8 Live Audience Data Trends You Can’t Live Without in 2020

Stepping into 2020, our CEO and Founder, Vince Ircandia, looks back at the role of data this past decade and identifies the 8 major trends live audience businesses will see in the coming decade.

In this day and age it’s impossible to think about the customer without considering the role of data. The past decade has not disappointed where data-driven capabilities for marketers are concerned, with massive progress being made. As we approach the next decade, we see ever increasing signs that rising consumer expectations and increased competition for attention, will make personalized marketing even more essential.

We offer these important trends and opportunities for this next decade – one where little place will exist for generic, non-personalized messaging to consumers.

1 – Single view of the customer

Despite data warehousing and master data management (MDM) technology being around since the mid-1990s, a single view of the customer across data sources, systems and departments continues to elude many organizations. A host of new players, practices and technologies are finally making it possible to not only assemble but also interpret and action a property’s unique marketable universe.

2 – Identity resolution

This decade will be one where brands finally start to seamlessly connect digital data points with offline data points. Resolving digital behaviour and identities with rich offline data boosts a view into total audience size and the customer’s journey.

3 – Democratization of data

Entire organizations (not just technical resources) now require a higher and more seamless level of data access (read more on this in our Analytics Inflection Point blog) due to the demands of personalizing customer experiences. Internal data resources will be required to go far beyond basic reporting practices in order to meet the needs of the data driven organization. No-code access to single customer views and the ability to automate data moving seamlessly between systems has never been more important and will be a requirement in the years ahead.

4 – Customer segmentation 2.0

Live audience businesses can finally stop wrestling with research driven fan profiling exercises that don’t manifest themselves in scalable one-to-one personalization capabilities. This next decade will be the one where fan segmentation becomes both easy and predictive. Using machines to learn faster from datasets much larger than what was previously possible now allows marketers to orchestrate more personalized, omni-channel interactions and attribute success to specific channels, touchpoints and content designed for specific customers.

5 – The skills of the future

As data talent continues to become more expensive and specialized, organizations need to think hard about how to approach gaining the capabilities of the future. Hiring for soft skills like emotional intelligence, creativity, adaptability, data literacy and tech savviness will become ever more important. Building a best-in-class data capability means hiring for skills that complement and extend upon what can now be purchased and/ or automated (read more on how CDPs fit into modern tech stacks).

6 – Broader use cases and data driven partnerships

It’s been about three years since The Economist magazine ran their article on how data is now the most valuable resource on earth. We see demand for this resource continuing to rise. For live audience businesses this will mean extending data use cases across all revenue streams. Marketing partners (or sponsors) in particular will increase pressure to understand and access a property’s fans. Second-party data capabilities will power a new level of activation and measurement that will allow live audience businesses to stay competitive for ad dollars.

7 – Automation. Automation. And real-time automation

Many fan data sets are still manual or batch processed making it difficult for organizations to reach the right fans at the right moments. The next decade will include better real-time access to actionable data across data sets. Timeliness has never been more important, and being able to pull, interpret and push data in order to enable on-the-fly personalization will cease being a “wish list” item. Countless teams ask us about time-savings and creating efficiencies within their teams, which automation can be the perfect solution for (read more about the benefits of time-savings through automation).

8 – Data privacy and security comes front and centre

This new decade started with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) going into effect on January 1  (2020) and marks the beginning of a new wave of customer privacy legislation going into effect in North America. Expect the data privacy and security elements under legislation like CCPA and GDPR to become the global standard. Effective and efficient compliance with concepts like “right to know”, “right to opt out”, “right to be deleted”, and “right to access” will become key for all properties looking to enable personalized experiences for customers.

For more information on how we are making it easier for live audience organizations to assemble, interpret and activate their data reach out!