Are you making the most of your customer & prospect data?

Many companies have customer or prospect data but fail to use this data effectively to grow sales & profits.

One SME retailer I met had 15 years customer data and attracted over 2,000 customers per month. However, they never did anything with that data. Having worked so hard to be distinctive to the competition, develop a compelling message to target prospects and finally achieve a sale, it is bizarre that they chose never to contact the customer again.

A significant number of those customers would have been happy to:-

• provide a glowing testimonial for the retailer
• buy additional products and services from the retailer in the future
• refer them to friends and colleagues to grow the customer base
  
• provide important feedback on customer service

However, this retailer didn't believe in seeking customer opinions or allocating any budget or resource to any marketing activities beyond the first sale.

Many of Britain's best brands know the true value of 'retention' marketing to customers after the first sale. Previous companies, I have worked with including RAC & AA get incredibly high customer retention levels which are proven to deliver high Marketing Return On Investment (ROI).

Amazon develop bespoke personalised email messages that provide relevant offers based on previous purchasing / web viewing history. Brands like Sky & BT invest heavily in Friends & Family referral programmes.

Historically, many of these data-driven marketing programmes were outside the scope of small and mid sized companies due to technical resource & cost requirements. However, these barriers to entry no longer exist given the explosion in web development software & systems in recent years. The barrier to entry is knowledge.

I believe that 90% of the data-driven marketing programmes that I developed with some of Britain's best brands to grow sales & customer lifetime value could be successfully applied to small and mid sized companies.

A customer database is an asset but only if you make use of it. If you do it well it will help grow customer lifetime value and increase your marketing ROI.

Data marketing tips for companies big or small

• Give a specific individual in your company responsibilty for managing customer / prospect data
• Try and collect relevant customer / prospect data whenever possible - make sure every employee knows the importance of doing this well
  
• Use this data to help profile your customers / prospects especially your high value customers
• Use email to get customer feedback on your service shortly after purchase
• Email customers to ask for a testimonial shortly after purchase
• Email customers with a relevant offer to incentivise referrals to friends & family
  
• Emailing customers with relevant & targeted offers based on their purchase or web browsing history
• Make sure you comply with the UK Data Protection Act
  

If you need help in using data effectively to attract and grow customer lifetime value, then contact a web marketing expert.


Remember...web marketing is about solving customers' problems profitably.

Peter Hawtin is an internet marketing specialist with Brand New Way, a UK web marketing agency which helps companies to attract and retain valuable customers online.