How to better manage and exploit your customer data with Customer Intelligence
The major developments in marketing over the last 15 years have led to a significant accumulation of customer data, yet collecting data can be counter-productive if not done properly. When devoid of intelligence, raw data is of no value to the company.
To overcome this difficulty, B2B marketing experts have developed customer intelligence. It centralizes and optimizes all customer data that is useful to the brand. As a result, advertising campaigns can be better targeted and generate more qualified leads.
The benefits of using customer intelligence don't stop there. This collection of useful data also enables us to better respond to consumer expectations and offer a much more efficient customer service. This customer-focused chain of events leads to greater customer loyalty, which in turn is synonymous with prosperity for all companies.
How to collect data? What tools should you use? And how do you incorporate this data into your digital strategy? Sélim Dahmani, Marketing Manager at HubSpot, answers these questions.
The importance of data collection
Data collection is a vast and complex process, involving the gathering of as much useful information as possible about your customers and prospects.
It is carried out using tools that retrieve and centralize information from different sources. This information can provide precise indications of a company's success factors, as well as its inefficiencies. It is used in management to improve decision-making.
A CRM is a platform that centralizes your customer data in a single software package. In Hubspot CRM, for example, contact information sheets present recorded information such as pages visited, e-mails opened, products purchased or subscriptions in progress, and much more.
Customer feedback at the heart of marketing strategy
With data collection, the consumer becomes a player. Gathering customer opinions makes them feel valued, and shows them that their opinion counts.
The figures are clear: companies that implement a customer insight strategy achieve a 30-50% improvement in satisfaction.
By targeting the needs of increasingly demanding consumers, it's much easier to meet their expectations.
What data to collect
To find out more about your customers, you need to collect accurate data. Their usefulness varies from one business sector to another. So it's important to focus on the information most relevant to your business. Generally speaking, there are 4 main types of Customer Intelligence data:
- transactional data, relating to customers' purchase history,
- Behavioral data, which shows what customers are doing on your website,
- demographic data, which tells you more about individual customers,
- psychographic data to understand why people make certain decisions by examining customer interests, opinions and activities.
While not all data carries the same weight, it's important to remember that the more you learn about your customers, the better you'll be able to meet their expectations.
Here are some typical data to collect on your contacts:
- Contact information: last name, first name, address, telephone number and e-mail address make it easy to communicate with the customer and personalize exchanges.
- Information specific to your business: this depends on the nature of your business. A clothing store will need to know the sizes of its customers, while a shoe retailer will need to investigate the shoe size of each of its customers.
- Customer history data: this information relates your customers' experience with your company. It includes, for example, their opinions, possible problems encountered and reasons for switching to a competitor.
- Personalization data: to sustainably improve your customer relations, it's important to show that you're interested in them. Birthday, number of inhabitants in the household, favorite sports team.
- Usage data: depending on the business sector, it may be relevant to track a customer's expected pre- or post-purchase actions, such as the purchase of refills, or the use of a maintenance or repair service.
In the case of a subscription, this may take the form of use of the proposed service; in the case of an application, it may involve downloading, frequency of use, downloads or even invitations to other users.
All this information enables you to further personalize your relationship with the customer and demonstrate your attention to them.
If data collection requires the accumulation of a large amount of data, it's important not to collect it all at once.
Consumers are too solicited to be inclined to respond to long, tedious questionnaires. The need for information is great, but it must be collected sparingly, so as not to exert too much pressure.
As is often the case, quality must take precedence over quantity.
Centralize data to improve customer service
To receive the rapid, personalized responses customers demand, it's imperative to have access to all their data efficiently.
By centralizing data and customer service channels, you'll be able to optimize every one of your exchanges. This efficiency enables you to meet the expectations of even the most demanding consumers, and build loyalty.
Customer service software that centralizes data is essential.
Hub Services offers numerous possibilities for personalizing exchanges with customers. It can also be used to conduct satisfaction surveys, and offers dashboards with comprehensive reports using the most important data.
CRM as a reference point
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a customer relationship management tool that enhances the relationship between a company and its customers.
It considerably improves customer follow-up by centralizing data. A CRM also makes it possible to personalize exchanges. It saves your sales teams time by automating certain time-consuming tasks.
The automation process is risky. If you're too eager to save time and generate sales at all costs, the customer may suffer. CRM software makes it easy and efficient not to neglect the personalized aspect of your exchanges with your customers.
CRM at the heart of your marketing strategy
This tool provides the company with a 360° overview of customer data, as well as a status report on the relationship with each customer.
It facilitates the transfer of information between your company's various departments concerning the evolution of a customer relationship. Its use is therefore at the heart of your marketing strategy, since it enables you to optimize your business and respond precisely to customer expectations.
The role of CRM software therefore focuses as much on acquiring new leads as it does on making sales and monitoring the customer relationship, leading to customer loyalty.
But it's important to choose the right software. It's essential to opt for a comprehensive tool that will enable you to manage all your data and make intelligent use of it. Choosing the CRM best suited to your needs is therefore an important step in implementing this type of software within your organization.
Marketing software: the key to converting customers
As many as 30% of marketing departments fail to understand their prospects because of the number of sources of information, according to Cyber Sphere.
Attracting qualified prospects is one thing, converting them into customers is quite another. The use of CRM software also finds its place in the way a marketing team establishes its strategy and vision.
The benefits of such a tool are not limited to customer knowledge. They also affect the finances of marketing departments. Those who use CRM software reduce their budget costs by 23%, while gaining in efficiency (source: Cloudswave).
As a complement to a good CRM, the use of marketing software enables you to take advantage of all the information stored specifically for your marketing department. This centralization of tools and data in a single platform enables marketers to save time and better target their campaigns through smarter use of customer data.
Software for sales
To improve the structure of your sales managers' approaches, you need to free up more of their time.
This improved sales strategy gives them greater efficiency and a higher conversion rate. Sales CRM software gives your sales staff a 360° view of the status of each prospect on a daily basis.
This enables them to focus their efforts on those most likely to be converted into customers. While 22% of salespeople still don't know what CRM software is (source Hubspot), those who do use it outperform their annual sales targets by more than 24% (source Aberdeen Group).
Customer data as a source of information
To ensure maximum efficiency, your CRM software must be able to access certain data sources. These sources offer a wealth of information about your customers.
Three of these are essential for gathering intelligent data that will help you to better interact with and target your customers' needs.
Social networks
In 2021, France will have 49.6 million active social network users. This represents 75.9% of the population, or 3 out of 4 French people. Smartphones have become increasingly popular, with 95.7% of French people aged 26 to 64 owning one.
French Internet users spend an average of 5 hours 37 minutes a day surfing the web, including 1 hour 41 minutes on social networks. These figures show just how attached your customers are to social platforms. Whether it's Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram or Tweeter, to name but a few, they deliver valuable information.
So it's only logical that a connection between social networks and your platform should provide intelligent data on the decisions you need to make to keep your customers happy. This relevant data can also be used to better target your prospects and more easily convert them into customers.
Open data
Sites such as data.gouv.fr or INSEE represent huge open databases.
Your customer's postal address will give you access to a vast amount of information about his neighborhood and the potential customers around him.
It's possible, for example, to obtain an overview of the socio-demographic profiles of the inhabitants of this neighborhood or region, and to extrapolate an estimate of their income and tastes. This data enables pinpoint marketing targeting and the prediction of purchasing behavior.
The Look-alike
The Look-alike data source is a household name.
After importing a list of your existing customers, it offers you a selection of other similar individuals on a specific point that you define. These can then be integrated into your CRM for inclusion in future marketing campaigns.
Enrich customer experience with data
86% of consumers recognize that personalization influences their purchasing decision, and personalized messages are said to be responsible for a 125% increase in the likelihood of purchase (source Infosys). These figures seem staggering, yet what could be more logical at a time when customers are becoming ever more demanding?
Personalized, consistent and contextualized interactions with the brand have become the norm. CRM software enables you to collect and analyze intelligent customer data from a variety of sources. From this data, your marketers and sales people can unearth more leads and sell more products or services.
But all this data doesn't just have a role to play upstream of the customer. It's part of an inbound cycle that also involves building customer loyalty.
The three phases of the cycle are: Attract, Interact and Retain. CRM software and intelligent data collection enable you to increase your efficiency in each phase of the cycle.
As far as loyalty is concerned, this is handled by the company's customer service department. As long as the latter is efficient, the customer has no reason not to call on your services again. And that means knowing exactly what your customers want, need and feel after they've made a purchase.
Of course, for data to play its decisive role in the customer experience, it's essential to put the customer at the heart of the company. Good internal communication and the correct transmission of information are therefore essential. To facilitate exchanges, a common platform such as CRM is a major asset.
Article translated from French