CMOs, Here's Why You Should Care About Explicit Data

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By: Forbes

It’s time to take the next step with your data strategies. According to our recent research, customers, especially Millennials, want to drive the customized experiences and interactions they have with brands. To meet these expectations, marketers must make a profound shift and enrich their implicit data with the power of explicit, self-profiled preference data.

You have no doubt been using implicit data, that is, information which you’ve data mined or your customers provided to indicate short-term interests or needs—but not to intentionally indicate deeper or longer-term preferences. Examples of implicit data include web browsing behavior such as page views, items placed in the shopping cart, wait-listed items, items purchased and data mined from social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook.

This implicit data certainly has value, but per findings from our more than 2,000 hours of VoC research interviews for clients such as Gilt, MassMutual, IBM, HP and QVC, it is not delivering the response rates or meeting the expectations of many BtoB and BtoC customers. Research findings indicate that today’s customers want to drive high levels of relevance and personalization through explicit preferences they provide.

Explicit data is self-profiled preference information customers provide in the Preference Center of a site or through dialogue boxes. Here’s a b-to-c example: A customer specifically tells a merchant she is interested in trendy professional clothing for the workplace. Here’s a b-to-b example: A customer tells a company that they want training programs on digital marketing for new hires.

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