Why you should be data-driven.
Whether you sell B2B or B2B, the behavior of the buyer has changed dramatically. Almost 90% of all purchases start with a search on the web or a social media reference. Before purchasing, the customer has probably touched several digital channels such as web, email, mobile and social media. Often combined with traditional channels such as visits to shops or print media. This creates a need for frictionless customer journeys in all channels. In addition, all these platforms generate large amounts of data.
Use the data and create a good customer experience!
Customer experience has become increasingly important. Today, customer expectations are greater than ever and you are not only competing with price and product, but also with customer experience that has thus been given higher priority. And with a really good customer experience you will be able to increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and profitability.
In today’s competitive digital world, marketers must have a new and integrated approach to marketing and sales. Marketers need to be data-driven in their efforts to find new customers and identify customers’ interests because traditional, analog and manual work methods no longer work as efficiently.
The stakes are high. According to a Boston Consulting Group report, you can get up to 30% lower costs and 20% higher revenue if you manage to be data-driven. On the other hand, if you wait too long or hesitate to invest in new technology, you risk losing market share and losing revenue because your customers will choose competitors that are more relevant with their offering.
According to Oracle, 89% of consumers switch to
a competitor after a bad customer experience.
The challenge
Data is everywhere and “Big Data” is here to stay. Today we all generate large amounts of data, whether you as a consumer are looking for a new car or if you are looking for a company-related product or service at work. All that data can and should be used.
In marketing and sales, we have seen a revolution in generating data as we move to digital marketing and sales. Also, “offline” sales are measured in real time so that we can collect data about each sale.
With so much data, you should know everything about your customers. Or do you, like so many others, get stuck in “excel-hell” and spend more time collecting the data instead of analyzing and creating insights from it?
Collect data from different sources. Data is constantly being generated – use it! That sounds good in theory, but the biggest challenge when it comes to being data-driven is about gathering the data from different systems and sources and structuring it so you can start analyzing and acting on it. And let’s be honest – how much time have you spent moving data from one sheet to another? And how much value has it created?
Here, modern technology can help you save a lot of time. Let us introduce you to a Customer Data Platform (CDP).
87% of marketers say data is an unused asset.
What is a CDP?
There is a lot of talk about the importance of working data-driven. And to be able to work data-driven and get the full potential of your customer data, you need a Customer Data Platform (CDP). But what is a CDP and why do you as a marketer need to work with one?
A CDP is a system that helps you as a marketer to combine data into a single customer view. Gartner defines a CDP as:
“A marketing system that combines the company’s customer data from marketing and other channels to enable customer modeling and to optimize the timing and targeting of messages and offers.”
At the core of a CDP is precisely the ability to integrate customer data from any external and internal source or platform, including your own CRM, sales data (POS), mobile, transaction, website, email and data from a marketing automation tool. Because when you have all the data collected you can easily analyze it, create insights and act. But more on that later.
Ok, now we have briefly explained what a CDP is. But why should you as a marketer work with a CDP?
We know that today’s customers require good customer experiences that are relevant and personalized.
The statistics speak their clear language:
79% of consumers say they will only engage in your offer if it is personalized. (Accenture)
89% of customers stay with companies that offer good experiences in several channels, so-called. omnikanal strategy. (Aberdeen)
Acquisition costs of new customers at companies that personalize are reduced by 50%. (McKinsey)
Why do you need a CDP?
According to Gartner, the interest in purchasing and working with a CDP is growing significantly. They say in Gartner’s Market Guide for Customer Data Platforms that the interest in a CDP 2018 doubled compared to the previous year.
Your customers want a good customer experience. One way to provide a good customer experience is to provide customized, personalized and relevant offers. You can only do that when you listen to your customers, and you do this most easily by collecting the data that your customers give you. And to manage all the data you need a CDP.
When you implement a CDP, it becomes possible for you as a marketer to create a truly holistic view of each customer. You get a 360 ° view of your customers’ behavior across multiple channels throughout the customer journey.
Here are three specific benefits of working with a CDP:
-
1
Easy to be effective and data-driven:
With many systems and data sources, marketers are often discouraged by technical tasks such as trying to manage and work with data. You spend a lot of time collecting and compiling data instead of spending time on more important and value-creating tasks. Even if you as a marketer is relatively skilled with dat and computers, data has historically been stored in a way that makes it slow and difficult to extract or to work with. A CDP can save time because they are intuitive to use and therefore the handling of customer data becomes much easier and faster. In addition, a CDP enables data consolidation and integrationg systems to be simplified, saving additional time and money. -
2
Better, more relevant and automated marketing.
A CDP gives the marketer control over the customer data and combines data from multiple marketing channels in a 360 ° customer view. Companies that implement a CDP quickly see results in the form of better designed campaigns, because they have better insights about their target group and their customers. Furthermore, they achieve better results from their campaigns, as a CDP gives everyone in the marketing department access to, and the opportunity to act on, the same dataset. This ultimately allows you to invest your budget in the most cost-effective channels and campaigns. -
3
Choose your KPI:s and metrics
As a marketer, you can safely measure key figures, or KPIs, such as:
- Customer lifetime
- Return frequency
- Average order value
Because the CDP has a unique ability to consolidate all available data, you can make the data useful. You can create targeted and relevant customer journeys across multiple channels. By having all the data easily accessible, you can stop working with "Spray and Pray" campaigns (the same message to everyone and hope it hits someone ...) and instead communicate personalized and relevant offers in the right channel at the right time. All based on customer data, of course. Last but not least: when your CDP uses so-called Machine Learning it lets you take advantage of advanced data analytics to gain insights that you can act on, for example:
- Identify customers who are likely to churn
- Offer recommended products with a purchase to increase the average order value
- Identify the most or least effective channels for additional, cross-selling and sales.
In summary
Three concrete benefits of working with a CDP:
-
1
Easy to be effective and data-driven
-
2
Easier to gain insights about customers and market more efficiently
-
3
Better, automated and relevant marketing
Collect data.
Anyone who knows who your customers are and what they are interested in will be able to create a good customer experience that will lead to more effective marketing, increased brand loyalty and higher revenue. Collecting customer data helps you to get to know each customer. This information helps you to create better offers, while adding value to your customers as they receive relevant offers.
Start by collecting the basics: name, address, mobile number and email. This allows you to communicate and personalize the communication. A “Hello Anna” is better than “hello dear customer”. Then you can build on from there by adding more demographic data such as age, profession and gender.
Interest and behavior
Now it’s starting to get interesting. Collect behavioral information such as which websites your potential customers visit, when and how often and what they purchased after these visits. Soon you have a full 360 ° view of your customers.
Collect data and be efficient. Collecting all data can be time-consuming. Once you’ve got all the data together, it doesn’t help to “just” paste the data into an Excel spreadsheet.
Take help from a Customer Data Platform (CDP)
The best and most cost-effective way to gather data from multiple sources in real time – and to save, store and act on it is by working with a CDP.
Spend time analyzing data and creating insights from it, not on “copy-paste”.
Know more about our CDP: Data Talks PRO.
From insights to result.
You analyze data to gain insights that you can then act on. Analyzing data to gain insight into customer behavior can mean segmenting your customer base so that you can be better at attracting, engaging and retaining your customers.
Attract and engage – be relevant
Once you have segmented your customer base, you know what you can offer the different segments because you have a better sense of what your target groups want. You may want to send a certain offer to existing customers and another to potential customers. You may also want to customize which channel is best for which segment.
By seeing past behaviors such as purchases, you can predict the likelihood of a future interest and thus become more relevant in your communication.
Retaining existing customers is an important marketing activity. Especially since existing customers are the most profitable customers. With the help of predictive analysis you can very effectively prevent so-called “churn”. Here are some examples of why it is so important to work with retaining existing customers:
Higher Conversion: If existing customers like you, they will come back at a lower or non-existent cost.
Lower marketing costs: You don't have to spend time and money to find these customers and build trust - they already know you.
Higher profitability: Existing customers are less price sensitive than new customers and you have to give less discounts to attract them.
According to Google, 170 Petabyte data were collected in 2017. Only 0.5% was analyzed.
Act on insights
You analyze data to gain insights that you can then act on. Analyzing data to gain insight into customer behavior can mean segmenting your customer base so that you can be better at attracting, engaging and retaining your customers.
Attract and engage – be relevant
Once you have segmented your customer base, you know what you can offer the different segments because you have a better sense of what your target groups want. You may want to send a certain offer to existing customers and another to potential customers. You may also want to customize which channel is best for which segment.
By seeing past behaviors such as purchases, you can predict the likelihood of a future interest and thus become more relevant in your communication.
Retaining existing customers is an important marketing activity. Especially since existing customers are the most profitable customers. With the help of predictive analysis you can very effectively prevent so-called “churn”. Here are some examples of why it is so important to work with retaining existing customers:
Be data driven!
Based on the insights and using your Marketing Automation system, you can be more relevant in your marketing and:
Send the right offer
To the right customer
In the right channel
At the right time
Work smarter on act on data:
Generate more leads
Increase open rate
Increase clickthrough rate
Increase conversion
Measure behavior and segment your target audience
Create relevant communication and cut through the noise
Personalize your communication
Personalized communication is 6x more efficient
Work with the right KPI’s.
Once you have all the essential data updated in real time and visualized in a clear way, you will have the key metrics to be able to control the marketing.
In Data Talks PRO we have divided these views into six different dashboards where each dashboard contains several KPIs.
-
1
Revenue
This dashboard is probably the most comprehensive. You can see the revenue, number of orders and average order value. You can also see which channel is generating what revenue. -
2
Contacts
Now we start looking at the people who actually make up your customer base. You can distinguish anonymous from known customers, if they are active and if they have subscribed to your newsletter. -
3
New contacts
This panel shows your ability to make new contacts known, because you want to know your customers. See what channel they come from? And which channel that generates the most customers who purchase at the highest value. -
4
Loyalty
As you know, loyal customers are very valuable. Therefore, it is important to measure how long customers stay, the so-called. customer lifecycle. An important key figure is to see when inactive customers return. Is there anything you can do to get them to buy from you again? -
5
Customer journey
The customer journey is a key element of effective marketing. In this panel you can see how your leads are converting through different steps in your customer journey and if they get stuck in any step. Then you need to initiate steps to get them to convert to the next step. This dashboard also shows an overview of your potential future sales, ie. a forecast. -
6
Optimization
You probably have marketing campaigns. But do they work? And what campaign generates what results? By collecting data you can follow up and analyze the different campaigns – to see which channels are generating what. You can see how much the different campaigns cost and how much revenue they generate. Then you can focus more on the effective campaigns and turn off the others. We can evaluate campaigns that are implemented in several different systems and channels, for example:
Marketing Automation
- E-mail
- Website (how personal and relevant it is)
Google Analytics
Facebook
LinkedIn
Marketing Automation is a perfect tool that can help you communicate personally no matter how large your target audience is. More and more consumers expect this today.
In short, you define your customer journey and can then communicate the right offer, to the right customer, in the right channel at the right time.
But to do this, you need a system to support you. The features of Marketing Automation allow you to combine several parts in one system.
CRM - Build customer cards and measure behavior
Channels to communicate: email, mobile, web, social media
Open APIs automation Process
Why Marketing Automation?
According to a report from Econcultancy, the main reasons for working with Marketing Automation are the following:
Creating high quality leads (potential customers)
Increase sales
Reach higher impact of sales and marketing activities
Generate more leads (volume)
Automate "onboarding" of new customers and building loyalty
Marketing Automation can provide 451% more buy-ready leads.
Data Talks PRO – our CDP.
Data Talks PRO is our CDP. It is a unique SaaS solution that we have developed for companies that want to be customer-focused and efficient in their marketing.
It allows you to generate growth and value through data. The data is automatically collected and presented visually – to help you make smarter decisions.
We have linked Marketing Automation with visual analysis. This means that you can collect all your data, analyze it and act on the insights – directly in your Marketing Automation system.
Stop wasting time gathering data from various sources, configuring, clearing, washing and Copy-Pastying. Instead, you can act on the insights and focus on what really generates value: to drive your business to be more efficient and customer focused.
Data Talks PRO:
Collect your data
Visualize the data
Act on the data and make smarter decisions