Thanks for the response Pete and I certainly know what you mean, the relevancy of the data is often linked to timing. Could definitely have included more on timing and certainly articles I have written previously it’s often a fun topic of discussion.
I probably wouldn’t go as far as yourself in terms of ‘if it’s not real time ignore it’, but i would say you need to know the options for the different campaigns. It’s about testing what timing works best. From doing this the last 10 years, I’ve certainly seen plenty of examples where the quicker you respond the better, but I’ve also encountered a number of campaign where timing is optimised later, whether that’s an hour later, 4 hours, 10 minutes, it’s all down to basic marketing principles – test, test and test. These differences can be by campaign type but also other factors like sector, audience profile, time of day etc…