Treating Data With Marketing Taxonomy
Marketing taxonomy is a long-ignored process that several businesses are finally embracing According to the sports brand Under Armour, flexibility, operational efficiency, and scalability are the three truths of marketing taxonomy. Previously, the brand tracked their customer data and marketing campaigns from spreadsheets, which was ineffective. A successful collaboration with Claravine helped them achieve marketing […]
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Marketing taxonomy is a long-ignored process that several businesses are finally embracing
According to the sports brand Under Armour, flexibility, operational efficiency, and scalability are the three truths of marketing taxonomy.
Previously, the brand tracked their customer data and marketing campaigns from spreadsheets, which was ineffective. A successful collaboration with Claravine helped them achieve marketing success by leveraging marketing taxonomy services.
Data integrity platform provider Claravine states that an enterprise-level taxonomy is “a structured framework that teams on multiple levels and business units of your organisation can choose to rely on when they track, structure, manipulate, or create metadata.”
It’s not as complex as it sounds. Also known as Schema, marketing taxonomy is a structured set of naming conventions, organising the enterprise data through metadata tags or categorising the multiple marketing touchpoints such as creative, keywords, and placements.
How does it help?
For an enterprise, global marketing is inevitable, and a horde of data accompanies it. Data assets can be used in cross-functional marketing strategies or to strengthen business optimisation processes and analyses. The possibility of interconnectedness also allows marketers to measure the effectiveness of brand campaigns, content, catalogues, and other elements.
Although data provides brands with insights that can help them optimise their marketing efforts and increase revenue growth, excess and disorganised data can be misleading and result in flawed business decisions, standardising these data points enables brands to do more effective and productive marketing. A reliable method of identifying and analysing data is imperative, and taxonomy is the answer.
Every brand’s business objectives and channels are different, and each follows a different marketing taxonomy. There are several other possible reasons why an organisation might need an enterprise-level marketing taxonomy.
One reason is when information is out of sync in different systems across the enterprise. From campaign data to communication assets and channels, when data is used in different ways, using different terminologies, it can cause considerable miscommunication.
Also, taxonomy can help when there is redundant information in the system. Several times, different teams use the same data and store the same information in various systems that hardly interact.
Meanwhile, users struggle to find the information they need using the phrases they are familiar with because the brand has the data labelled under other terms. Additionally, with the new problems from the downstream analytics platform, users have begun to question the validity and reliability of their data to make decisions.
Some experts claim marketing taxonomy can help marketers enhance their customer experience strategies with the knowledge of when and how customers want information. With proper categorisation, brands can generate highly targeted campaigns for their customers.
Moreover, taxonomies can also help create multiplatform messaging that ensures a seamless customer experience across touchpoints. It also helps scrutinise search-related problems and improve analytics. By mapping out customer journeys on every level, enhanced content development is possible.
For instance, when the team works with marketing taxonomy, it brings agility and pre-determined brand values on board. It also helps the company navigate the on-boarding of any new technological investment – a necessity in the digital ecosystem.
Brand safety is also addressed. Sometimes, unexpected circumstances force marketers to change campaign strategies or take drastic measures at the last moment. It can tarnish the brand’s reputation if it does not have the capacity for a quick turnaround. In such cases, marketing taxonomy can aid the stressed marketing team. It allows them to be calm, agile, and respond quickly with its organised and optimised data assets.
Privacy changes can also be addressed. With personalisation being a high priority business strategy in recent times, implementing marketing taxonomy can enhance processes and customer data in use made privacy compliant.
With such endless possibilities, brands are realising the massive potential of marketing taxonomy in the digital era.
Apart from Sprinklr, Oracle and Sitecore, several platforms offer marketing taxonomy services. For instance, Claravine allows companies to centralise their data structure and govern the process to validate and connect data for optimal experience delivery. The platform offers a Data Standards Cloud to manage marketing taxonomies and another tool, Classr.io, for taxonomy building.
A critical link between users and data, marketing taxonomy, is a proven process that requires foresight, data understanding, and inter-team communications. Crayon, an award-winning competitive intelligence software platform, also helps organisations see and seize opportunities for sustainable business advantages. Other platforms include Crimson Hexagon, Concept Inbox, and Curata.
Clearly, with the advanced technologies and the excess data within systems, a well-established marketing taxonomy system can easily avoid a data-driven mess by resetting the company data strategy.
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