Author Nancy Duarte Discusses How to Communicate Data Insights

Most marketers know that data is a necessity in the current customer loyalty environment. In fact, some thinkers have even likened it to oil—which is used to fuel nearly every technological advancement of modern society. In the same manner, brands just can’t run their loyalty programs without data.
 
However, using data is still a challenge. Marketers don’t just need to know what data will be most useful, how to aggregate it into a single view, and what insights to draw from it. They also need to be able to communicate data insights effectively.
 
To help marketers meet this challenge, we at Loyalty360 recently spoke with persuasion expert Nancy Duarte, author of DataStory: Explain Data and Inspire Action Through Story, which explores how narrative frameworks enable people to communicate data insights with greater ease. She said, “We have lots of data. The purpose of it is to find an opportunity or to solve a problem. But, when you’ve found the opportunity, data becomes a communication problem. You have to figure out how to package the insights you found and communicate it to others.”
 
Duarte then pointed out that the whole point of data is to make recommendations so that people can act. However, getting people to take the correct actions from data is a difficult prospect because, as Duarte noted, “Data is historical, but you’re trying to get people to take future action.” She believes that the best way to solve this problem is to use strong argumentation matched with rhetorical techniques to get marketers aligned with data insights. “Then,” Duarte said, “you become a trusted advisor and leader. From there, you can learn how to inspire people to take action.”
 
One of the best ways marketers can do this, Duarte believes, is by making data emotional. She said, “You have to get people to respond in a visceral way, make the data relatable, make it tangible. I work with a lot of tech and pharma companies, chip companies, generators of vast amounts of data. I help them create appealing visual systems for data, decide the best chart, the best line, the best way to take retail data into consideration and help people understand it quickly. I teach them how to stand and deliver at their own events.”
 
The reason people have trouble doing this in the first place, Duarte noted, is lack of empathy. That is, they don’t take into consideration, when trying to communicate what data means, that every insight requires a context. In other words, a story, a scenario with relevant features. For example, if a coffee shop sees that a given customer comes in to purchase a coffee every single day, that shop still needs to know a host of other things to determine what personalization to offer the customer.
 
That’s why Duarte believes marketers need to understand that the customer is the hero of the journey. She said, “This kind of mindset is a way to create empathy. That’s a big revelation that a lot of people have picked up on. That’s why we’re empathy first. We try to understand the action you’re trying to get people to take. It’s a multi-dimensional way of understanding the customer. It’s about how people transform over time, the different emotional fuel people need to commit, to engage. Being empathetic helps us understand what emotional fuel people need to reach the finish line.”

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