GUIDE

How connected data fuels personalized, cross-channel customer experiences

With customer expectations for seamless experiences at an all-time high, marketers are under pressure to deliver personalization across distributed teams, languages, and compliance environments. This guide looks at how connected data powers more relevant customer experiences and how brands like Pimkie, L’Étudiant, and AXA Direct Assurance use Selligent by Marigold to scale engagement across channels.

The experience disconnect

Marketers around the world are finding it difficult to turn their ambitions into real outcomes. While customer expectations for seamless, personalized experiences continue to rise, teams are slowed by disconnected tools, fragmented data, and the evolving reality of customer data regulation.

This disconnect is shown in Marigold’s 2025 Consumer Trends Index. 40% of consumers say they’ve been frustrated by irrelevant content or offers in the past six months: a direct result of poor personalization. Yet the opportunity is just as clear: seventy-nine percent say they’re likely to engage with personalized emails that surprise them with offers tailored to their interests. Personalization is no longer optional. It’s the foundation of modern customer experience. 

But personalization isn’t possible without data. And not just any data. Marketers need connected, compliant, and configurable data to turn strategy into reality.

Big data is dead. Long live good data!

Marketing teams aren’t short on data, but they are often short on clarity. Today’s challenge isn’t gathering more information; it’s activating the right data.

The essence of data-driven marketing is using customer data to fuel the personalization of each customer’s journey. Real-time personalization enables marketers to respond dynamically as customers interact across channels such as email, web, mobile, or in-app. In practice, this means using behavioral, demographic, and preference-based signals to customize the next message, offer, or experience. Done right, this builds stronger connections and long-term value.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence add a powerful layer of insight and automation to scale this process further: 

  • These technologies can analyze large datasets to uncover patterns in customer behavior, enabling more accurate segmentation, smarter recommendations, and adaptive content strategies. 
  • Machine learning supports critical decisions like when to message, what to offer, and who to avoid targeting for now. 
  • With real-time analytics, marketers can make mid-stream adjustments based on live performance rather than waiting for post-campaign analysis. 
  • Predictive models, powered by historical and behavioral data, can also forecast customer needs and intent, allowing brands to personalize timing and messaging at scale with confidence.

Fundamental considerations

Consider different types of actionable data:

  • Demographic data: sign-up date, birthdate, gender, time since last engagement or purchase
  • Behavioral data: total sends, opens, clicks, site activity, spend history, product views
  • Experiential data: preferences, quiz and survey responses, product/style interests
  • Predictive data: lifetime value, engagement, and purchase propensity, churn risk

Decide what to collect: 

    • Not all data holds equal value, and without a clear purpose, it can become a liability rather than an asset. 
    • Every piece of information gathered should serve a defined function, whether it’s powering segmentation, informing messaging, or optimizing the customer journey.

Advice from our experts: start with what you have, then identify what’s missing. 

  • Step 1: A smart data strategy begins with analyzing your existing datasets to understand their strengths and gaps. 
  • Step 2: Define what new data you need to fuel personalization, e.g. more detailed preferences, updated behavioral signals, or predictive insights. Any new data acquisition should be done transparently and with a privacy-first mindset, ensuring compliance and building long-term trust. 
  • Step 3: Once you’ve defined your data priorities, focus on how that data enables faster segmentation, more personalized cross-channel messages, and continuous learning through testing and optimization. 

Why it matters:

When marketers shift focus from quantity to quality, data becomes more actionable, and the path to personalization becomes clearer. Selligent’s local teams of experts help marketers worldwide to work from a privacy-first foundation and activate data in ways that feel natural to the consumer.

Brand spotlight: L’Étudiant

L’Étudiant uses behavioral data to build journeys that match user intent—from students to parents—delivering content that resonates and converting readers into loyal audiences.

Read more

Zero-party data: The trust-based connection to consumers

Today’s consumers want relevant experiences, but not at the cost of their data being used carelessly. 

According to the 2025 Consumer Trends Index:

  • 73% of consumers react positively toward product recommendations based on past purchases 
  • 80% appreciate personalized birthday offers
  • But 53% find ads based on indirect tracking tools, such as third-party cookies, intrusive

The line between helpful and intrusive is narrower than ever. When personalization feels disconnected from past interactions, it can foster discomfort instead of connection. Often, the underlying issue is data: many of these moments depend on information the customer didn’t knowingly share.

Some data sources marketers frequently rely on:

  • Zero-party data: information shared voluntarily by the consumer (e.g., quiz responses, preferences)
  • First-party data: collected through direct interactions like purchases, email clicks, or loyalty actions
  • Third-party data: purchased or acquired from external sources, often collected via cookies or tracking pixels

Third-party data can be outdated, inferred, or gathered without explicit consent. Zero- and first-party data offer higher accuracy, transparency, and relevance. They are not only more compliant with privacy regulations but also more trusted by consumers, which makes them a smarter and more sustainable path forward for personalization.

Top tip
Embed zero-party data collection within your brand’s messaging strategy, from onboarding quizzes and polls to preference centers and interactive content. You can then use the information collected to better personalize customer experiences. 

How do you get consumers to share their data?
Be transparent about how the data will be used and offer a clear value exchange. When your audience sees how their data is used to make interactions more relevant, they’re more likely to understand (and appreciate!) why you asked for it in the first place.

Why it matters:

Zero-party data represents a shift from assumption to understanding, and personalization powered by zero-party data is founded on a respectful, trust-based relationship with the consumer. Selligent gives marketers the tools to create personalized, high-value moments that deepen the brand relationship.

Brand spotlight: AXA Direct Assurance

AXA Direct Assurance automated helpful weather updates and automated claim journeys to help their customers stay informed when affected by a severe weather incident.

Read more

Personalization at scale – across channels and borders

Email remains the leading channel for driving purchases, with 54% of global consumers saying they’ve made a purchase as a result of an email in the past year, surpassing all other digital channels, including social media ads (44%) and SMS (26%). But today’s consumers expect experiences across channels, which means that relying on just one channel is a missed opportunity.

  • Email’s reach and flexibility make it a powerful foundation for personalization: it’s widely utilized, cost-effective, and allows for rich, dynamic content personalized at the time of open. 
  • SMS and mobile app notifications can enhance immediacy and engagement but typically serve best in a supporting role. 
  • If you’re promoting a loyalty program, a direct channel like SMS might be ideal. 
  • If you’re delivering a product recommendation based on behavior, email could be more effective.

What matters most:

Align your channel mix with what each customer expects and how they prefer to engage. For marketing to feel genuinely personal, data must work together across every channel, such as email, mobile, app, loyalty programs, and in-store experiences.

Distributed marketing

The challenge of multilingual needs, distributed teams, and regional marketing structures adds complexity. 

Top tips for marketing leaders scaling across regions:  

  • Align at the top. Define shared goals and KPIs that regional teams can localize without losing focus.
  • Localize with intent. Empower teams to adapt tone, language, and offers grounded in shared data structures and messaging strategy.
  • Unify data and segment regionally. Centralize data collection and measurement while allowing for regional-level segmentation.
  • Respect privacy. Make sure your personalization tools are flexible enough to comply with local data regulations like GDPR.
  • Encourage collaboration. Create systems that let teams share insights, performance learnings, and audience trends across borders.

Brand spotlight: Pimkie

Pimkie needed to support local marketing incentives while maintaining a cohesive brand voice through automation.

Read more

The technology behind truly connected customer journeys

To deliver personalization at scale, data must be unified and accessible across every channel. This is the foundation for seamless, automated experiences. When tools don’t communicate, data becomes fragmented and siloed, losing context and value.

How can brands set up their technology to create connected customer experiences?

  1. Unify data from multiple touchpoints into individual customer profiles: Bringing together insights from every touchpoint into individual customer profiles allows marketers to build predictive segments, define journeys, and personalize content at scale.
  2. Continually enrich data: Customer data is only as valuable as it is accurate. Capturing zero- and first-party data in a structured way ensures every profile stays relevant and can be activated in real time.
  3. Seamless cross-channel execution: Your technology should enable you to create, personalize, test, and optimize campaigns across channels. 

How can brands set up their technology to achieve this?

Consolidation

You can consolidate data and activation in one tool, unifying and executing data from a single system. An advanced cross-channel marketing automation platform such as Selligent by Marigold can handle complex data needs, collect and unify data from multiple touchpoints into individual customer profiles, continually enrich data, leverage it in real-time, and capture customer attention through advanced cross-channel execution.

Integration

You can go down the integration route and use multiple tools for data storage and activation. For this scenario, you need a marketing automation platform that is open and flexible, allowing you to connect it to the rest of your technology stack. Selligent integrates seamlessly with your existing data ecosystem, allowing you to access your data wherever you store it to handle automated cross-channel execution in real time.

Best practice expert tips for connecting data

  1. Start with zero- and first-party data. Use interactive tools to collect accurate, permission-based insights.
  2. Unify customer data across systems. Avoid silos by connecting CRM, e-commerce, loyalty, and web behavior.
  3. Design for privacy. Ensure data is collected and stored with compliance and transparency.
  4. Localize without fragmentation. Support teams with tools for multilingual, regionally relevant messaging.
  5. Prioritize activation. Build data flows that power real-time personalization across all touchpoints.
  6. Test and learn continuously. A/B testing isn’t a one-off. It should evolve with customer behavior.
  7. Use AI to prioritize smartly. Machine learning can help decide who should (or shouldn’t) get a personalized offer.
  8. Make mid-stream optimizations. Real-time analytics allow marketers to adapt while campaigns are still running.
  9. Coordinate cross-channel touchpoints. Ensure email, SMS, mobile app, web, in-store, and loyalty channels all work from the same data and logic.

Next steps

To deliver the connected customer experiences consumers expect, marketers must first connect their data. By shifting focus from big data to good data and activating that data responsibly, brands can scale personalization, increase loyalty, and create lasting customer relationships.

Contact our regional teams of experts today to learn how our technologies help you make your marketing theory a reality.

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