Achieving Meaningful Customer Insights from IoT

Tom Treanor, Global Head of Marketing, Arm Treasure Data, offers perspective on achieving meaningful customer  insights from IoT data.

Most marketers today already struggle to keep up with the waves of data that websites, CRM, email, and mobile apps capture about their customers. The challenge will only worsen as the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to proliferate consumers’ lives and bring with it a deluge of additional data as billions of new devices and sensors are deployed globally. 

IDCOpens a new window estimates that by 2025, the average connected person will interact with a connected device 4,800 times per day. While challenges exist for marketers to manage new volumes of data created by IoT, there is also much for them to gain. IoT gives marketers in certain industries, such as energy and healthcare, the first direct information they’ve ever had from their customers, and in other cases IoT enriches existing customer profiles. Across the board, IoT generates unprecedented amounts of data and creates new opportunities to interact with customers based on real-time insights on their preferences and needs.

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Generate Meaningful Insights from IoT

Here are four potential tips and benefits for how marketers can form deeper connections with customers by leveraging IoT data:

• Data-driven customer insights: By analyzing IoT data, marketers are able to gain an understanding of how their customers behave, spot product problems or opportunities and identify areas where greater customer support is needed. Based on the insights gleaned, companies can personalize their approach, such as recommending a complementary product or service for an existing customer or offering an incentive to a potential new customer. To gain these insights, companies need to convert raw IoT data streams into useable events through parsing, classification and tagging.
• Combine data sources to learn more: By combining IoT data with data from other, often digital sources, marketers can gain information that isn’t visible in isolation. A runner’s behavior as captured in a fitness tracker combined with their shoe purchase history can provide valuable insights into when they may need new shoes. A smart thermostat reading compared to outside temperatures could help identify customers who might need upgraded insulation or new windows. By linking vast amounts of IoT data, companies can gain unprecedented insights into their customers.
• Connect with customers through devices: Many IoT devices provide an opportunity to communicate directly with customers. This can include recommendations for getting better results from a product or ways to upgrade. Understanding what information to share and when is crucial though. Marketers can gain this understanding by connecting data from the IoT device to a marketing system that can combine it with other information, apply appropriate selection rules, and draw from a library of approved content.

• Leverage IoT to expand your reach: IoT data can also contribute to communications through other channels by helping to uncover customer needs or interests. This is only possible if the IoT data is combined with other customer data in a unified database and then shared with other marketing systems. This makes it possible for the data to then be leveraged in other forms such as through email or social media campaigns.

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Start Creating New Value for Customers

IoT creates new challenges in the management of customer data. Volumes are higher, structures are more complicated, and data streams are often continuous. However, the companies that are able to unlock the insights found in this data can obtain new possibilities for understanding and interacting with customers. This makes it worth the additional effort required to capture IoT data and convert it into formats that marketers can use.

To maximize their opportunity and create new value for customers, companies need to adjust to the IoT world. This includes putting a strategy in place to manage high volumes of streaming inputs, perform advanced parsing and event extraction, store data in usable formats, and connect with other marketing systems for analysis and execution. Not only will this help them achieve meaningful customer insights that they can put in place today, but it will also enable them to grow their relationships with customers into the future.