Partner Article

Data driven marketing with WRM Media

I caught up with Gemma Rawson and Oliver Smith from WRM media to find out their thoughts on data driven marketing. WRM Media specialise in email marketing and lead generation services, producing over 300,000 new customer leads on a monthly basis to a wide variety of businesses both large and small.

But first, a bit about Gemma and Oliver…

Gemma is the Digital Operations Manager; a Gemini who loves to eat out with the odd cocktail thrown in with a favourite past time of shopping.

Oliver is the Technical Lead at WRM media who has a passion for travelling and cooking – he’s the go-to for anything technical at WRM!

What are must-have tools for data driven marketing today?

I would say that having a means of collecting users who have opted in to wanting to hear from you is number one. Sourcing quality and compliant data is essential and keeping it updated is vital.

Validation tools that can ensure quality data as well as reviewing the quality of your existing data will pay dividends when carrying out any form of data driven marketing.

Targeting and profiling tools have also become more of a requirement as the demands of data driven marketing have become harder and more competitive. How can you make your campaign stand out? Is this consumer actively interested in what you have to say – does this campaign suit them?

What are the most common challenges facing organisations when performing targeted marketing campaigns?

Ensuring users are clicking on links for the right reasons (preferably not the unsubscribe link!) – it means bounce rates decline and the people that are sent to the website are genuinely interested.

Email Deliverability – this has become increasingly harder over the last few years as the major email service providers (ESP’s) have become more savvy and consumers are more particular about what they would like to see in their inbox.

Bad data or mismatched correct data; we’re all heavily investing to ensure that we’re collecting the best data possible that won’t impact negatively on our marketing campaigns or the leads that are being supplied to our end clients/brands. Bad data can affect a company’s reputation and it costs more too.

Organisations which incentivise users to share their personal details are always going to be targets of fraud, for example, in our case fraudulent users registering on sites is something we spend a lot of time working on to avoid or correct.

What are your thoughts on GDPR? Do you have a key piece of advice for preparation?

We see GDPR as a really positive thing as we become an even greater digital world. The existing and proposed regulations both focus on improving users awareness of what types of communication they opt into, which potentially leads to a smaller but more responsive audience as they’re unlikely to be annoyed having expressly opted into sectors that they’re interested in.

As it stands, a lot of suppliers are falling short of the essential requirements that protect a person’s privacy and it’s important that these standards are met and that the consumer’s best interests are prioritised.

Essentially, in a nut shell I think that the focus needs to be strengthening visibility around publisher processes and policy management so that everything becomes more granular. Being able to provide ‘audit’ evidence will become imperative.

I fully expect that we will all benefit from the changes!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Victoria Wilson .