critical, single-tenant properties in North America and Europe. It primarily engages in sale-leasebacks, where a company sells its real estate to an investor (like W. P. Carey) for cash and simultaneously enters into a long-term lease.
As the company grew, its integrated communications team began looking for ways to further optimize and automate marketing efforts to increase reach and efficiency. One step the team took to achieve this was to integrate its MarTech stack.
Problem 1: Data Quality
W. P. Carey has used Oracle Eloqua as its primary marketing automation platform for over ten years. As a result, the company had a decade of old data cluttering up its system. The first challenge was performing the required housekeeping to clean up contact data.
Problem 2: Eloqua Expertise
The Integrated Communications team also noticed that when reaching out to the platform for support, they were met with different representatives, each of whom required a detailed background explanation of W. P. Carey’s system before they could help. Consequently, this process made support tickets take longer, posing a challenge as the team did not have a designated expert on call who understood Eloqua and W. P. Carey’s system to quickly address challenges.
Problem 3: System Integration
The primary reason W. P. Carey partnered with 4Thought Marketing was to assist with a system integration project. W. P. Carey uses Salesforce as its CRM and Eloqua for marketing automation, but hadn’t integrated the two tools yet. This resulted in disconnected contact databases, created a gap in reporting, and limited the team’s abilities to email contacts and tenants. Without their own backend Eloqua knowledge, the team sought an experienced agency to support the integration.
The Solution: Partnership with the 4Thought Marketing Team
Following a thorough evaluation, W. P. Carey decided to establish a partnership with the 4Thought Marketing team.
The 4Thought team quickly integrated with W. P. Carey’s team to help address their challenges. First, they focused on data quality, clearing out the old contacts from W. P. Carey’s Eloqua instance. Next, 4Thought fully integrated Salesforce with Eloqua, allowing W. P. Carey to engage with contacts through Eloqua marketing campaigns and record responses in Salesforce.
Kelly Mulvaney, Digital Marketing Manager at W. P. Carey, says this simple change was revolutionary to her team: “We could now track the entire contact journey from start to finish, create reports with just a few clicks, and enhance our overall marketing automation strategy.” The saved time allowed the team to focus on other important projects, like the W. P. Carey blog newsletter (distributed via Eloqua).
The 4Thought team also provided a primary contact that supports W. P. Carey, so the marketing team always knows who they should contact for questions or to discuss strategy and plan future improvements. Most importantly, the marketing team enjoyed near-immediate responses to questions or requests.
What’s Next for W. P. Carey?
As the company moves forward, the Integrated Communications team plans to use the newly reworked MarTech stack to make landing page and email creation more efficient, as well as take full advantage of Eloqua’s ability to connect contact data to campaign activity. “We look forward to developing evergreen lead generation campaigns and an improved lead score model,” said Kelly. “Most of all, I’m excited to have an optimized framework in Eloqua that I can share with the rest of the company as a huge timesaver.”
Write Your Own Success Story with 4Thought Marketing
Do the challenges faced by W. P. Carey sound familiar? If your marketing team needs better systems integrations or an on-call Eloqua expert, we’ve got you covered. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.
Start focusing on first-party data. Adapt! As we head into 2024, digital marketers will find themselves in an environment with stricter privacy laws and less reliance on third-party cookies. As a result, the industry is starting to see first-party data as the new go-to.
The main thing now is to get users’ permission and be clear about how data is handled, with a big emphasis on collecting and storing data ethically. This means embracing zero-party data collection and advertising methods that respect users’ privacy. These steps are vital for gaining consumers’ trust and will help businesses provide personalized experiences while keeping privacy intact. This change is in line with the evolving laws and the growing demand from consumers for responsible handling of their data.
Data is like the new oil. Refining it will drive the 21st-century engines of prosperity. Businesses that invest in first-party data platforms see an increase in marketing ROI.
Invest in building a robust first-party data infrastructure. Offer incentives for users to share data through loyalty programs, personalized experiences, or valuable content. Then, cultivate deeper connections through email marketing, social media engagement, loyalty programs, and personalized customer experiences. Finally, invest in creating valuable content, exceptional customer service, and genuine brand experiences that grow trust and loyalty. Loyal customers are more likely to share data and engage directly with your brand.
Provide value to customers and seek their consent. The discontinuation of third-party cookies doesn’t imply that businesses must halt data collection and utilization in their marketing efforts. Instead, the focus should be on optimizing the data voluntarily shared by individuals.
This data, commonly referred to as first-party data, is the information customers willingly provide on a digital platform you own, such as your website. Some businesses encourage users to create accounts to access software or view wholesale pricing. They may allow customers to create wish lists or mark items as “liked”—features that entice customers to register. Similarly, you can offer valuable content downloads or product demos in exchange for an email address and motivate subscribers to complete surveys or preference centers to provide additional data.
Offer customers valuable incentives or content to encourage them to willingly share their data. Once you have their explicit opt-in, you can personalize your approach or offers based on what you know about a visitor’s preferences or their past order history.
Focus on your mailing list as an internal business asset. It’s something that not a lot of businesses do, and it’s so crucial in developing your customer journeys and loyalty. 2024 is the year of the newsletter!
As third-party cookies phase out, marketers can focus on building first-party data through customer engagement strategies. Encourage users to share information by offering personalized experiences, exclusive content, or loyalty programs.
For the best results, create interactive and value-driven content. It incentivizes users to provide their data voluntarily. Once you have a decent list, you can send newsletters or subscription services over email.
This way, you can gather first-party data from users who have opted in. It’s a more reliable and privacy-compliant database than using cookies. You can leverage it to build relationships with your customers and establish a transparent channel of communication.
Focus on source-of-truth sales from your entire organization, tracked daily, and compared with the costs and results of your marketing activities, also tracked daily. This way, you’ll know over time which actions in your marketing efforts are correlated with more business-wide sales.
For more precise tracking, onboard a customer data platform and an attribution partner to get detailed insights about the performance of your advertising activities.
Aside from first-party cookies, a good strategy for marketers to develop or turn to would be contextual advertising. Contextual advertising leverages keywords and phrases within the content of a website or webpage to display relevant ads, rather than relying on user data from cookies.
This approach allows for more targeted and personalized advertisements without infringing on users’ privacy. It’s important for marketers to also focus on creating engaging and valuable content that will naturally attract their target audience, rather than solely relying on targeted ads. This can include utilizing social media platforms to build brand awareness and establish a strong online presence.
However, all strategies should be complemented with a strong understanding of and adherence to data privacy laws, and transparency and ethical practices when collecting and using user data. As technology evolves, marketers need to adapt and find innovative ways to reach their audience without compromising user privacy.
In the ever-evolving digital landscape, as the era of third-party cookies fades away, savvy marketers are setting sail toward the shores of personalized, permission-based marketing. Picture it like an exclusive club where customers willingly opt in to receive tailored content and experiences. This strategy focuses on building genuine relationships by putting the customer in the driver’s seat, allowing them to choose the level of engagement they’re comfortable with.
By fostering trust and delivering valuable content, marketers can create a bespoke experience that not only respects privacy but also resonates with the audience on a personal level. It’s like having a conversation with your favorite barista who knows just how you like your coffee—tailored, enjoyable, and built on mutual understanding. Welcome to the future of marketing, where permission is the new currency, and the customer is the VIP.
Marketers can pivot toward creating engaging and interactive content to encourage direct audience interaction. By fostering genuine connections and experiences, brands can build strong customer relationships without relying on third-party cookies for tracking, ensuring continued effectiveness in a cookie-less landscape.
Nurtures are the lifeblood of your marketing automation strategy, so tracking progression is a crucial metric. It provides feedback on how well you are aligned with the buyer’s journey. It also indicates how effectively you’re guiding leads through the process of learning about your business to prompt them to make a purchase.
Since journey nurtures are meant to align with the buyer’s journey, it’s important that marketers take a close look at where nurture campaigns are either succeeding or stalling, in order to improve future campaigns.
What Journey Nurture Progression Tells You
This metric gives you an indication of the overall quality of your content and messaging, as well as how well you’ve segmented your database. If there is an area where leads are not moving from one nurture stage into the next, it may be the wrong time to hit prospects with that particular message. Alternatively, maybe it is the right message, but going to the wrong audience.
If leads are not progressing nicely through the nurture journey, you’ll need to ask some basic questions:
Are we reacting to our potential customers’ digital behavior?
The answers can help you course-correct. In the process, you may also learn more about your potential customers and gain insights into market trends.
How Journey Nurture Progression Works
Every marketing automation platform has its own approach to tracking this KPI. Marketo, Salesforce, or other platforms will likely require you to set up nurture membership along with goals for stage progression. Oracle Eloqua generally tracks journey nurture progression by default. Whatever the case for your company, get familiar with how your platform of choice handles this KPI. Regularly evaluate your entire nurture setup. That way, you can make sure that your lead flow continues to improve.
Don’t be afraid to experiment or get creative. This is the perfect place to learn what resonates with potential customers at each stage and what doesn’t, and it’s relatively easy to course-correct.
Elevate your marketing stack to new heights by integrating Oracle Unity CDP with Oracle Eloqua. In this webinar, learn how this powerful duo can supercharge your marketing efforts, offering a seamless, data-driven approach to customer engagement to maximize your marketing spend and drive measurable results.
Get ready to unlock your marketing potential with Oracle Unity CDP and Eloqua
Join us for an engaging live webinar where you’ll:
Uncover the transformative capabilities of Unity CDP for enhancing customer experiences.
Discover why Unity CDP and Eloqua duo is a powerful combination for modern marketers.
Delve into 5 essential use cases solved by the Unity CDP and Eloqua partnership.
Learn the potent AI/ML capabilities delivered by Unity CDP and Eloqua working in tandem.
Discover the reasons behind customers choosing Unity CDP as their premier solution
Concrete data in the form of key performance indicators, or KPIs, is compelling evidence that your marketing team’s efforts are getting results. While it may seem like a daunting task to find the right KPIs to prove this, it’s far from impossible.
Today, we’ll look closer at two basic marketing KPIs your company should be tracking and what each means.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) Conversion Rate
Delivering a thousand MQLs sounds fantastic, but not if the conversion rate is very low. When it comes to MQLs, quality trumps quantity.
While you still might set a goal for the number of MQLs that marketing creates, the focus should be on creating quality MQLs. You can determine whether you are delivering quality leads by measuring the number of leads against a conversion percentage goal.
What the MQL Conversion Rate Tells You
A low conversion rate tells you that you first should look at your MQL definition and whether your lead scoring program is set up to deliver leads that fit that definition. You may have too many requirements that an otherwise qualified lead won’t match, driving your numbers down. Too few requirements and MQL quality declines, which causes sales to spend valuable time sifting through them.
Second, take a look at your nurture foundation. Is it truly engaging your audience, at their pace? You may need to rework some marketing plans.
Finally, how quickly does your sales team follow up? Warm leads can get cold pretty quickly. You’ll also want to know how many leads turn cold and why.
A good conversion rate tells you that your efforts are working. Unfortunately, it won’t tell you which efforts. To find this out, sort the MQLs by lead source and calculate the conversion rate for each source. This will show you which sources consistently convert more than others, and what parts of your marketing strategy need to improve.
Tracking Your MQL Conversion Rate
Once you pass an MQL on to sales, keep tracking it. Note how quickly the lead is accepted, and if it was rejected, why it was. If your workflows are already set up to track lifecycle stages, then you’re good to go. If not, setting this up should be your top priority.
Next, track the actions that the sales team can take. Generally, this is a field on the lead record in the CRM that gives the sales team the option to accept or reject the lead. From this information, you can easily generate a report to calculate your overall MQL conversion rate expressed as a percentage.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) Conversion Rate
The SQL conversion rate measures how often a lead converts from an accepted lead into a sales-qualified lead. At this point, the sales team has created an opportunity for conversion. This metric is arguably even more important to track than the MQL conversion rate.
What the SQL Conversion Rate Tells You
By tracking the leads that make it from acceptance to the SQL stage, your marketing team can pinpoint the campaigns and content making an impact. This lets you identify high-value content. Better yet, you can turn this newly identified high-value content into multiple marketing messages, especially for the early stages of exposure where persistence is key.
If the conversion rate is abnormally low, it’s time to initiate a conversation with sales to learn why. It could be the qualification rules are incorrect, or you need additional nurture activities to better qualify for sales-ready leads.
Tracking Your SQL Conversion Rate
This essentially requires the same setup as your MQL conversion rate. In addition to tracking MQLs, ensure you’re also tracking the lifecycle stage and can update the stage as necessary.
Sales should still be able to reject an acceptable lead, as they might an MQL. However, at this stage, the acceptance can be automated. An SQL needs to be associated with an opportunity. This allows your marketing automation platform workflow to change the lifecycle stage to SQL when the contact is added to an opportunity. The final report generated will be the same as the MQL conversion report, with the added choice to filter on accepted leads or SQL stages.
Companies that put all their money into advertising and sales may be missing a potentially valuable source of revenue. You have an additional option to maintain customer connections and increase sales: leveraging your relationship with existing customers. Even the strictest privacy laws allow you to contact leads who have demonstrated a strong interest in what you have to offer. And the longer you can keep a conversation going, the more likely you are to be rewarded with a purchase—or even a long-term loyal client that will spread the word about your company!
Leverage Customer Relationships
Happy customers are far more likely to leave a good review, recommend you to a friend, or help you out in some other way! But don’t forget that preexisting customers are likely to buy from you again if they like what you have to offer. Even if you don’t get a new client out of the deal, retaining a particularly profitable one can be just as good.
Offer rewards for referrals. Anyone who refers a new client to your company might get a gift card, a discount on future products or services, or some other reward. (Some companies may also offer incentives for positive reviews.)
Write a success story with them. Invite the client to talk about how your product or service improved their own business. A professional success story lends significant credibility to your brand.
Continue nurturing your customers. Stay within reason—obviously, no customer wants to receive sales calls or emails every day. But a customer that has already purchased from your brand is a potential repeat customer. Upsell related products or services they’ll appreciate.
Leveraging customer feedback is a relatively untapped source of potential promotions. Don’t ignore it!
An Additional Source of Revenue
Existing customers who appreciate your products or services will spend more money with you. Especially appreciative customers will happily encourage a friend to check you out or share their success story with you for promotional purposes. And in an increasingly competitive world, every potential avenue for marketing should be explored. How are you leveraging your customers?
Finally, remember it’s not just products or services that make customers happy with you. Professional communication that plays to their interests goes a long way. If you’re struggling to determine who needs communication and when, based both on local privacy laws and the customer’s own interest, we can help! Our privacy compliance software, 4Comply, will keep your customer communication plan profitable and legally viable. Get in touch today to learn more and get on the path to higher profits.
Email marketing: all marketers use it. Eloqua’s functionality is built around it. But if you’re only leveraging Eloqua’s email system, you’re missing out. You can get even more from your Oracle Eloqua instance when you include all your marketing channels – and when you take the time to properly integrate, automate, and measure them. Let’s look at three marketing channels you can start using right now.
3 Powerful Non-Email Marketing Channels to Integrate, Automate & Measure with Oracle Eloqua
1. Social Media & Paid Ads
You know how important your presence on the web is. Apart from getting eyes on your content, what’s most important is to track those interactions in Oracle Eloqua.
Integrate
Capture the content your audience is reading. It is easier said than done, but the effort is worth it. These Oracle Eloqua tools may help you capture specific interactions:
Configure your Eloqua setup to leverage data from social media and paid ads. Use this input to adjust Lead Scoring and nurture campaigns. Additionally, consider how to get these contacts to comment, share, and like more of your content. Once you have that working without manual intervention, all you need to do is measure the effectiveness.
Keep in mind that your social media outreach should include more than your new leads. Existing customers are a great source of shared content, comments, and likes. Balance your campaigns to provide both current and potential customers with ample high-quality content to engage with.
Measure
Not enough companies give measurement the attention it deserves. Social media and paid ads kick-start a customer’s journey. If you aren’t measuring the results, how can you know what works and what doesn’t? This is too important to be left to guesswork.
If a contact interacts with a social media post, and then completes a contact form a week later, do you attribute that social media campaign to the lead? Or at least consider the influence of the social media post? You’re in luck – it is indeed possible to track this user’s journey to see how they found you! Watch this short video for details.
2. Video Marketing
In a Google-dominated world, using video to get your brand, product, or services out to the world is key. Here’s how to approach working with videos in Oracle Eloqua:
We also recommend including interactions throughout the video. Use opportune moments to encourage viewers to click through for a demo, more details, or other important information. You can configure the responses to these prompts to go straight to Eloqua. These points of interaction will not only help harvest new leads, but they can also prompt you to score and target those leads with the right follow-up message.
Automate
Making a good video takes time and effort. As tempting as it is to pat yourself on the back after your video gets lots of attention, don’t wait! The sooner you follow up, the better.
Use the information flowing in from your video interactions to automate your next actions. For example, if a person watches past a point where the video discusses an important product or service-related feature, configure Eloqua to send them follow-up communication. If they watched to the end or watched multiple times, assign them to a segment to follow up with other relevant content. If they watched the video and are located in an area where you are having an event in the near future, let them know right away. You can then follow this personalized announcement with a general bulletin in the next scheduled email.
Remember to score leads accordingly. Video viewing data is just as important as email clicks and landing page visits, if not more.
Measure
Once you’ve integrated and automated, find out what impact video marketing has had on your ROI. Depending on the product or service, it can take many interactions with an individual to convert them into a lead or an opportunity. Has your video created enough leads to justify the cost of creating it? If so, fantastic! Stick with what works. If not, consider how to improve next time.
Once again, measurement is critical here. Relying on guesswork can torpedo your marketing campaign and, in the long term, your general ROI.
3. SMS Communication
With texting as prevalent as it is today, why not try promoting your business via SMS? Here’s how to get started with SMS promotions in Eloqua.
Automate
For text message marketing, we recommend starting with automation instead of integration. The best SMS tool in the world won’t help without a properly formatted, working phone number. Start by implementing progressive profiling on your forms so you don’t immediately ask for their mobile number. When you eventually do ask, make sure to also request consent to receive texts from you. Automatically send a text to re-affirm their consent (and include unsubscribe information if they change their minds later).
Remember: text message marketing requires consent as much as email marketing does. Take the time to develop a sustainable plan for capturing consent and keeping your messages legal.
To make sure the telephone numbers you collect are formatted correctly, we recommend setting up a data normalization program in Eloqua. You’ll need to use the phone number and country fields to obtain the country code and phone number format, so your text messages go through. A phone formatting app may help simplify this process.
Be careful when segmenting here. Only target contacts with SMS for specific types of communication, such as:
Form submission follow-ups: if you know they used a mobile device, send an SMS to thank them or provide additional information.
Form abandonment follow-ups: a text message may yield a faster response and motivate the user to finish the form.
Registration confirmation/event reminders – make sure your events get added to your contacts’ calendars.
Integrate
Integration for SMS marketing is relatively straightforward. Find an SMS tool that integrates smoothly with Oracle Eloqua. You’ll want to capture key data, such as the message title, the date it was sent, and any responses you received.
But don’t just monitor customer activity. Keep track of how many SMS communications you send and when they go out. This information can tell you if you are under- or over-communicating with your clients.
Measure
With the integrated and automated data above, you can start tracking the success of your SMS campaigns. Tracking these results will look somewhat different from tracking video interactions or social media likes, but it is still very possible with the right tools.
Go Beyond Email Marketing
Oracle Eloqua has far more potential than just email marketing. Maybe you have the same problem we’ve observed in other companies – marketing channels like SMS or video marketing are ignored or tracked separately, while Eloqua functions only as an email marketing platform. Don’t make this mistake! Tying your marketing channels together allows you to create a unified view of your ROI and use Oracle Eloqua to its fullest potential. Good news: it’s never too late to get started! Contact us today and let us help you take your marketing channels to the next level.
Marketing key performance indicators, or KPIs, are a critical part of any marketing strategy. These numbers tell you at a glance what’s working and what needs improvement.
Unfortunately, it’s too easy to get focused on KPIs that are easy to gather and look great on paper but don’t really provide actionable insights. Improved email open rates make it seem like your campaigns are paying off, but if you can’t connect them to increased profits, you only have numbers.
But your marketing KPIs can do so much more. In this eBook, we’ll examine:
Data quality is central to marketing’s ability to create targeted campaigns and personalized experiences. Marketers work very hard to ensure the data they collect is accurate, relevant, and up-to-date which helps improve campaign performance and drive engagement and revenue. New privacy laws align well with marketing data collection practices. Gone are the days of collecting as much data as possible, hoarding and using it for as long as possible. Let’s examine the relationship between marketing, data quality, and privacy.
What is Data Quality?
Data quality refers to the accuracy, completeness, consistency, and timeliness of the data collected. Accurate data is essential for making informed business decisions, providing personalized customer experiences, and targeting the right audience with relevant messaging at the right time. Inaccurate data can lead to flawed insights, wasted resources, and missed opportunities.
What is Data Privacy?
Data privacy refers to the protection of sensitive information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. This information can include personally identifiable information (PII), health information, financial information, or any other information that is considered sensitive. Violating data privacy can result in severe repercussions, including identity theft, financial loss, reputational harm, and the erosion of public confidence in the digital environment, as well as the imposition of substantial fines and penalties for non-compliance with applicable regulations.
What is the Relationship Between Data Privacy & Data Quality for Marketers?
Data privacy and data quality are closely linked. For example, if a marketer collects a customer’s email address and then sends them irrelevant marketing material, the customer may consider this a breach of their privacy. Not only can this damage the relationship with the customer, but it can also harm the brand’s reputation.
Marketers can increase their conversion rates and avoid damaging their brand by ensuring that the data is accurate, relevant, and up-to-date. On the other hand, high-quality data can improve data privacy. For example, if a marketer collects a customer’s email address and sends them personalized marketing material that they are interested in, the customer is more likely to trust the brand with their personal information.
Another core tenet of data privacy is data minimization, or only collecting information required to respond to customer requests and only using it as necessary. This is generally the side of privacy that most laws tend to emphasize.
What are the Data Privacy Regulations for Marketers?
Data privacy regulations are designed to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. One of the most well-known data privacy regulations is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies to all organizations that collect, process, or store the personal data of EU citizens.
The GDPR requires organizations to obtain explicit consent from individuals before collecting their data, provide access to their data upon request, and implement appropriate security measures to protect the data. Failure to comply with the GDPR can result in significant fines and damage the brand’s reputation.
What Steps Can Marketers Take to Ensure Data Privacy and Quality?
Marketers can take several steps to ensure data privacy and quality, including:
Only collect personal data from people who have given explicit consent for you to do so
Collect details on consent input at the point of initial contact: in other words, accurately record information on the request (such as when, why, how, etc.) to evaluate for permissions later
Take appropriate steps to protect sensitive information: access control, data encryption, etc.
To summarize, data quality and privacy are crucial components of successful marketing. Marketers rely on accurate, relevant, and up-to-date data to create targeted campaigns and personalized experiences. However, data privacy is equally essential to building trust with customers and avoiding data breaches. Marketers must comply with data privacy regulations such as the GDPR and implement best practices to ensure data privacy and quality. By doing so, they can improve the customer experience, build trust, and drive engagement and revenue. As data continues to play a significant role in marketing, prioritizing data quality and privacy will be essential for success.
Introducing 4Comply: The Privacy Compliance Software for Marketers
4Comply is a data privacy solution optimized for marketers that makes it easy to practice privacy compliance at every step. At the point of first contact with a customer, 4Comply collects details on consent input to help you make future decisions as you market to that customer. Best of all, 4Comply’s system records everything you and creates a record to prove your ongoing legal compliance. Get in touch with our team of experts today to schedule a free demo and better incorporate privacy into your long-term marketing strategy.
In an increasingly privacy-conscious world, companies must continually adjust their strategies for collecting and using customer data as laws and regulations change. By necessity, this includes rethinking a major marketing staple: the Call To Action (CTA). Since customers no longer want to hand out large amounts of personal information (and you may not be allowed to ask in the first place), how can you continue using CTAs effectively when you don’t have explicit consent? One answer comes from a concept cemented in the GDPR: legitimate interest.
The legal term “legitimate interest” appears only in the EU’s privacy law, the GDPR. However, the concept is present in several other prominent regulations, each with its take on how legitimate interest is communicated and how long it lasts. A given company’s privacy policy needs to address both. More importantly, the privacy policy must stay within the appropriate legal guidelines for each regulation.
What is Legitimate Interest?
Most privacy laws contain some concept of legitimate interest even if the term itself doesn’t appear. And for our purposes, this principle is the most important. The European Commission defines legitimate interest in this way:
“Your company/organization has a legitimate interest when the processing takes place within a client relationship, when it processes personal data for direct marketing purposes, to prevent fraud or to ensure the network and information security of your IT systems.”
Old-school marketing measures would say that making a purchase or taking advantage of an offer demonstrates legitimate interest to be contacted frequently and perpetually. But a detailed understanding of most relevant legislation shows that’s not the case. Privacy laws are concerned with the customers’ interests above all else—and most customers don’t want to be contacted forever. Nor do they want a barrage of offers on items they haven’t expressed interest in for a while. Instead, they are more likely to respond when the offer is based on recent interactions.
Layering Calls to Action
In a privacy-conscious world, companies can collect many customers’ legitimate interest through “layering” their calls to action. This ensures you’re targeting customers that actually want to hear from you, rather than just sending off mass emails.
One simple way to layer CTAs is to promote them specifically to their target audience. For example, a cybersecurity management firm might publish a blog article about recognizing phishing emails. The article could contain a link to purchase the firm’s specialized antivirus software. Anyone reading the blog is interested in safeguarding their computer, and will be more likely to appreciate the offer.
A second way to layer CTAs is to embed one offer within another that has already been accepted. Let’s continue the example of the cybersecurity management firm. A customer that signs up for their newsletter demonstrates an interest in computer security, and may also be interested in attending an upcoming security webinar advertised in the newsletter. The webinar itself may conclude with a CTA to take a free cybersecurity assessment. This is just an extension of the customer’s interest, and continually accepting CTAs within CTAs demonstrates continued interest—and more importantly, continued permission to be contacted.
Regardless of how you choose to handle your calls to action, make sure to keep your promises! Failure to follow through on an offer will only hurt you.
Different Types of CTAs
Showcasing a call to action is more than just presenting a customer with a link. What form does it take? Is it likely to draw the customer in? Experiment with these tried-and-true CTA formats:
Strategy session. If you’re promoting training or services, use this session to show the customer how your services will help them.
Demo invitation. Invite the customer to watch your product in action. This approach is best for highly engaged leads that are very likely to buy from you.
Free trial. Let the customer play with a product or service on their own before making a decision.
Series of emails. Offer to send the customer a series of emails specifically focused on something they’re interested in. This gives the customer engaging material, and you a lead to nurture.
General marketing offer. If all else fails, go for Plan B and simply ask the customer if they’re open to any and all future communications from you. You’ll retain a lead, but you’ll have to continue working to narrow down their interests.
Managing Customer Preferences
Customers deserve to know that you respect their preferences. But this raises the question: how can you keep track of everyone’s marketing preferences? Can you respond effectively when they express a preference and prove to your customers that you’re following the law?
That’s where a specialized privacy compliance software comes in. 4Comply, a creation of 4Thought Marketing, is designed to keep your marketing campaigns in line with the applicable regulations and prove to your customers that you’re doing your best. Privacy software helps with several critical functions:
Centralized consent: This system keeps track of which customers provided explicit consent and those who didn’t, but whose actions satisfy legitimate interest.
Permissions. Permissions tracking ensures that you use customer data in compliance both with legal requirements and with customer preferences.
Legal activity history. A permanent legal activities archive keeps track of every consent-related activity. Any customer that asks why you’re emailing them can be shown that they responded to a call to action.
Customers are more aware than ever of their rights to privacy. Likewise, privacy laws have more teeth and can cost you more for violations. An all-in-one software solution that monitors all your activities is an invaluable addition to your arsenal.
Structure Your Offers for a Privacy-Focused Audience
Privacy laws are designed to protect customer data, not hinder businesses. You can still maintain a lucrative marketing strategy while staying well within the guidelines. However, you must think more strategically about your approach.
With new restrictions on advertising, companies have had to learn to balance zealous marketing with a healthy respect for customer privacy. Correctly understanding legal and practical guidelines for sales tactics can be time-consuming. However, with the right approach, the results are more than worth it.
Is your system optimized for new legal requirements? We can help you find out! Get in touch today for a privacy assessment to keep your marketing strategy in the clear.
April 9, 2026 | Page 1 of 1 | https://4thoughtmarketing.com/articles/page/24
