Data Driven Marketing - What is it and how can you use it?

What is data driven marketing?

Put simply -  adopting a data driven marketing approach in the built environment industry, will allow you to connect with potential customers (clients) at the exact right time with the exact right message. 

Data should be the foundation of any marketing campaign and will provide you with concrete insight into what is working and what is not. A telling 78% of organisations say data-driven marketing increases lead conversion and customer acquisition (source).

Here we explore 5 key metrics where data driven marketing is available to understand and utilise for your businesses data driven marketing approach. 

1. Traffic 

Website traffic refers to web users who visit your website. Web traffic is measured in visits ( or sessions) and is a way of measuring online effectiveness at attracting an audience. The greater number of visitors a web page has the greater opportunity you have to convert this traffic into customers (clients). There are four types of traffic analytics to understand when reviewing your website: 

• Organic traffic is when traffic ( webpage visits) come to your website as a result of an unpaid search.

• Direct traffic refers to when a visitor has typed in your URL, or clicked on a bookmarked page or a social media link. 

• Search traffic- is taken from web visitors who have come from search engines.

• Campaign traffic is when a visit occurs from a paid advert such as a Google Ad, or an email campaign or a social media campaign. 

Traffic analytics will inform you which pages are relevant to your audience and which pages could use improvement.

2. Engagement

Engagement is a metric used to track key points such as the time spent on a page and bounce rates. It tracks how often web visitors interact with your content.

Similar to traffic engagement can also tell you which of your web pages are most valuable to your customers (clients). Collating data around engagement can detect what pages are working well and what need improvement to boost engagement rates.

3. Open rates

The open rate metric relates to email data. This useful metric can be analysed to determine how successful an email campaign has been. If your open rates for email are low - review your subject line as this is the key to achieve larger open rate data.

4. Click through rates (CTR)

This also attributes to email data - a click through rate directly measures how many people clicked on your call to action within the email. Most are a direct link to a website page or a contact link.

5. Conversion rates

Conversion rates is arguably the most important data metric to be aware of. This metric details the percentage of users who performed a desired action on your webpage. It is similar to CTR ( Click through rates) but describes the number of times a visitor has either purchased directly from the website if applicable or performed a call to action - such as used a contact form or clicked to make a call.

How to use data driven marketing:

The true value of data driven marketing is not just about measuring analytics - the results have to be contextualized. When putting together a data driven marketing strategy its useful to use the S.M.A.R.T method ( source) to ensure that your goals are: 

Specific – for example if you want to increase conversion rates or CTR via your emails -  be specific regarding how much.

Measurable – Can it be quantitative or qualitative?

Actionable – is it achievable and realistic?

Relevant – do the goals benefit your business in a direct way?

Time-bound – are the deadlines realistic?

A successful approach to adopt is to use analytics to flesh out and improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Whilst a data driven marketing approach is vital for any built environment business, it can only take you so far. The use of storytelling and creativity along with your analysed data are essential to achieve successful results.

Need help understanding your data driven marketing?

Book a discovery call with our Marketing Strategists to brainstorm ideas to up your content game and elevate your brand in 2021.