Siloed data sets have been a bad practice we in the data world have put up with for far too long. There’s a reason tightly siloed datasets have lasted as they have—they’re easy to create, difficult to connect, and most importantly, people need them. But after a few years in the data industry, I began to see the real problem with walled datasets: they stand in the way of true omnichannel marketing and hold your campaigns back from reaching their true potential.
Linked Data Caters to Today’s Modern, Highly Mobile Audiences
With an expansive numbers of professionals working from home during this uncertain COVID time, the line between our professional and personal lives continue to blur. Smartphones have made it too easy to constantly check our work email at home. In fact, one recent LinkedIn survey found that most professionals in the U.S. check in with the office by email or phone while vacationing. While that kind of intrusion may be a bad habit for some, it is great for marketers. It unveils new opportunities to reach your prospects on a platform they check constantly. But that isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
With traditional data, you might buy a B2B email list with appended postal addresses. That may be the foundation of many successful B2B campaigns, but you would still be targeting your prospects during only one part of their lives. The same issue exists when you buy a B2B list—you will miss out on contacting your prospects on other channels that can really get their attention.
Expands Omnichannel Campaigns
Linked data is special because it includes both B2B and B2C data. That means you can reach your prospects while they are at work or at home (or checking their work emails at home).
For example, say that a company wants to market a personal electronic device, such as a beard trimmer. The company already has a list of prospects it wants to use from another campaign, but the list only contains B2B email addresses. By connecting those B2B emails to B2C data, the company would be able to send:
- Emails to its prospects’ B2C email addresses
- Direct mail ads to their home addresses
- Display ads
- Social media ads
This would give the company the flexibility to find professional males using B2B data and reach them using B2C data.
Improves Onboarding and Custom Audience Creation
Linked data is also an invaluable tool for onboarding and custom audience creation. Since data management platforms (DMPs) match B2C emails at a higher rate, onboarding traditional B2B lists leads to lower match rates, not to mention decision makers usually don’t spend too much time surfing online while at the office. Linked B2B data includes B2C email addresses, which result in higher match rates. When we were developing StiristaLINK, our own linkage product, testing showed that it increased match rates by more than 27%.
The same goes for creating custom audiences on social media. Since most people use their personal email addresses when they create their accounts, B2C email addresses have significantly higher match rates. Using linked B2B data when you create custom audiences will help you reach far more of your B2B prospects on social media.
Conclusion
Linked data has really opened the doors for marketers to create their own custom audiences. You can choose from all kinds of B2B filters and pair it with B2C data. This is just one of the innovations the market needs to reach our increasingly connected audiences on multiple channels.
