- January 19, 2017
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3 Win-Win Ways to Leverage Customer Data
We’re big proponents of empowering small-business integrated marketers to better compete with larger, deeper-pocketed rivals. One strategy we believe to be particularly effective is better leveraging of in-house customer data, much like large corporations mine so-called ‘big-data,’ only in a more familiar and relatable way.
Insights contributed by marketers at CIO.com (combined with suggestions from our previous posts about exploring ‘dark’ data and site search data), should help bring a higher return on information you already have.
1) Leverage Customer Data to Shape Strategy. Segmenting customers by relevant criteria enables you to tailor your marketing accordingly, including personalizing emails and other tactics with appropriate imagery and offers.
“Simply including the recipient’s first name in the email can boost engagement,” notes one article contributor. Another adds that prior to segmentation “We were really just throwing emails at the wall and hoping they led to sales.” Customization increased his company’s top-line conversions by 15 percent.
2) Respond to Operational Lapses. By closely monitoring customer feedback channels, including social media, you can understand the nature and sources of customer dissatisfaction. This helps “identify specific locations, processes or even employees that don’t maintain the company standard,” one marketer observed, and respond quickly and appropriately. The secret here is to ensure that “data is sufficiently aggregated,” so that reliable patterns emerge (an excessive number of returns or complaints from one store or website, for example), rather than basing responses on infrequent or one-off grievances.
3) Apply Insights to New Offerings. “Mining data from support interactions can be a goldmine for developing future versions of your products,” says one marketing exec, relating how his company does it. At the end of each call or email they handle, “the support team simply asks customers if there’s a feature they’d like to see in future versions.” These ideas are immediately compiled on a nearby whiteboard, and with enough mentions, added to the next development-meeting agenda.
In the end, a more intentional and creative approach to leveraging data can only have upside for you and those you serve.