By Frank Bobo

There are almost 2 billion Internet users worldwide, and more than 30 million adults in the UK alone (60 percent) access the Internet every day. This presents a significant opportunity for online businesses and digital marketers looking to exploit the increasing number of time-poor people who are turning to the Internet to quickly and conveniently find the information, products or services they are looking for.

However, with the average user’s time spent visiting websites clocked in seconds, not minutes, there is only a short window of opportunity to make a good first impression and establish a direct connection with visitors—for businesses, this can be crucial. There are a number of technologies that claim to deliver better audience segmentation and targeting capabilities to help with this, but in reality, do they live up to their own hype?

The truth is, online marketing comes down to just one thing—relevance. At that point, you’re only as good as your data.

The importance of accuracy

With so many people accessing the Internet from so many different locations at any given time, and with personal information constantly changing, it can be difficult to keep the marketing data needed to target your online audience up-to-date and relevant.

What’s more, marketers have a number of different online data parameters at their fingers tips—geographic location (country, city and postal codes), connection speed, language, ISP etc.

This information can then be layered with financial, demographic, lifestyle and purchase data to bring an additional array of customer insights that bear on an even wider range of online interactions. Whether it is information supplied by users when they originally register with a site or data contained in a third-party list (for which marketers often pay handsomely) how comfortable are you that the data you have is reliable and accurate?

Just keeping up with the breadth and depth of the numbers shared above should make marketers feel very uncomfortable.

In today’s ultra-competitive online market—whether you’re a small online retailer or a multinational corporation—possessing accurate data about your audience has never been more important. Now, more than ever, the quality of your data is tied to the success or failure of your business, determining not only how you market and sell to customers, but also how you will continue to engage with them to build loyalty.

Unfortunately, there have been—and still are—a number of online technologies on the market that fall short in their promise to deliver the desired results simply because their datasets are outdated, unreliable and inaccurate.

Dig deeper into vendors’ marketing spin

When it comes to securing data to use in online marketing efforts, don’t just a take a vendor at its word when it touts the accuracy of this type of information.

Spend a little time and do your due diligence. Look for companies that continually strive to improve their accuracy levels and validate their information, year over year, either through partnerships or technology innovations. Also, you should consider companies that utilise third-party tests conducted by reputable organisations and those that have a stable list of customers whose business depends heavily on providing precise and reliable data.

Having the right data and analytics can make marketers more effective and improve the online experience for consumers. For instance, geo-targeted ads get a 50 percent higher click-through rate and less wasted impressions than regular online advertising. However, ensuring the accuracy and reliability of that information should be at the foundation of any data-driven strategy—and consistent across all marketing channels.

It’s important to remember that you can glean plenty of useable, reliable and accurate online data without invading users’ privacy. In many instances, this online intelligence can be combined with offline datasets to create a validated, wealth of information that allows marketers to confidently produce the necessary one-to-one, cross-channel marketing efforts necessary to succeed in today’s competitive environment.

About the author

Frank Bobo is Vice President of Business Development and leads Digital Element’s international direct sales and operations, partner channel management and strategic alliances. He brings more than 15 years experience in business development and operational leadership to the role.

About Digital Element

Founded in 1999, Digital Element is the industry pioneer of IP Intelligence, a non-invasive, privacy-sensitive technology that automatically uncovers geographic information, connection speed, domain name, ISP, language and other characteristics about online users based solely on their IP addresses. This knowledge enables online businesses to customise content for more accurate and profitable online interactions, making it ideal for targeted advertising, content localisation, geographic rights management, local search and enhanced analytics. Digital Element’s patented IP Intelligence solution with its exceedingly accurate geolocation capabilities is used by industry-leading advertising networks, web publishers, search engines, social networks, e-tailers, analytics platforms, and online enterprises around the world to revolutionise the way people experience the Internet.

For more information about Digital Element, visit http://www.digital-element.net. To read Digital Element’s blog, visit http://knowhow.digital-element.net/, or follow Digital Element on Twitter (http://twitter.com/DigitalElement).