AdExchanger recently reported on how Brooks Running built a complete customer 360 view with Amperity, which they used to improve return on ad spend, clickthrough, and conversion rates. According to Mark McKelvey, VP of Information Technology, they’re now “able to get [their] message to the right people.”
The team at Brooks is doing a lot of things right, which keeps them at the head of the pack. In our work with them and other forward-thinking brands, we see consistent data strategies and approaches that separate leaders from laggers. Here are the top three:
1. Power Your Entire Organization with a Customer 360 View
As Brooks discussed in the article, customer data isn’t just for marketers. After building a unified customer database using Amperity, the team made that data available to advertisers, marketers, analysts, IT operations teams, and product developers. This is precisely what it means to be customer-centric: use your customer data to inform all aspects of your business, not a single channel or department. Better still, everyone shares the same understanding of the customers, ensuring the business is working in concert to provide the best experiences and the most impactful strategies for long-term growth.
2. Build a Best-of-Breed Technology Stack
Brands often think that they’re gaining efficiencies by using a single technology provider as their end-to-end solution for collecting, unifying, and actioning on customer data. But the hefty price tags, archaic business models, slow-moving teams, and behind-the-curve tech negate any perceived benefits associated with using a single vendor.
Instead, winning teams build best-of-breed stacks. This gives them the flexibility to customize their ecosystem based on their unique needs, and it also allows them to cherry-pick the leaders in each category, even as they change over time. For example, Brooks shared that in just 10 week, they “ended up accomplishing more during the test {of Amperity} than during the entire engagement” with their enterprise solution provider.
3. Take a Leap with New Technologies
More often than not, winning brands are trailblazers, offering new experiences, products, or ways of engaging with their customers. This will inevitably involve some level of calculated risk. Playing it safe when it comes to technology is actually just the opposite. A wait-and-see approaches means losing your competitive advantage, and lets early adopters reap outsized rewards and create insurmountable leads.
Brands like Brooks mitigate risks by hiring a forward-thinking head of IT or an experienced Chief Innovation Officer whose job it is to understand and vet the latest innovations. They also avoid the trap of the DIY approach, opting for outside teams of experts when the problems are new and difficult.