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At Capital One, there is no shortage of customer data that can be used for marketing insights. The challenges of this wealth of data become particularly clear when analyzing cross-channel data.

I recently asked Bill TenBusch, Director of Digital Marketing and Cross Channel Analytics at Capital One, to shed some light on the team’s approach to the analysis process.

Paul Talbot: When marketers are working to gather insights from cross-channel analytics, what are some of the most common mistakes to avoid?

Bill TenBusch: When extracting insights from cross-channel analytics, a few things are important: placing too much emphasis on incomplete data and applying a single insight to an entire audience or segment.

When doing cross-channel analysis for something like a potential trip, you will never have a high level of coverage across all channels for a single user.

When you consider that potential customer match rates on channels like display and social media are often only 50-60%, it becomes very difficult to effectively understand a prospect’s entire journey before landing on your website and converting.

While workstreams like Journey Pathing are powerful tools for cross-channel marketing and can provide insight into a customer’s most common paths, keep in mind that the number of customers you have complete Journey data for is likely to be quite low and therefore should be careful when trying to extrapolate the findings to all of your potential audience.

The second mistake to avoid is applying a single takeaway to an entire audience or segment. Your potential or customer universe is likely made up of a diverse and sophisticated group of users, and each of them has their own wants, needs and behaviors that influence how they decide which companies to remain loyal to or from which to buy.

It can be common practice to divide your customer base into segments in order to further analyze and personalize them. However, it is important to remember that even within these segments there are a number of behaviors and marketing techniques that can be effective, and imposing a “one-size-fits-all” approach on different segments can be disappointing Lead to results.

Talbot: The card market appears mature and well saturated, which suggests opportunities for marketing innovation. How do you use analytics to identify and implement innovative marketing opportunities?

TenBusch: Analysis coupled with market research has allowed us to better understand our customer base and unlock some of the deeper needs of small business owners.

Because Capital One is a diverse company with a wide variety of product offerings, there is always an opportunity to provide a more seamless experience across the different areas of our business. One area where Analytics uncovered marketing opportunities focused on deepening relationships with our existing customers and introducing everything Capital One has to offer for both our business and consumer products.

For small business owners in particular, we were able to gain new insights into how we not only act as financial service providers, but also offer informative content and services that make the life of our small business customers even easier. especially last year when they faced numerous challenges due to the pandemic.

Talbot: Any other thoughts you would like to share?

TenBusch: What I enjoy most about the interface between analytics and marketing is that we feel like we’re standing on the precipice of an age of truly personalized marketing interactions. The last decade has seen an explosion of new channels and ways to interact, but the interactions have often been one size fits all.

As messaging personalization advances, we are rapidly approaching the ability to target customers based on individual needs and preferences, and also address them in a way that connects and feels personal, which will continue to be a differentiator for companies that are constantly following Looking to break through in such a competitive market.