What is data activation and why is it so valuable?

If your company has any form of online presence, then you likely rely on a data warehouse or other digital repository of sorts for storing customer information. Most organizations use a customer data platform (CDP) to consolidate data and eliminate disparate data silos. And while data integration is essential, it’s just one part of the equation.

For data to be usable, you also need to take into account data activation. Collecting data for data’s sake adds zero value, and if you can’t act on it, the data you’re sitting on remains a wasted investment and contributes to data chaos. And according to an estimate by IBM, as much as 80% of data collected by organizations is dormant, or not actively being used for data insights.

Data activation explained

Data activation is simply data that is consolidated and provides real-time insights across an organization, like for a marketing, advertising, or HR team. 

The data activation process varies but can generally be broken down into these four steps:

1. Collection: Data is collected from different sources, such as social media, A/B testing results, surveys, blog comments, etc.
2. Analysis: Data is analyzed to identify trends and patterns.
3. Activation: The data is put into action. For example, data may determine that the click rate is higher when calls to action convey a sense of urgency. With this insight, you incorporate the fear of missing out (FOMO) in your CTAs.
4. Measurement: The final stage is measuring the results of the activation to determine if it’s yielding the desired outcomes.

What’s the difference between data and activation data?

Data in its default state, or raw data, is data right after it has been collected and hasn’t gone through the above four-step process. Once it goes through the multi-stage phase, you now have activation data ready for real-world application. But it’s not as simple as it sounds, and lots of organizations continue to struggle to make more of their data both reliable and actionable.

Why does data activation matter?

With proper data activation, the information is ready for metric analysis and real-time application. There’s no delay from manually integrating data or working with Excel sheets. The advantage is multi-fold: faster reaction times and decision-making processes aligned with customer behavior and pain points at the moment. Good data means good, well-informed business decisions. 

1. Data you can act on keeps you agile.

The market and trends can change quickly, sometimes in a matter of hours. With data activation, the data is ready almost at the moment it comes in.

2. The cost of bad decisions is high.

Businesses are sitting on more data than they know what to do it. Lots of it is unreliable and siloed. What’s worse, even less of it is actionable. It’s historically been true, and unfortunately, not much has changed.

• In 2016, Forrester reported that although 74% of brands said they wanted to be data-driven, only 29% felt successful at connecting analytics to action.
• According to Inc., for enterprises, between 60 and 73% of all data goes unused.
• Because they struggle to find and access the data they need to act on to inform campaigns, as many as 50% of marketers today plan to hire marketing data analytics experts (to rectify their reliance on IT teams for data access).
• For data teams, so much time (60%) is spent on cleaning data, and chasing down actionable data (19%), that only 20% of their time is actually spent using data.

Data activation use cases

Connecting data and its insights to action within your business is critical across departments, from sales to marketing and customer support. Consider these use cases to understand how data activation can bring enterprise-wide value to your organization.

Sales

Data activation helps the sales team identify new sales prospects and consumer segments that the company may not have been previously targeting. By understanding the behavioral patterns of these new demographics, the sales department can collaborate with the product and marketing team to tailor campaigns to these specific audience niches.

Marketing

Data activation fosters more targeted campaigns based on the latest trends. You get the most recent insights regarding social media habits, browsing history, etc. This enables you to create personalized campaigns based on collective demographic interests and behavioral patterns.

Customer support

Customer support teams also rely on data to determine audience sentiment. They can use data to decipher:

• How satisfied customers were after an inquiry call
• How satisfied customers were after submitting a support ticket claim
• The likelihood of customers leaving a negative comment or one-star review after a bad experience

Lytics: a data activation platform, and much more.

A data activation platform is a system that stores data and translates it into actionable insights and analytics. With this in mind, such platforms are far more than just a data warehouse nestled in a cloud environment. They also have extensive ETL and reverse ETL functions. That is, they’re capable of collecting information from multiple data point systems (e.g., company website, social media, Google Analytics, etc.) and consolidating them into a single platform viewable from your dashboard. It can also do the same in reverse by sending the consolidated and now-activated data to the same website, social networks, and analytic tools for deployment.

With Lytics, you can automate data activation instantly with Cloud Connect. Outdated data warehouses and legacy storage systems may not provide the latest data activation capabilities afforded by the modern data activation platform. Lytics’ Cloud Connect provides immediate and automatic data integration and the processing from raw data to activation data.  Then, Decision Engine lets you use machine learning to power meaningful, intent-based, behavioral personalization at scale.