Customers don’t separate their lives, so why would your data strategy?

It’s been said a million times already (and I don’t feel like I am exaggerating) that the customer journey is not linear. Not does it follow a certain path. Neither does identity. It’s not 'Sally, the mom and daughter', and 'Sally the VP of Marketing for a big financial company'. - she’s one in the same. But most brands market to Sally as if she’s two different people. 

Data Axle, a data and marketing intelligence company, pitches that this is wrong and organizations shouldn’t separate our engagement strategies. According to Natalie Cunningham, SVP Marketing at Data Axle, explains:

More and more consumers, whether you're a business consumer or you’re a professional consumer, are asking for relevance. And they want you to know more about who they are as a person, in a data-compliant, non-creepy way. They want more relevance, and that can't just mean looking at their title and the company they work for.

That’s the gist of Data Axle’s report: The Connected Customer: Unlocking Relevance Through Unified Data Intelligence. The report dives into the need to connect personal and business profiles to create more relevant messaging, offers, and experiences. This isn’t about brands having more data; it’s about bringing together the right data. “It’s about the quality and activation of that data.”

One example Cunningham provides involves a hotel that wants to get business professionals to extend their stays (i.e., bleisure). The hotel discovered that a customer who frequently travels for business also enjoys sports and is willing to travel for games. They recommended tickets for a local hockey game, which would encourage the customer to stay at their hotel for a few days longer.

The more you know about a person, the more you can connect the why to the what and provide them with more relevant content.

Cunningham believes there is so much opportunity for overlap where companies can generate more revenue. This thinking applies to all types of brands, B2B, B2C, and B2B2C.

Getting personal 

But wait, aren’t personas with personal attributes a waste of time?

It feels like it wasn’t that long ago that we were creating these detailed, in-depth personas that combined business profile information with personal details. You know the ones - “Sally is the VP of Marketing for a financial company, loves pilates and three kids under 10, one of whom plays AA hockey.”

Marketing teams would spend hours, even days, discussing and building these personas to use in their campaigns.

Then suddenly, marketers were saying these personas aren’t helpful at all. Who cares if Sally has a kid in hockey - what does that have to do with selling her finance software?

Well, it turns out - maybe a lot.

Cunningham acknowledges that there was a time she thought this way too. Maybe that was true five to ten years ago, she concedes, but today that mindset is wrong. Today budgets are tight for both marketers and consumers. Most brands are also in highly competitive markets that are often commoditized and crowded. You need a way to stand out, so many look to personalization.

The reality thought is that personalization isn’t straightforward or simple - or all that generative AI “slop” everyone is complaining about would be working. That content is supposed to be personalized, too, but it’s often based on inaccurate or incomplete data.

The differentiator, Cunningham said, is having a foundation of accurate data. If you have that, leveraging personal data can be very useful.

Another example from the report involved the Wholesale Club. After analyzing its customer data, the Club discovered that although it had a strong individual membership base, there was untapped potential in its business segment. It analyzed its consumer membership to identify individuals affiliated with businesses, particularly those who would benefit from a business membership.

The Club then tailored messaging that acknowledged the current relationship but also highlighted the added value of a business membership.

It uncovered that business members shared key traits, such as being heads of households, owning multiple vehicles, and having children at home. It also found that many individual members had roles below manager, suggesting the company could drive conversations with these people who could have growing responsibilities that might trigger them to upgrade.

The point is, looking at customer data from a connected view provides the Club with more opportunities to deliver relevant messages that are mapped with each member’s personal and professional journey. The result was a 15% lift in membership upgrades.

Knowing personal data doesn’t mean you use it in your messaging

Here’s something important to understand about connecting personal and business data - you don’t use it in your messaging or content necessarily. Instead, you use it to find the right people to target and the right offer to make to them. Cunningham argues:

“I think for me, the best CMOs I know look for data to help them create relevance, less so the personalization point. I think in the past, it's often been, ' Hey, Barb, we see you have x, y, z, job title, and you might be interested in x, right? ' I think the best personalization is when they don't have any idea it's being personalized to them. It's just extremely relevant. It's almost kismet that it's at the time that they're getting it. That's the best outcome of personalization. And I think the leading CMOs are doing that, and they're doing it with a combination of business and personal data.

And the truth is, people do want brands to understand them on a deeper level. This desire for a more connected experience is especially true for existing customers and service industries. Data helps create that better experience throughout the customer lifecycle and ultimately, when done well, drives brand loyalty.

According to the report, 72% of consumers feel more loyal to brands that tailor their experiences, and 78% believe their experience would improve if brands responsibly combined their personal and professional data. Additionally, one-third of consumers stated that they would be willing to pay more if they had an emotional connection or felt brand loyalty.

How do you decide what is relevant data to use?

But it’s not about knowing more about a customer, it’s about knowing them better. And that requires building an experience around individual preferences, behaviors, and values.

Cunningham believes that there is always a concern to not cross the line where it feels like a company is using data in a way that’s non-compliant or the person hasn’t given permission to use it that way. But she suggests that if it feels creepy or 'Big Brother'-like, then you are doing it wrong:

If we can remove some of the manual work that resource-strapped marketing teams have always had to do to get good quality data, to get it to be relevant, to make it useful, by leveraging good data foundations like from Data Axle and AI; to make something that's easier to activate, then you get to spend your time instead of creating that PowerPoint slide on what the persona is, like we all did 5-10 years ago, to really analyze that data, talk to customers to validate what we're hearing. Maybe create customer advisory boards, maybe engage in communities. I can use that time to find the human connection that helps me really understand which of those data points are going to actually be a lever for influence with that audience, and which of those are noise.

Marketers get it, they just can’t implement it

According to the report, 94% of marketers agree that connecting personal and business data makes sense. The problem is, only 34% are doing it today. So what’s the disconnect?

Well, first of all, 60% of marketers cite data quality and integrity as a top concern, and 30% struggle to unify the data they have across platforms. Plus, 57% worry about compliance and regulatory risk.

Cunningham posits marketing as the connective tissue between sales and customer success, helping them achieve their goals. But it is also dependent on these other groups to do their job well, including the data and infrastructure team. Which means they are limited to what the organization has decided to invest in in terms of data infrastructure.

If your data infrastructure is siloed, if they have B2B data and B2C data, maybe it's separate business units if you sell into both. If they have fragmented data, that makes it difficult for you to connect to those profiles and to action on it. You have to request reports or request outputs, and it's not real-time. That can make it really challenging for marketing to actually operationalize this philosophical idea.

My take

I’m all for blurring the line between personal and professional. I’m not an either-or, and often something I see in my work life gives me ideas for my personal life and vice versa. As long as it’s done right - and that means not creepy. But that’s such a challenge for most marketers who struggle to get the right data, and struggle to know what the right data is.

This is something Cunningham pitches that Data Axle does. It doesn’t just provide data, though. It also provides services that help customers understand that data and how to activate it the right way. I think maybe that’s even more important today, because marketers are stretched for budget and resources. Yes, generative AI is helping, but it’s not the sole answer.

Ultimately, connecting personal and professional data isn’t about being invasive; it’s about being insightful. The brands that get this right won’t just gain attention. They’ll earn trust and loyalty.