Less data. More relevancy.

Most of us have spent our lives working with the knowledge that you should drink two litres of water a day. It’s something that we just inherently know: to stay healthy you have to stay hydrated, and to stay hydrated, you need to drink two litres of water. But here’s the thing: it’s not true.

More precisely, there’s no evidence in science to back this up. Where did the myth come from? It's generally believed (though even this appears to be under some doubt) that the source is a 1945 US Food and Nutrition Board Recommendation that declared, "an ordinary standard for diverse persons is 1 millilitre for each calorie of food". 2000 calories in the average diet, equates to two litres of water or around eight glasses a day. But what's usually ignored from that report is the crucial next sentence: "Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods."

I start with this because one of the hardest things to do with myths like is to break them, and yet we’re about to experience the potential ending of another myth: marketing is always better when it’s personalised.

Marketing automation platforms, ABM companies, data brokers – almost everyone with a product to sell – has sold it on the merits that it allows more personalised and targeted communications. In the same way that drinking more water can help you stay healthier, having more data can make your marketing more effective, but it doesn’t mean that it always will.

Collect all the datas.

For the past ten years, the policy of most tech companies has been ‘extract as much data as you can and work out what to do with it later.’ Many marketing teams have been the same: collect as many contact details as you can and find a way of communicating with them. Get enough communication in front of enough people (sometimes these communications are very effective, other times less so) and you find that something sticks.

Since 2012 (though the broader trend starts a few years before that) marketing effectiveness has been on the decline (http://www.ipa.co.uk/media-in-focus-book). In particular, we see smaller gains in penetration and market share, the key drivers of long-term business success. Though the changes in marketing have been manifold over this time period, it does coincide with the explosion in marketing data acquisition. As data quantities have grown, so too has the focus on ROMI (ROI), which is an efficiency metric, rather than growth or indeed profit, which are measures of effectiveness.

The focus of most uses of data has been increasing personalisation and targeting. But as Heidi Taylor wrote earlier this week, do customers really want personalisation? . I argue that personalisation not only isn’t what people want, it’s not even the goal. Relevancy of communications is the goal, and though data acquisition has done wonders for increasing how personalised marketing appears and made more granular targeting possible, there is still a way to go with using data to make the marketing comms themselves more relevant to cut through the noise.

More relevant marketing.

Data creates information. Information creates insight. Insight creates understanding.

Relevancy comes from understanding customers and prospects, not from mail merging their name into one of a dozen email templates. In a post GDPR world, more focus needs to be put on understanding of industries, business models, legislation, technology, sales models and contracts to make marketing comms more relevant. The Challenger Sale example of Xerox selling schools on colour printers based upon understanding that children perform better when using visually exciting learning materials rather than black and white pages is a classic example of this.

Yes, customer data is crucial to marketing, much as water is crucial to being healthy. And yes, more data has helped marketing get better and get closer to customers. But just like more water does not make you more hydrated, more data need not necessarily make marketing better. Just because something can make a difference does not mean it will if not applied correctly.

GDPR is a chance to focus on creating more effective marketing communications. A level playing field – for now. More water, when drunk by a fully hydrated person is just expelled as waste. More data, when captured by a data-saturated marketing team, is also waste.