Big Data? Size doesn’t matter
- 02. July 2018
Marketing Automation for NGOs: Actionable Data
They say that data is the gold of the third millennium. And indeed, data is the foundation of a billion-dollar business by Internet giants like Google and Facebook. Data is also of central importance for NPOs: if you collect and maintain your patrons’ data properly, you understand their needs and can build better and more long-term relationships. What sounds simple and obvious often poses a great challenge in practice.
“Bigger isn’t always better.”
Thanks to cloud-based tools, tracking scripts and (big) data management platforms, it has become very easy to acquire a large amount of data in a short time. But the big challenge is not in collecting the data, but in using it efficiently and in a targeted manner. Ultimately, it is not a question of the quantity and size of the data sets, but only of whether we can convert them into actions that serve to achieve the organization’s goals. This is “Actionable” Data.
“Every organization should have a data strategy.”
Based on this credo, every organization should pursue a data strategy that is based on concrete business requirements. A concrete example shows how this looks like:
- Goal – Improve retention
- Measure – Automated follow-up e-mail with updates on project successes
- Data requirements – donation amount, date and purpose must be available in the Marketing Automation System
Studies show that communicating the achieved results is one of the most important criteria why donors remain loyal to an organization. This example shows that even small and simple data sets can be used to implement effective measures. Provided that the data is available at the right time in the right system.
And this is where problems often start: Many organizations map the customer history very precisely in the CRM system, but do not have real-time access to it in their email marketing or marketing automation solution. This massively reduces the value of this data, because it is not available exactly where it could be used cost-effectively for personalized communication measures. Since, for performance reasons, not all data can be mirrored 1 to 1 between the systems, a clear data strategy is needed to answer the following questions:
- What data do we need?
- In which database do we need it?
- At what time are they needed?
In order to break down the complexity, it has proven itself in practice to work with so-called use cases to answer these questions. One defines the most important current and future business cases and derives the data requirements from them.
“Once the data architecture is on paper, the use cases can be revisited.”
On this basis, a data architecture with databases and interfaces is developed, which ensures that the required data is available at the right time and in the right place. As soon as this architecture is on paper, the use cases can be retrieved to validate the designed architecture. This lays the foundation for successful marketing automation and valid performance measurement.
This way to part 1: Donor centricity – Focus on the people
This way to part 3: Personalized, orchestrated, real time: This is what Marketing Automation can do for NGOs