In the UK, more than six out of 10 adults use at least two devices every day. And some one in four use three devices a day. Internet users have on average over five social media accounts.

The same person will interact with your brand at different times in different ways. And then there are those who are talking about you and not to you. 96% of people discussing brands online don’t follow the brand’s owned profiles.

The goal for marketers in this fragmented environment is to strive for a single customer view. You need to bring together all the multifaceted complexity of each person’s online footprint into one manageable, marketable unit.

In this post, we’ll show how marketers can make the most out of multichannel by gaining access to and harnessing all the data available about their prospect. We’ll see how data management platforms are the key to making sense of all the information now available to us.

The multichannel conundrum

An excellent explanation of the multichannel conundrum that modern marketers face was put forward as far back as 2011 by Tom Hoffman of Customer Strategist:

It’s become the norm that customers interact with companies through an assortment of channels. The more channels they use to connect with a given company, the higher their potential loyalty and spend. Conversely, the more frustrated they become when their experiences are inconsistent across channels when interacting with their preferred providers.

Unfortunately, few companies have equipped themselves to monitor, manage, or optimize their customers’ multichannel experiences, thus increasing the chances of dissatisfaction, churn, and decreased customer value by failing to meet customer expectations.

In the five years since that, the challenges have only been exacerbated by the vast proliferation of data. Internet users are generating information about themselves at an alarming rate. One estimate puts it at 2.5 quintillion bytes a day.

Enormous volumes of untapped data

Unsurprisingly, this glut of disparate data is causing real headaches for marketers. We know that only 12% of data collected by businesses is currently analysed.

The sheer volume means that many of the insights that could be extracted and exploited are going untapped.

Silos and archaic systems

Yes, we’re still talking about silos in 2016. It’s the perennial problem of different departmental data banks, separated by virtual (or co-operational) walls.

Once again the issue is magnified by the flood of data now on hand – it’s more essential than ever to rationalise, streamline and combine databases.

Duplication of customers

Inevitably, siloed data leads to duplicate records, with customers existing in different places and inconsistent audience profiles resulting in disjointed marketing efforts.

It’s time to think of each customer not as an entry in each database, but as a single profile accessible to everyone in the business.

How data can help you to make the most of multichannel

The good news is this: There is a new weapon in the modern marketer’s arsenal. The data management platform is designed to address these very challenges and make data work the way it should.

Matching customer identities is the key to unlocking value from the plethora of data available to us today. Data management platforms do this by harmonising data from across multiple channels – including transaction data, online profiles, interaction records, cookies, device IDs and more.

Second and third party data is also incorporated, to build a single, silo-busting view of the customer.

Marketers are increasingly taking up the new technology. In one survey 35% of marketers in Europe had started using one within the previous year, and 26% within the last two years.

And it’s not just about programmatic adverts – 60% of DMP users harness them for more than just display advertising. In fact 55% of DMP users say it helps ‘create a targeted profile of the audience’ – the power to accurately segment and pinpoint audiences is a crucial benefit. 

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, with 64% of marketers who use DMPs employing them ‘to drive higher ROI’. 

Overcome the multichannel conundrum

The multichannel conundrum is real, but it can be solved by the clever and intelligent use of data management platforms to make sense of the vast volumes of data generated.

By combining all available insights about each prospect or customer into one single view, you will gain the power to deliver an engaging and effective customer experience across all channels. 

Takeaways:

  • Today’s customer is operating across multiple channels, devices and networks, making the simplistic linear customer journey an outdated concept.
  • Focus your data management efforts on building a single, unified view of each customer.
  • Bring together information from different first, second and third-party data points.
  • Silos must be broken down and duplication of customers eradicated.
  • Data management platforms are designed to defeat the multichannel conundrum by assembling data from multiple origins into a central hub.