We wrote previously about data validation but an additional element in the journey to enriching customer data is data augmentation.
Assuming you have gone through the process of setting up data rules in the schema definition, around length, datatype, associated lookup lists and valid values and formats, we can then consider whether you have used a service to verify that the data that you hold is accurate. This could be simple API-based checks for Email, phone and Address; but it may be more elaborate and verify the actual known names of a person via an identity verification provider or simply verify that the Twitter handle or Instagram ID is valid and active.
You might enhance your first-party data further with aggregations from analytics, insights and transactional systems that tell you about the last time the customer did business with you, how much they have spent to date or other key information that may be useful for making decisions about a customer based on the data that you legitimately hold in relation to them.
The second part of augmentation is often referred to as enrichment, but Pretectum feels that this is too vague a term given that enrichment in itself is really just the overall process of improving, enhancing or increasing the value of the data including examining and assessing the data quality. So when you perform data quality assessment and then correct for identified data quality issues; those are in themselves also enriching the data.
The art of data augmentation
Here, Pretectum sees several possibilities, the first is the purchase of customer contact lists from third parties – often referred to as second-party data. While this is not necessarily a popular approach, particularly with consumers, the reality is that your business may be just starting out and you want to grow the awareness of the community of your offering and buying lists may help you to do this. This type of customer data augmentation means that you might consider adding bought lists to your existing known customer base.
With Pretectum you could do this using additional datasets or simply append the data to your existing customer dataset but perhaps with fewer data attributes because you don’t have all that data in the customer list. You may only say have a first name, last name and email address.
The second possibility is by taking your data from your different sources and combining them to create a superset of the customer record. While you net amount of data that you have will not change, the availability of other attributes from multiple sources now makes the data much more valuable.
Just like the preceding actions, and more particularly, similar to the buying of lists, consider second-party data that can be provided by second parties that may include customer activity on websites, mobile app usage, that social media usage and customer interaction in events. Here the data may come from a telco provider, a mobile phone manufacturer or the social media platforms themselves.
The fourth possibility is the addition of data that can be imputed to relate to your customer – often considered as 3rd-party data. This might be the geo-demographic classification of household data or bringing in Census data based on the known address of the customer contact. 3rd party data providers are typically data aggregators. Through a combination of fee-paid relationships and partnerships. they organize the data into categories based on industry segments, audience behaviours, interests and demographic characteristics such as sex and age as well as socio-economic status.
You might invest in 3rd party data to understand your prospects and customers better and improve audience targeting and customer database segmentation.
Pretectum allows you to manage not just first-party but also allows you to add second and third-party data to your CMDM to augment your customer master data to a level where it can be most valuable for your sales, marketing, service and support relationships with your customers.