My new year’s resolution: Deal with my data
- Fri, December 23 2011
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
An interesting thing is happening in data. More and more companies (and nonprofits) have more and more data on their customers (and donors). Thanks to technology and systems for tracking consumer behavior, we have loads of information. This could make us incredibly effective. But it’s not yet.
One reason is our data is in disorder. We may have data in siloes or different platforms, which makes it hard to get a clear view into individual consumers so we can actually use the data to work smarter. Another reason is we have so much data, it’s hard to handle. There’s a lot of talk of “big data” these days—data sets so massive that they can’t be handled by the same old tools. It’s hard to capture, store, search, share, analyze and visualize that much information. Too bad because there’s so much to gain - a view into key trends and patterns and insights that can do everything from increase sales to prevent disease to defeat crime. (Source for big data definition: Wikipedia. It was there that I learned every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created and 90% of the data in the world today was created within the past two years. That last fact is mind-blowing.)
The good news is there are tools to deal with this. I’m going to spend 2012 dealing with my data, and I encourage you to do the same. You can’t do a great job as a marketer if you don’t have a clear grasp of your audience. And you can’t have that without data that gives you one view into people: when they’re giving, how they’re giving, how much they’re giving. Having a database of online donors vs. direct mail donors vs. major donors doesn’t give us the view we need. We need our information in one place, with the tools that can help us analyze the information. It’s like investing in glasses when your vision is blurry: it’s a wise investment to allow yourself to see.
Comments
Great blog post Katya! I think that being able to have all of your data in one place doesn’t just help marketing, but everyone in the organization who needs to look at the data. I’ve been reading more and more articles about how data silos are hindering organizations. Sitting down and dealing with your data is an investment in time and money, but the ROI will greatly benefit your organization and those you are communicating with.
Thanks for another wonderful post! Truly big data is the next frontier for innovation, productivity and competitive advantage. The challenge for nonprofits with limited budgets will be finding the time/resources to turn their information into actionable knowledge. Something for us all to consider.
This is one of our biggest challenges as a small nonprofit. We collect data on everything.. but it is all over (physical surveys, reports, survey monkey reports, etc) and takes a while to pull together information that paints a true picture of who we are. We are looking forward to having a database built to track our students, volunteers, donors, etc. in one location… since there is a lot of overlap. I welcome any resources that will help us operate more efficiently in this area. I look forward to reading about your journey as well.
Great post Katya! Most of the organizations I work with are suffering from “big data”. If only the cure to “Big Data” were easy to find and follow. It seems many organizations don’t have the tools or the department structures to break down these walls that hold us in. In an ideal world, we can work with the end in mind when we build out these systems. Most of us come into legacy systems where that work was done before our time or from a compromised view of our constituents because of gaps in our technology or system design. All of the information in one place is essential, along with designing a data structure and practices that are easy for the common person to follow. I’d love to hear from you and others on this post how you are going to take this on bit by bit or byte by byte. What’s one thing we are all going to do in 2012 to harness big data?