The Lunch Pail: A Digital Marketing Blog

Segmentation is at the heart of traditional marketing – getting the right message in front of the right people in hopes they’ll respond favorably to your offer. The more information you have, the easier it is to slice and dice your addressable audience to target groups more efficiently, resulting in stronger ROI. However, many marketers are ready to move past groups and target people as individuals. Studies show that a growing number of consumers want that as well – especially as it relates to device-specific optimization and addressing their unique needs and interests within marketing channels. This leaves marketers with a fever for greater control over messaging so they can provide increased relevance and message consistency across channels. They got a fever… and the only prescription is more, uh, more cowbell? Nah, actually it’s for more data, managed through a “DMP” or Data Management Platform.

Forrester defines a DMP as: “A unified technology platform that intakes disparate first-, second-, and third-party data sets, provides normalization and segmentation on that data, and allows a user to push the resulting segmentation into live interactive channel environments.”

It’s interesting how the channel-specific “solutions” of the past are actually contributing to real problems for marketers moving forward. Why? Because the more channels-specific systems or platforms in use, the more fragmented your data. The level of sophistication needed for advanced segmentation, analytics, cadence strategies, etc. requires a rich data environment where actionable data is stored within individual profiles. This data environment becomes more important and valuable as digital marketing evolves.

With a DMP solution in place, data from multiple sources comes together to enrich universal profiles within a single unified platform.

For a deeper look into how all that data can come together to enrich universal profiles and the customer experience, stop back on Friday.