How real-time data powers seamless B2B digital experiences

Highlights

You’ll learn how businesses can utilize real-time data to deliver engaging B2B digital experiences.

• Instant insights: Process customer data within milliseconds
• Personalization at scale: Deliver tailored experiences at scale and on the go
• Proactive service: Address customer experience issues before they impact satisfaction
• Unified profiles: Integrate multiple customer touchpoints seamlessly

Opt for Contentstack’s real-time CDP to activate and use your customer data to its full potential.

According to Gartner, 83% of B2B buyers prefer to order or pay via digital commerce. Yet, only 24% of B2B companies deliver matching digital experiences. This gap highlights the challenges faced by enterprise companies in leveraging real-time data to meet customer needs.

What is real-time data, and why does it matter in B2B?

Real-time data in B2B refers to customer information collected and processed for immediate analysis and use. We are talking timescales of milliseconds to seconds of generation. It is instant and different from batch processing, which updates data on a periodic basis.

Differences between real-time and batch processing

While batch processing has its benefits, real-time data can have more impact. For one, there are no time lags between data ingestion and processing; instead, you access data and insights on the go. With real-time data, you have a steady stream of data to make decisions. This is a step away from regular data processing, which involves collecting and processing data in chunks.

How real-time data powers decision-making

Real-time data powers business agility. It reduces latency in customer interactions and supports an iterative approach to decision-making and problem-solving. It also enables you to work with the most relevant and current data. You cannot go wrong with real-time data, and here are some reasons.

Immediate response to customer signals

With real-time data, you can detect and address changes in customer needs before they impact satisfaction or revenue. It also allows you to set event triggers for specific customer actions. Think of when a customer shops online and abandons their cart. You get signals to send out an email reminder or offer, nudging them to complete the purchase.

Real-time personalization at scale

Companies can tailor content and user experiences in real-time based on behaviors. For instance, streaming services adjust the content they recommend as viewers change their online activity. They also adjust content based on the viewer’s location.

With real-time data, you can deliver tailored content at the account level. For instance, you can adjust your sales outreach to prioritize accounts that show buying signals. You can also adapt messaging to address specific account challenges.

Dynamic resource allocation

You can assign just the right amount of personnel, financial and IT resources for campaigns and strategic projects as needed, based on current data, rather than relying on historical patterns. This ensures you can save costs and make the most of resources at hand.

Proactive issue resolution

Real-time data enables you to detect anomalies as they occur. That way, it is then easier to address those problems before they lead to negative customer experiences. This proactive customer service improves the brand’s image and enhances customer retention.

Customer journey optimization

Real-time data maintains context between interactions and synchronizes messaging across channels. It also recognizes when customers move between channels, enabling an omnichannel approach. The use of real-time data also allows you to recommend relevant offers, content and solutions based on a customer’s most recent search behaviors.

Building a unified customer data foundation

So, how do you build a system that unifies customer data for real-time insights? It starts with collecting the right types of customer information and then progresses to how well you integrate it.

First-party data collection strategies

First-party data is the information you collect directly from your audience. It provides the most reliable foundation for real-time insights. Here are effective strategies to collect first-party data:

• Behavioral tracking: Track how customers interact with the business on various channels. You want to focus on search queries, bounce rates, geo location, email open and click rates, etc.
• Progressive profiling: Implement incremental data collection across interactions to gradually build customer profiles.
• Direct feedback mechanisms: Deploy relevant instruments to collect direct feedback from customers. This may include feedback forms, surveys, product reviews, etc.
• Transaction and usage data: Track purchases, product usage and service interactions to provide a comprehensive view of customer activity.

Cross-channel data integration

Research shows that a typical B2B buyer engages a brand in up to 27 interactions during a sales cycle. The challenge here is to integrate these disparate data sources. By doing so, you avoid delivering a disjointed experience that leads to churn.

To achieve this, you need a reliable tool that can integrate multiple data sources in real time. So, whether the data comes from sales interactions in the CRM, the web, app or even customer service interactions, you can unify it to support strategy. This is where real-time customer data platforms (CDPs) come into play.

The role of real-time customer data platforms (CDPs)

A CDP centralizes customer data in real-time. It collects, unifies and activates that information across channels. It is designed to:

• Ingest data from multiple sources in real-time
• Create consistent, holistic and unified customer profiles
• Make these profiles available to other systems for activation

Unified customer profile management

A real-time CDP consolidates all known information about accounts and customers into accessible records. This may include company data, purchase history, support interactions and more. As these profiles update in real-time, brands can stay in tune with their customers' needs.

Real-time identity resolution

A real-time CDP connects multiple identifiers to a single entity. This is known as identity resolution. This process can be complex in a B2B setting where buying committees can include up to 10 decision-makers.

Real-time identity resolution enables you to match IPs and connect anonymous visitors to known accounts. It also helps you identify buying committee roles and unify individual and account-level insights. In essence, you are always working with accurate data.

Customer journey orchestration

A real-time CDP collects real-time data from multiple digital channels and uses it to power omnichannel campaigns that target anonymous and known users. It also triggers tailored messages and provides insights that allow you to forecast churn or upsell opportunities.

Aside from that, real-time CDPs use real-time data to extract insights into conversion bottlenecks, channel preferences and decision triggers. With these insights, you can optimize customer journeys and adapt experiences to improve customer outcomes in real-time.

Integrating real-time data into the B2B customer journey

Real-time data can be integrated into the customer’s journey to promote meaningful customer interactions with brands. This transforms the customer journey in many ways, such as:

• Sales enablement: The sales team gets up-to-the-minute insights on account activity and engagement. This enables them to adjust content based on prospect activities and prioritize high-intent leads. 
• Customer success: Customer support teams get timely alerts on usage changes and potential bottlenecks in the customer journey. This enables them to activate proactive issue resolution, offer extra features to ready customers and provide support as needed.

• Email customization: Real-time data also enhances email interactions via event triggers. Trigger timely, relevant messages based on real-time behaviors and signals.

Case Studies: Transformation driven by real-time data

These brands have leveraged Contentstack's real-time CDP to transform customer data into actionable insights, enabling them to increase conversions, click-through rates and customer engagement.

Land O'Lakes

Land O'Lakes chose Contentstack’s real-time CDP to integrate its customer data and power its personalized experience delivery. This increased CTR by 29% and conversion rates by 38%.

Steve Rude said. "Impressions are the metric of a failed marketing campaign…If you’re not getting the conversions, it means you weren’t hitting the right audience. You may not reach a million people, but we’re going to reach the right people with the right message. And that’s where Contentstack helps us."

Read more on how Land O’Lakes increased the conversion rate with a real-time CDP.

Industry Dive

Industry Dive was unable to track the individual customer journey as it lacked access to real-time data. Choosing Contentstack's real-time CDP allowed them to integrate customer data for personalized customer journeys. This resulted in a 40% increase in customer engagement.

"Our editors really see the value of Contentstack. They’re using it every day to shape their editorial content." Robin Re said.

Read on to see how Industry Dive grew CTR by 40% with Contentstack’s real-time CDP.

Measuring the impact of real-time data initiatives

With a CDP in place, you are equipped with the right tool to start leveraging real-time data. However, you do not merely set it up and let it run. Instead, ensure it is well-integrated with your existing tech stack, monitor its performance and make relevant adjustments. Here are strategies to track the impact of real-time data initiatives.

• Track relevant KPIs: Set metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score to measure customer satisfaction. Also, outline some operational metrics, like resolution rate and response time and business metrics like conversions and customer lifetime value.
• Track ROI: Given the financial investments required to implement a CDP, you want to ascertain its monetary benefits to the business. Focus on IT cost savings, time-to-value and repeat purchase rates. Also, compare retention metrics to the pre-CDP baseline.

• Continuous optimization: Use real-time data to make iterative improvements. For instance, you may conduct A/B testing at scale to compare multiple experience variations.

Addressing implementation issues

Notable issues when working with data are data security and privacy, tech integrations and team alignment. Here are strategies to manage these issues.

• Data quality and governance: Implement data governance to ensure data integrity and ownership. Set up periodic assessments to track data completeness, accuracy and relevance. Finally, deploy security measures such as role-based access control, multi-factor authentication and compliance frameworks.
• Cross-functional alignment: Align departments around common business goals and shared objectives. Set up collaborative workflows and establish standard success measures across business functions.
• Technology integration: Prioritize an API-first approach and deploy scalable integration platforms. This supports seamless integration and allows you to deploy best-of-breed solutions. Also, deploy with a phased approach to minimize disruptions and manage change.

FAQ section

What is real-time data? 

Real-time data is information processed immediately after collection, enabling instant analysis and action.

How does real-time data support B2B digital experiences?

By leveraging real-time data, B2B companies can deliver proactive customer service. They can also adapt to the dynamic needs of customers and deliver timely responses to technology and market shifts.

How does a CDP utilize real-time data?

A CDP ingests, unifies and activates customer data across digital channels to create holistic and up-to-date customer profiles that support decision-making.

How can real-time customer journey analytics improve B2B digital experiences?

Real-time customer journey analytics help you identify friction and pain points, which allows you to optimize the paths to conversions. It also provides insights into behavioral patterns that support proactive engagement.

Learn more

Real-time customer data enables businesses to deliver the most relevant experiences to their target audiences. It allows enterprise B2B firms to orchestrate and optimize customer journeys for seamless personalized experiences.

Contentstack's CDP uses real-time data to create highly-targeted user segments and unified audience profiles, enabling you to deliver experiences that drive higher engagement and ROI. Talk to us today to see how Contentstack can power your journey toward data-driven B2B excellence.