Benefits and Challenges of using Customer Data for marketing.

Using customer data is no new thing. Database Marketing is being used for several decades. Nowadays, marketers are more involved with data as the customer data is growing at an enormous amount and using data analytics, the insights extracted from the collected data is also growing exponentially.

Using Database Marketing organisations can benefit in several ways : 

1. A couple of decades ago, marketers used mass media marketing strategies (like TV's, Radio, etc) to create any sort of brand or product awareness. But now with the proper Customer Data Platform and analyzing the data efficiently marketers can maintain a clean and centralized record of the collected data also known as Single Customer View Marketing Database. Single Customer View refers to the process of collecting data from both online and offline sources and merging it to form a single customer profile. This Single Customer View profiling can be done based on website visit, purchase history, demographics and interactions on various social media channels.
2. Personalizing the customer experience. It is experienced that customers engage more to the brands that offer a more personalized shopping experience tailored to customer needs. For instance, Netflix has widely grown in the number of daily users as the algorithm of Netflix works exactly according to customer watched or browsing history. Moreover, it recommends TV shows based on customer interests.
3. Understanding the customer needs with database marketing will help in engaging and fulfilling the customer requirements as better and improved service.
4. Using a Customer-centric approach will lead to better customer service prioritizing what the customer wants.

Every opportunity comes with some challenges, so the challenges of data-driven marketing. 

1. Analyzing Data from different sources: Data is being collected continuously and at a huge amount, but analyzing this data and eliminating the factors which can manipulate the data must be ensured at each step. Making sure Data is clean and complete is very important. According to Google, "61% of marketing decision-makers said they struggled to access or integrate the data they needed last year". (Feb 2017)
2. Data without a clear purpose is useless. Ensuring the right KPI's is relatively necessary to serve the purpose of the organisation's goal.

References : 

1. Botibol, A. (2018). “The benefits of database marketing for marketers and customers”. Available at: https://www.bluevenn.com/blog/benefits-of-database-marketing (Accessed 12 Feb 2020). 
2. Horne, J. (2018). “The Challenges of Data-Driven Marketing (And How to Overcome Them)”. Available at: https://www.digitaldoughnut.com/articles/2018/december/the-challenges-of-data-driven-marketing (Accessed 12 Feb 2020). 
3. Carey, C. (2017). "Dealing with Data: Today's Marketing Analytics Challenges and Opportunities". Available at: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-apac/tools-resources/data-measurement/marketing-analytics-data-challenges-opportunities/ (Accessed 12 Feb 2020).
4. Martin, N. (2018). "How to Overcome the Challenges of Data-Driven Digital Marketing". Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolemartin1/2018/12/18/how-to-overcome-the-challenges-of-data-driven-digital-marketing/#354cb6d14767 Accessed 12 Feb 2020).