The Rise Of The Data-Driven Marketer: Why It's Beneficial And How To Hire One

Post written by

Almitra Karnik

Almitra heads marketing for CleverTap, a mobile marketing platform that enables marketers to create differentiated engagement experiences.

Consumers are becoming increasingly picky about the messages they read and the products they buy. In response, marketers have to create personalized messages to attract and retain customers -- and that requires data.

The consumer demand for relevant messages has given way to a whole new kind of marketing: data-driven marketing. Marketers are now collecting data at every touch point to better understand their audiences, interpret that data to predict future behaviors and make real-time marketing decisions.

Why Marketers Are Data Hungry

Over 40% of brands plan to expand their data-driven marketing budgets, according to eMarketerThe benefits of data-driven marketing are plentiful. Here's a look at why marketers crave statistics so much:

• Personalization becomes easy and effective: Customer data allows marketers to segment buyers with ease and create tailored campaigns that speak to niche groups. Research shows this kind of marketing results in increased revenue. Marketers that exceeded their revenue goals in 2017 were using personalization techniques 83% of the time, according to a survey from Monetate.

• Decisions are based on concrete data: As you learn more about your customers and their behaviors, you can make sound business and marketing decisions. Data collection can tell you who to market to, what kind of content or incentive to send and what improvements you should make to a product to increase customer satisfaction.

• Customer journeys become clearer: The traditional sales funnel is dead. Thanks to dozens of digital channels, customers don't take a defined path to checkout. They might Google your business, read reviews, ask for recommendations on social media and price compare before making a decision. Data-driven marketers can get a better understanding of their customers' buying journeys and create content for each step of the process. 

• Data leads to better understanding of ROI: Data-driven marketing provides statistics that attribute successful outcomes to a specific marketing effort. Marketers can see how many products were sold because of a specific email campaign or quantify conversion rates that stem from free resources like blog articles and webinars. By knowing what's successful, marketers can spend budgets wisely.

Skills To Look For To Build A Data-Driven Organization

Collecting, organizing and interpreting data in a way that drives decisions takes skill. As you hire marketers, look for recruits that have the ability to:

• Separate knowledge from data: Experienced marketers gather intel from years of campaign creation and analysis, but it's important that today's marketer separate this knowledge from the data collected. Experience may suggest one path, but data may suggest another. The reason you're collecting data is to help you choose the right path.

• Create a well-oiled martech stack: To be a data-driven marketer, you'll rely on a variety of marketing tools to streamline data collection and mining. You'll need employees that can create a martech stack, a stack of marketing tech tools that work together to provide the valuable insights needed to elevate your customer relationships.

• Use customer insight to make real-time decisions: You need marketers that can analyze data that comes in and use it to make decisions in the moment. For instance, if real-time social media ad metrics show high engagement during a certain time of day, your marketer can adjust the timing of your ads to maximize your budget. Watching metrics and making adjustments is a crucial component in data-driven marketing.

• Constantly mine data: A data-driven marketer is always mining statistics for new insights. You want a marketer who can think of new and inventive ways to use the data collected to find new customer segments, identify characteristics of repeat customers and pick up on patterns and trends that lead to proactive marketing tactics.

• Bridge the gap between marketing and sales: Marketing and sales might be different departments, but they're both dedicated to landing new customers and keeping existing ones. Look for a marketer who can work with the sales team and encourage them to focus on stats like average customer value and annual recurring revenue rather than compete for lead totals or vetted prospects.

The wave of digital channels and shifting consumer behavior has forced marketers to collect and analyze data to thrive. Organizations that embrace data collection and evolve with technology will become the frontrunners in the marketing landscape today and in the future. As we continue to build our marketing organization, our core objective is to make it a differentiator for us. Brands build differentiation via products. Why shouldn’t differentiation be built through sub-organization values and cultures? Let me know your thoughts on how you hire or train employees to be data-driven.


Almitra heads Marketing for CleverTap, a mobile marketing platform that enables marketers to create differentiated engagement experiences....