Granularity Definition

Modern data management requires precision and accuracy. Well-organized, smartly-categorized data can be described also as granular. Get to know the definition of granularity and its importance in digital marketing and business.

Granularity in general means the quality of including a lot of small details. In the digital marketing area granularity describes the depth of detail used in data segmentation and categorization. The more detailed, thoughtfully categorized information, the more granular it is.

Gathering granular data is a major step that comes before data optimization – it gives the foundation for detailed, effective information optimization, which then allows to use it in marketing activities, for measuring the performance of advertising campaigns, tracking conversions, and checking which touchpoints work better than others.

How to use granularity in digital marketing?

Though highly granular data provide the most detailed information, it’s not always best to gather as much information as possible. Trying to collect too much data makes optimizing it time-consuming and ineffective. Here’s an example:

An online store selling sneakers tries to gather data about its recent offer – the goal of it is to know, which products turned out to be hits. The company have all the means to collect plenty of information, such us how much money did the customers spend, which products did customers buy during a specific period of time, but also a bunch of unnecessary data, like buyer’s age or address. The key to use granularity effectively is to know where to stop.

In this example, the store employees need no more than the first three pieces of information to know which sneakers are the most popular among the customers. While time spent in store and buyer’s address might be valuable information in other scenarios, they don’t need it now, so there’s no point in collecting them too.

Granularity gives the company more control over the collected information. It’s up to you to decide how deep you need to go with the information granularity and customer segmentation. With great granularity come great possibilities.