How Big Data is affecting the Single Customer View

In 1999 Seth Godin wrote about the idea of ‘permission-based marketing’, and to achieve it marketing departments soon realised they would need a Single Customer View (SCV). But how has the evolution of Big Data affected SCV?

Every day we gather information on our customers and store it in different databases, different departments and even different buildings. An SCV, or single marketing view as it’s sometimes called, seeks to merge all that data into one point that is accessible by all.

The problem was that for some companies, achieving an SCV was a journey that could take years. Many large organisations needed to build 5 year plans and it was not unusual for projects to over-run.

As a result, SCV slipped a few places on corporate priority lists. But Big Data may change things.

According to Bryan Eisenberg, founder of the Digital Analytics Association, the world is currently generating more data in 2 days than in all the days before 2003.

The sheer Volume, Variety and Velocity of information has increased; largely as a result of the explosion in digital marketing and the data it generates.

Managing the ‘3 Vs’ has been a problem. But Eisenberg believes that as new companies enter the Big Data arena, and provide cloud-based solutions, the capabilities that had previously been accessible only by large organisations will find their way into smaller companies. Big Data for the little guys.

Duncan Stuart, Director at Deloitte Canada, confirms there are compelling reasons for companies to pursue Big Data, “Instead of looking at my customer’s behavior once a month, I can look at it every minute of every day. That kind of insight is very, very powerful. It allows me to serve my customer better”.

The result could be that SCV becomes easier, or essential, to implement.

With SCV companies will have a platform that can profile, segment and enhance data to make the most of the intelligence and insight a unified view provides – and they can do it minute-by-minute with Big Data.

This will enable you to make your marketing more relevant, and relevance is important. A recent study by Transactis* asked customers about their relationship with companies they had already given information to. It showed:

• Nearly 80% UK customers would shift their business to a competitor if a company kept sending them irrelevant offers and communications
• 86% of customers say they would withdraw permission for a company to even contact them in future if it continued to send them irrelevant communications and offers
• 88% of customers would simply refuse to hand over further details on themselves if a company kept sending them communications and offers that they find to be of little use or interest

Proper integration of Big Data into an SCV provides clear insight so you can tailor, personalise and track the outcome of marketing messages and offers faster than previously possible. All of which is vital for customer acquisition, retention and profitability.

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The 3 Vs of Big Data
Bid Data refers to the explosion of data that organisations gather and the issues surrounding the management of that data. It is measured using the 3 Vs.

Volume: The amount of data, normally measured in Petabytes.
Variety: The different types of data; video, sound, documents, web logs, etc.
Velocity: The speed at which the data changes.

There is perhaps a fourth V… veracity. All the data in the world is meaningless if it is not accurate and checked regularly, and one of the best tools for B2B data cleansing is telemarketing.