Don’t Spray and Pray! Take Advantage of Customer Intelligence in Marketing Automation
Nowadays, if you want to stand out from the competition, you need to get to know your customers and perfectly respond to their needs. You can’t target everyone. You can’t advertise only in one marketing channel. So what you should do? You have to collect information. But remember, having data is one thing but using it is something different. Understanding consumer needs is the key to your business success.
See what customer intelligence can do
Customer intelligence is the real-time process of gathering and studying information about customers. This is the basic definition, but in practice, this is a very complex process. To gather information about clients, a company must rely on data from several sources and analyze it at once.
This solid basis gives a wide range of possibilities for marketers. It tells them not just what, who, when, where and why. Understanding customer behavior is the key to success. Proper customer intelligence not only informs, it’s a kind of signpost that guides and advises marketers to make rational business decisions.
How customer intelligence can help marketers
Customer intelligence helps the marketer better understand the wishes and expectations of consumers. Research conducted last year by IBM clearly indicates that it is “impossible to personalize products, services or experiences without a clear idea of the customer’s core values and what’s happening in their lives”
Where to look for information? Social media, CRM, websites, mobile apps, loyalty programs, Wi-fi and beacons, etc. The possibilities are endless. The key to success is, first of all, an appropriate analysis of the data received and maximizing the consumer touchpoint with the brand. Customer intelligence is a powerful machine that can help marketers to personalize communications.
Customer lifecycle in marketing strategy
Currently, customers have constant access to the world of information on both companies and their competitors. Social media and websites are for them a kind of megaphone through which they communicate their feelings about the brand. Those emotions have an impact, whether positive or negative.
The primary goal of marketing automation and sales is to increase sales volume through a perfect fit between targeted messages and the needs, interests and possibilities of potential customers.
5 major steps in using customer intelligence
1. Say “Hello” to your new clients
The first impression is important. Always. Interaction with potential customers is possible on many levels. Classic marketing “Hello” can take the form of supplementing their data in the customer profile, sharing information about the products and services they are interested in, or their personal preferences for communication with the company.
2. Take care of the needs of a regular customer
Don’t send regular customers general offers. A lack of personalization and references to their individual needs is a mistake, which generates a high degree of risk. With customer intelligence, we can explore consumer purchasing preferences, find out what they expect from the product or service and prepare a personalized offer that will help them make the purchasing decision. Thanks to the support of marketing automation, customers will receive an e-mail or SMS based on real customer behavior, taking into account the most diverse scenarios of contact and target groups.
3. Use the possibility of the cross- and upselling
Buying advice, published in emails, are perfect for conducting effective cross- and upselling. Product recommendations can be initiated by a purchase, registration or any other action of the client. The intention of the marketer is to encourage the customer to continue shopping or to offer higher value products.
4. Remember – email still has power
Birthdays, anniversaries, new products linea – there are many reasons to initiate contact with customers. Typically, transactional e-mails are automatically sent after the purchase, order or other similar transactions and provide information matched to the last transaction. Collect all needed data about your clients, then start marketing automation campaign. This step is crucial in modern marketing.
5. Reactivate your customers
The client lifecycle ends with remarketing. Marketing automation can also be helpful when we see the lack of customer response to marketing activities – no clicks on ads, e-mails or offers, unfinished transactions or long breaks between account logins. Using encouraging reactivation, it is possible to automatically recover and protect a customer’s lifetime value.
Wrapping up
The combination of customer intelligence and marketing automation helps to create highly personalized campaigns. Today, there is no problem in the implementation of direct dialogue, during which every customer receives a personalized message. Marketers have the power to integrate various data sources and create a powerful analytical too.