Great platforms, bad data: why marketers are still missing out
by Alex Ritchie - Data Solutions Lead
When customer experiences fall flat, it’s rarely because technology can’t deliver. Tools like Braze and Iterable are more than capable of supporting sophisticated journeys and brand activations. It’s often because the supporting data isn’t set up to deliver the level of personalisation, orchestration and activation the brand wants to create.
It’s a common disconnect: the gap between what marketers want to achieve and how their data is structured. A CRM strategy may look solid on paper, but it depends entirely on the quality and usability of the data that underpins it. That’s where things regularly break down – data is missing, fragmented across too many systems, or captured in ways that make it hard to use in campaigns. As a result, marketing teams are often making decisions without a clear understanding of the customer.
It’s a language game
Language is a common point of friction here. While marketers talk about ‘high-value customers’ and ‘lapsed users’, data teams work with events, tables and timestamps. Which means that if these worlds don’t align, even the simplest segments become difficult to navigate if they’re incomplete or inaccurate, often resulting in slowing teams down and greatly reducing campaign agility.
Fragmented systems create fragmented experiences
Customer data is often completely siloed, with engagement data, product usage and transaction history living in entirely separate systems. When these tools don’t communicate in real time, message becomes out-of-sync with reality. This can look like an abandoned basket email for a customer who has already completed the purchase, or continuing to promote products that have been returned. All of these things create friction within the customer journey, compromising brand loyalty – the opposite of a seamless experience.
More doesn’t mean better
Huge volumes of customer behaviour data, without a clear plan for how it can be used, can actually be more of a hindrance than a help. Data that’s poorly structured with no actionable use case can lead to inefficient platform usage and missed opportunities, confusion over which data points to use in segmentation and personalisation, or potentially acting off deprecated data.
At the same time, advanced personalisation often requires technical skills that marketing teams don’t always have. When execution starts to feel complex, ideas are simplified. Over time, this leads to powerful platforms being used for safe, generic messaging that doesn’t live up to the brand promise. Marketers need to rethink how their data supports experience across every touchpoint.
How adm Indicia can help
Successful brand experiences come down to sophisticated data orchestration. We’re here to build the foundations to allow campaigns to perform to a high standard, and at scale, enabling true 1-2-1 communications. How? By focussing on these key areas:
Auditing the schemas
Standardising event naming conventions and data structures so segments are intuitive to build and easy to maintain. This removes friction for marketing teams and reduces reliance on technical specialists for everyday marketing activity.
Implementing connected content
Integrating customer engagement platform and data feeds that allow real-time information to inform customer communications. This ensures experiences reflect what customers are actually doing – not what they did last week.
Defining personas through data
Replacing broad, lifestyle-based personas with segments grounded in real behaviour: how often someone engages, how they shop across devices, and what signals intent or drop-off. This creates communications that feel relevant, timely and consistent.
Because when data is structured around experience rather than systems, interactions start to feel genuinely connected.
