- August 28, 2014
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Making Sense of Unstructured Data
Every so often, marketers need to step back from the targeted campaigns, various media outlets, and individual messages to get a broader perspective of the audience.
Businesses can look at their customer information in a larger context by combining structured data (the “who, what, when, where”) with unstructured data (the “why” and “how”) to help gain new customer insights.
Writing for Smart Data Collective, Michele Nemschoff explains the difference between structured and unstructured data.
Structured Data
As the name suggests, this is data that can be easily organized. It’s simple and analytical data that can include both machine-generated and human-generated information.
Machine-Generated Data
- Location/Sensory Data
- Point-of-Sale Info
- Telephone Records
- Web Server Logs
Human-Generated Data
- Input Data (age, zip code, gender, etc.)
Structured data can help marketers understand where to find new insights within unstructured data.
Unstructured Data
This kind of information can’t be easily organized in a predefined manner.
Take email, for instance. Some email values fit neatly into a table, such as the date, time, sender, recipient, etc. But the information contained within the body of the email can’t be organized or understand in the same way. This is unstructured data.
Social media has become a big factor in generating unstructured data. As many as 73% of online adults now use a social networking site of some kind, according to Pew Research. (Facebook is the dominant platform of choice.) Determining positive or negative brand sentiment is one of the ways businesses are organizing their unstructured data.
Other kinds of unstructured data:
- Written documents or files
- Audio
- Presentations
- Videos
- Images
- Messaging
What can unstructured data reveal?
Take just one possible example: by examining audio of customer service calls along with structured data, a company could learn how problems start, get detailed consumer feedback, and determine how long it takes to resolve problems and why.
Unstructured data can help businesses of any size gain greater insights into their customers, thereby creating a more personalized experience.
For more insights on how to integrate data into your marketing efforts, take a look at “Struggling to Keep Up with Big Data? You’re Not Alone” and “Woo More Customers with Relevant Targeted Data”.
