A customer database is much more than an address book. For a company to manage its customer data and fully benefit from the power of database marketing, the key is to have an excellent… customer database! Be careful, however, not to downplay the importance of your contacts’ consent in your marketing. Without it, there is no point hoping for effective acquisition or loyalty actions that guarantee the ROI of the marketing investments made. How should you go about it?
Too many people still confuse a customer file with a customer database (customer DB). The problem does not lie in semantic knowledge, but rather when these people have marketing and/or decision-making responsibilities within the company. Unfortunately, this is a more common phenomenon than one might think (according to a 2015 Sage study, 74% of SMEs in France do not have a CRM – Customer Relationship Management system).
Of course, not all companies have the technical, financial and human resources of large corporations. This is particularly the case, as the Sage study points out, for VSEs, SMEs and mid-sized companies. However, simply working with a file is anything but optimal if you want to achieve good sales results! There is a reason we speak of database marketing… Hence the obligation to turn the good old Excel file into a living customer DB, especially when the company’s activity is linked to regular sales of products or services, subscription-based models, etc.
Improving the ROI of marketing operations : advantage no. 1 of a qualified customer DB
Which key elements should you include in your customer DB ?
Boost the performance of your customer DB with a Marketing Automation tool !
Improving the ROI of marketing operations : advantage no. 1 of a qualified customer DB
A qualified and relevant customer database makes database marketing possible; this is also referred to as data mining. Behind this term, several major actions can be identified: prospecting, targeting a marketing operation, maintaining customer loyalty, reactivating contacts, reactivating former customers (the latter being able to regain prospect status).
Also read: How to configure the database of your marketing CRM software
These different operations can only be carried out through database data processing operations, using mathematical and statistical manipulations. While this may seem off-putting at first glance, it is important to point out that this work has several objectives :
Improve the ROI of the marketing actions undertaken. Indeed, without targeting, marketing investments are weakened because they lose relevance and conversion rates approach zero. To do this, you need to manage recent cookie-related obligations thanks to marketing automation.
Define the key media channels for contacting the target audience (a segment of the customer DB) at lower cost. Large-scale actions involving high volumes are no longer relevant in modern marketing.
Guarantee the quality of the customer relationship by managing, for example, the marketing pressure exerted on each segment of the database according to needs and expectations. This can be done by interfacing the customer DB with a Marketing Automation (MA) tool.
Deliver, in the context of a B2B target for example, specific messages to each participant in a purchasing decision, whether they are an influencer or a decision-maker.
Etc.
These initial elements show how much a customer DB, through segmentation operations, makes it possible to target marketing operations and therefore to:
- Personalize messages as much as possible,
- Increase the effectiveness of all types of campaigns.
- Reduce marketing costs.
- Focus efforts on the most effective marketing operations.
Segmenting the database for precise targeting for each marketing campaign to be carried out is therefore essential. The segmentation discussed here goes far beyond simply separating prospects and customers. In the age of constant connectivity, 360° marketing, and new consumer buying habits (buyers research before committing, a multitude of channels consulted, etc.), the effectiveness of modern marketing rests on two major principles: segmentation to create effective decision mapping and the day-to-day management of the customer DB for quality and relevance.
Which key elements should you include in your customer DB ?
“Crown jewel” and guarantee of the company’s future, a customer database must be high-performing and up to date, in other words, alive. It must receive the same level of care as that which the company devotes to its own technical expertise within its sector of activity. It is no coincidence that a company sees its intrinsic value increase when its customer DB is of high quality.
As a reminder, a customer database (do not be misled by the term “customers”, because it is also made up of prospects) brings together all the information collected during completed transactions, information requests and, thanks to the digital revolution and the magic of cookies, all customer contacts with the company, not forgetting classic elements such as sociodemographic data (age, income, date of birth) and psychobehavioral data (activities, interests, media used…)
This brief presentation is not exhaustive. Indeed, certain business sectors, such as B2B for example, or companies marketing subscription-based offers, require many other data points to be entered into the database:
- Volumes purchased,
- Prices paid and terms obtained,
- Purchase profitability,
- Contractual elements : contract content, contract status…
Not to mention information on the key contacts who participate, within the same company, in purchasing decisions (buyer, influencer). This may seem like a real challenge to deal with on a daily basis. All the more so because a customer DB must be anything but a warehouse of static, dead data, since every day the company generates multiple interactions with its customers and prospects.
Also read: Tips and tricks for organizing your database in Webmecanik Automation
Boost the performance of your customer DB with a Marketing Automation tool !
Fortunately, a marketing automation (MA) tool makes it possible to meet this challenge. Indeed, it is entirely possible (and recommended !) to interface your customer database (CRM) with an MA tool. Why ? Because it makes it possible to :
Boost database performance by automating relationship scenarios and marketing operations for each target segment, no matter how numerous they are
Make it easier to populate the customer DB with key information (via visitor tracking on its website and/or blog, for example, in order to identify each person’s interests, including within the same company),
Automatically manage the different relationship levels whatever the target audience,
Provide sales teams with mature leads, ready to call, so they can contact them at the best moment in their buying journey.
Lighten the workload of marketing team members through automation.
In conclusion, if you want to have the keys to successful business development for the company, we cannot recommend strongly enough that you take an interest in these two major tools…
