Where does your marketing data live? If you don’t have a marketing data warehouse, chances are it’s spread across a bunch of different platforms.
On average, marketers use around 15 different data sources. This includes—but isn’t limited to—CRMs, Google Analytics, and eCommerce websites, as well as a host of social media, email, and advertising platforms. That’s a lot of data—and a lot of silos.
Instead of the expensive, error-prone process of manually collecting siloed data for analysis, why not turn to a marketing data warehouse instead? In doing so, you accelerate your data integrity and enhance the value of your insights.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Before we discuss why you need a marketing data warehouse, let’s kick things off with a definition.
Understanding data warehouses
First things first, what is a data warehouse?
Essentially, it’s a type of cloud-based data management system that supports analysis, reporting, and business intelligence. It acts as a centralized repository for your current and historical data.
In other words, it collects data from multiple sources and houses it all in one system.
So what is a marketing data warehouse? It’s a warehouse that specifically stores marketing data. It collects large volumes of this from a variety of sources: your website, CRM, Google Analytics, social media platforms, and email marketing solutions (to name a few).
With all this data in one easy-to-access location, marketing teams can analyze cross-channel insights to inform business strategies and decisions. Other departments, such as finance, sales, and PR, can also access marketing data through your data warehouse to aid their analyses.
But does your business really need a marketing data warehouse, or will a traditional solution suffice? Let’s get into the benefits.
The benefits of data warehousing for marketing
Marketing data warehouses aren’t as intimidating as they seem—but do you really need one? From increased data storage to enhanced data quality, here’s why every modern business should opt for one.
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Store and own volumes of historical data
Using historical data to inform current and future strategies is a key marketing activity. It provides a foundation for demand forecasting, helps you predict the success rate of future initiatives, uncovers areas for improvement, and much more.
Traditional databases are unable to store the vast volumes of data required for comprehensive historical analysis. Relying on third-party sources isn’t ideal either, as platforms have distinct data retention policies that dictate how long they can store data.
A marketing data warehouse, however, has immense storage capacity. Plus, you have full control and ownership of the data you store, so you can use historical datasets to their full potential.
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Access a single source of truth
The more data sources you have, the more siloed and inconsistent your data becomes. This can cause a bunch of different issues: poor collaboration, limited data analysis, and decreased productivity, among other problems.
Remember we said earlier that the average marketer used roughly 15 different data sources in 2022? Well, this figure has been estimated to grow year by year.
Image sourced from salesforce.com
A marketing data warehouse gathers marketing data from all your separate sources and consolidates it into one system. In other words, it becomes a single source of truth. All your teams—marketing, sales, PR, etc—can make decisions and base reports on the same marketing data.
This is especially important for cross-department collaboration. Collaborative efforts between marketing and PR, finance, and sales teams, for example, are much more streamlined because data warehouses increase accessibility and facilitate better data sharing.
Plus, teams don’t have to waste time signing into dozens of different systems to collect the data they need. By consolidating marketing data, you streamline collection and give them more time to analyze it and optimize their campaigns.
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Accelerate time to insights
Setting up a physical data center requires a lot of time and resources. Cloud-based data warehouses, however, can be deployed immediately without significant expense. They don’t require costly hardware or access to a physical center, meaning you can migrate your data via a fully managed pipeline in just a few clicks.
The result? Quicker access to insights that enable you to make pivotal decisions.
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Gather real-time metrics
Businesses that possess up-to-the-minute data can maintain competitiveness in the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape too. Marketing data warehouses natively integrate with BI dashboards to deliver real-time data visualizations straight to your screen.
This data can be leveraged immediately to gain insights into everything from current operational proficiency and existing marketing opportunities to future trends and predictions.
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Achieve better data quality
Think of all the data sources you have—social media platforms, social listening services, Google Analytics, your website, and more. All of these format data differently, which—if you’re using manual methods—can lead to inaccuracies, duplications, and other data errors that erode the value of any insights you glean.
A marketing data warehouse collects data from these different sources and converts it into a standardized format, mitigating the risk of inaccuracies and duplication. This improves the consistency and quality of data, allowing teams to extract maximum value from this information.
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Gain a 360-degree view into the customer journey
As your customers travel from awareness to conversion and beyond, marketing data warehouses gather data from every touchpoint. Thanks to the centralization of this, it’s much easier for your team to view the entire customer journey.
Marketers can use this data to create more accurate customer journey maps, gain in-depth insights into customer needs and pain points, and optimize interactions to drive business growth.
Conclusion
A data warehouse is a treasure trove of historical trends, patterns, and insights. By containing and standardizing data in a centralized place, it becomes a single source of truth that delivers immediately accessible, highly reliable, and hyper-accurate insights. This is crucial for your marketing team, as they rely on the integrity of current and historical data to guide key business decisions and optimize marketing strategies.
Wondering how to take the next step toward data maturity? Or perhaps you want to amplify the quality of your data and the accuracy of your insights. A marketing data warehouse is the answer.
