How Cloud-Based Data Is Revolutionizing Marketing

There’s a lot of chatter about data and the cloud. But, those aren’t just buzzwords. Rather, they are changing the way businesses work from operations to marketing. When combined, it’s cloud-based data, and it can be a very powerful asset for companies.

Analyzing it and drawing insights from it can enhance almost every aspect of marketing. Some would call it a revolution.

In this post, we’ll define what cloud-based data is and the many ways it’s contributing to marketing success.

What Is Cloud-Based Data?

In defining the term, you have to break it up a bit. Generally speaking, cloud computing uses on-demand computing services, including applications, storage, and processing, over the internet.

There are several types of clouds: public, private, and hybrid. Public is what most companies use. A cloud hosting company offers you space to keep your applications and data along with lots of others. A private cloud is one that a single entity uses. Hybrid clouds leverage both public and private.

So, cloud-based data really means collecting and aggregating information from many sources living in the cloud. You can use the cloud to store it and analyze it.

Using the cloud reduces the burden on your internal team and offers great security with multiple layers of protection. It also enables your users to access data or solutions from anywhere if they are online and have a login to the system.

Now that you have a grasp of the topic, let’s look at how using the cloud to store and use data delivers for marketing.

Customer Data Is Easily Accessible

Customer information is critical in marketing. First, it determines what products your customers use and how they use them. You can then market to them where gaps are, such as upselling or cross-selling.

Second, it helps you build a picture of your ideal buyer based on how these customers engage and interact.

You continue to collect data on customers post-sale, including if they open emails or attend events. Also, if they contact your contact center, you’ll be tracking this in contact center software. That information can be really valuable as you look at changes in customer behavior.

You can move that data and share it with different applications like a CRM or marketing automation solution when it’s in the cloud.

Analytics Tools Can Make Sense of Big Data

Your organization is always gathering data on leads and customers. That volume grows larger every day, and it can be overwhelming and hard to understand. In the cloud, you can deploy analytics tools that derive insights from this big data.

Because it’s happening in the cloud, it’s not straining your IT infrastructure. Processing is faster, so you can then act on what the data says.

For example, if you collect data on website interactions, you can begin to identify patterns in how prospects flow through your sales funnel. This can help you improve your website and their journey.

Data Enables Personalization

Personalization in marketing is a big deal right now. Audiences want to see content relevant to them, whether it be when they land on your website or what emails you send them. The cloud is a must-have for any business that wants to scale personalization.

You can capture data from individual users that offers insight into what content they like to consume and what products are interesting. From this framework, you can then target them better when they return. Also, based on actions they take, it can trigger email campaigns that relate to these interests.

The Cloud Enhances Security

A portion of the data you have regarding customers and prospects is personal. You have an obligation to ensure it remains private. The cloud fortifies security in a way that on-premises solutions cannot.

On-premises solutions also don’t often have redundancy. In the case of an outage or incident, if you don’t have backups, you could lose it all. The cloud structure, however, typically has multiple backups for redundancy.

Realize Cost Savings

All that data and software marketers use comes at a price. It can be expensive if you’re hosting it on your own. You’re responsible for the deployment, maintenance, upgrades, security, and more. The more you grow, the more pricing increases.

The cloud offers some great cost savings. You can scale up or down and are not on the hook for hardware, energy expenses, and technical experts.

The Cloud Offers Greater Productivity and Efficiency

Marketers need technology to keep up with all the demands. When there are opportunities to automate or streamline, it can certainly improve productivity and efficiency. The cloud makes this possible because of its accessibility.

Further, you’ll be able to pull and share data as needed with different applications and users. This would be cumbersome without the cloud, involving a lot more manual work, which hampers workflows.

Innovation Is More Attainable

Finally, the cloud empowers many processes and requirements in marketing. One thing that your marketing team constantly focuses on is innovation. The cloud makes this much more achievable because you’ll be doing many things with less effort and time. As a result, your will have more time to do high-level strategic work that drives innovation. And all that data you have will make the path to this clearer as well, with all its insights.

Cloud-Based Data Takes Marketing to a New Level

Are you leveraging the power of cloud-based data? If not, what’s standing in your way? Cloud file storage is easy to deploy. Intermedia SecuriSync is a platform that can offer you a secure and seamless way to store data. See how it works.