No matter what kind of business you run, customer data is always helpful when it comes to marketing. From gathering helpful data insights through analysis to tracking customer purchase histories, data is the key to more effective marketing.
Here are just a few ways your business can use customer data to improve its marketing endeavors:
Put Quality Data First
Data experts will tell you to capture all incoming customer data, which is good advice. Capturing all of the data your business website produces will help you avoid data blind spots, but that doesn’t mean you should analyze all of that data.
Once you have your data sets in front of you, choose only quality data to send to the analytics department. Although this seems time-consuming and complicated, it’s really quite easy as long as you know what you’re looking for.
Customer data that gives your business insights on purchasing patterns, click-through rates, and purchase histories is all considered quality.
What you don’t want to do is bog down your analytics with useless data, such as data from outdated product pages.
Capture Browsing Data
As the following article looks at, on a scale from 1 to 10 on the most important types of data, browsing data is an 11. Why? Well, browsing data is one of the only forms of data that gives your business a first-hand look at what your customers find interesting about your brand.
Browsing data shows your business which website pages your customers visit the most and which digital paths got them there.
This specific type of data lets your business know what’s working with your brand and, more importantly, what’s not.
Don’t Neglect Other Data Sources
There’s probably a good chance your business is already mining data from its website, which is great. However, those customers who visit your full site from their home computer are becoming few and far between.
That’s why it’s important to mine data from other data producing sources, such as smart phones and tablets. With more and more people taking a mobile approach to their online shopping, gathering data from your business’s mobile site is becoming increasingly important.
While you’re at it, go ahead and capture data from your social media accounts as well.
Be Adaptable
When it comes to the world of customer data, nothing is set in stone. Trends, buying patterns, and customer interests change all of the time and are for the most part unpredictable.
In order to keep up with this constant change, make sure your data team is ready to scale up or down and make an analytics change at a moment’s notice.
Always Protect Customer Data
It doesn’t matter if it’s something as basic as an email address or something as sensitive as credit card information, it’s the responsibility of your business to protect all of its customers’ data.
From password protection to encryption to data backup protocols to network firewalls, security should be a top priority when handling customer data.
When it comes to optimizing and improving your customer data collection practices, keep in mind the pointers above.
About the Author: Adam Groff is a freelance writer and creator of content. He writes on a variety of topics including data processing and customer outreach.
