Use customer data and add value to your business
Business in the digital era is very much customer-centric and revolves around customer’s ever resonating happiness. It must also be one of your business goals to equate customer data to superior customer service.
Customer data can affect your conversion rate, decide customer acquisition factors and help you gain many actionable insights if you know how to use customer data.
Firstly, let us understand the different types of customer data that can have an immense impact on your business as well as your customers.
Types of customer data
Customer data comes in all forms and handling them can be overwhelming without the right viewpoint of its usability. Here is a broad classification of the different types:
- Basic data:
It gives you a fundamental understanding of your customers. It also forms the standard data fields in any CRM tool. What falls under basic data is your customer’s name, email address, phone number, gender, income, job title, industry, and so on. You can collect Basic data from subscription forms, membership sign-up pages, purchase bills, and so on.
- Interaction data:
It is the same as engagement data. This is helpful with respect to decisions pertaining to the buyer’s journey. Social media shares, email inquiries, demo requests, ebook downloads, page views are a few examples of interaction data. You can collect real-time interaction data using an analytical tool with A/B testing.
What is A/B testing: A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of a web page or app against each other so as to determine which one performs better. In an A/B test, half of the traffic is shown the original version of your webpage or app, and the other half is shown a modified version of the page.
The change could be as simple as the redesign of a headline or a button. The customer engagement with each version is measured and collected in a dashboard using analytical tools.
- Behavioral data:
Behavioral data gives a clear picture of the customer’s behavior patterns when using your products or services. It equips you to understand their browsing habits, social media conduct, online activity, and buying patterns. These are chief trigger points that help you use customer data for marketing to generate more conversions.
- Attitudinal data:
As attitudes disseminate what your customers think about your organization, this type of data provides a first-hand account of customer satisfaction. Online reviews and customer satisfaction surveys are sources of attitudinal data. Most importantly, you need these data quantified and this is where metrics like NPS, CSAT, and CES can aid you. So check out for recent CRM tools that help you use CX metrics efficiently.
Remember, when you work with customer data, it is most important to understand what data you want to collect and then work with your data team to create a custom dashboard that handles customer data analytics suitable to your business.
How do you make the most of customer data?
Surrounded by superfluous data and do not know what to make of it? Read on to find out how to leverage customer data in ways that benefit your business.
1. To help you personalize your customer experience-
Personalization is the sole instrument to tune customer experience. Customer data is the only authentic source to help achieve the personalization of the customer experience. Personalization can be achieved by knowing customer expectations through data from opinion polls and online reviews posted by customers. Segmenting the data based on parameters like gender, age, job, and other data fields can also help in personalization.
When you have figured out who your customers are and what they expect, you can bestow your personalization strategies before them. For instance, all women love to buy accessories along with outfits. So, recommend the same when they purchase outfits and witness an increase in the average cart value.
“Personalization is pointless without knowing the individual. Understand the dreams, hopes, and fears that motivate your customers, then hit them where it counts.” – Paul Gillin
According to a report by Accenture, 33% of customers who ended their relationship with a business did so because of a lack of personalization. No doubt personalization is the new brand differentiator.
2. To help you improve customer acquisition-
It is no surprise that acquiring a customer is the primary goal of any business and a difficult task to attain in the oversaturated market. So how do you increase your customers without spending a dollar on them?
The customer behavior patterns and trends projected by the existing customer database can help you understand potential customers. The data that the potential customers provide like the previous purchase or the search queries can better your chances of customer acquisition.
3. To help you analyze customer journey or path-
Customer data can give you an insight into the overall customer journey on your website. Customer behavior as predicted by the behavioral data and attitudinal data gives an indication of your product or service being in par or not with that of your competitors.
The customer journey map tells you the different stages the customer goes through with your business- right from being a prospect to your loyal customer or promoter. For example, the data about their engagement level tells you if they are on the verge of abandoning your product or not.
This way, you can identify what makes them move ahead in their journey with your brand.
4. To help you identify where to spend your budget to boost your revenue-
With the prime insights provided by customer data, you can know what aspects of your business you should target. Customer data tells you what your customers are responding to, which is the most searched after product or service. This influences your decision-making on developing trends, inventory management, additional staffing, or resource requirements. Have you not got a better picture of where to spend your budget?
5. To help you increase your conversion rate-
Customer data and marketing go hand in hand and it’s a fact that should never be played down. Every business would like to see its conversion rate go up. This can help you lower your acquisition costs, as you drive more revenue per visitor. The tactics to increase conversion rate are derived from data – like the customer journey analysis, A/B testing, and cart abandonment analysis.
With these facts cited, it goes without saying that if put to use flawlessly, customer data can send your revenues skyrocket.
6. To improve your marketing strategies-
In the age of e-commerce and online marketing, the treasure trove of all business and marketing strategies is customer data as it provides a deeper understanding of your market.
The formats and types of data delivered by data management tools help marketers understand what works best and what does not. For example, customer data predicts the needs, desires, and future behaviors of customers. Such insight helps devise marketing strategies to deliver products or services to meet those needs. This paves way for the highest possible Return on Investment (ROI).
Say that you want to design and sell merchandise online for free. Before committing to the idea, you will want to research the market and find out where your audiences are.
Are you more likely to find them on social media? Or maybe PPC ads on Google would bring better results? And what about the longevity of the idea? Can you expect to make money all year round, or will you need to introduce new designs once the year is over or the season changes?
With customer data like IP addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers of customers who have interacted with your brand in some way, you can send them SMS marketing updates, attractive offers, email newsletters, and much more. This way you are applying your time and marketing budget on quality leads.
7. To help you uncover the best channels for promotion-
Customer data reveals not only the customer preferences but also suggests what channels a business should use to engage their audience now and in the future. It tells you about your customers’ most preferred social media platform, most preferred product, and so on.
Such insights help you position your message, ad campaigns, or promotions in the best channels so as to never miss reaching out to your customers.
8. To help you identify loyal customers-
Loyal customers are an integral part of any business and you may never dream of losing them. Use customer data to accurately measure the loyalty of your customers. Few metrics that can help you measure customer loyalty are NPS, Repurchase Ratio, Upsell Ratio, CLV, CLI, and CES.
An effective loyalty program can get your customers emotionally attached to your brand. Last but not least, always remember that the first and most important step for increasing customer loyalty is to measure your current standing.
9. To help you understand the sales funnel-
With the sales funnels and charts ideally formulated from customer data, you are informed about the acquisition, engagement, and monetization standpoints of your business. Doesn’t it tell you enough about your business goals for the month? You definitely won’t miss it if you have the stats and the numbers neatly presented on your dashboard with CRM tools.
10. To help you gather feedback from targeted customers-
Customer data can help you build the right business with the targeted customers. It is indeed necessary to have communication going on with your customers. You can zero in on your targeted customers by segmenting your customer data. A different set of questionnaires can be framed for the active, casual, and dormant user segments. You can now plan a different marketing strategy for each of the segmented groups.
With data being the new oil, get Kapture CRM’s Customer Profiling Software that helps with Customer Data Management and realize the true potential of your business. Go for a free trial now.
About the Author | |
 | Seema C Mohan |
| Seema C Mohan is a content writer at Kapture. She is passionate about all things XaaS and loves to write value-added content. She has been in Business Process Management in the past and has experience in streamlining processes for Enterprise Mapping Projects. She has published technology articles in National and International journals. Her job at Kapture helps her gain more insight into the SaaS industry and emerging technologies. | |
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