What Should You Do With All That Customer Data?*

Many companies have huge swathes of customer data at their disposal, but have no idea as to how to use it effectively. There are actually many productive ways to use customer data. This guide explains some of the best ways to put your data to use.

Understand your audience with analytics

Customer data can be analysed in order to better understand your audience and their wants/needs. You can work out exactly which types of products are popular among which types of demographics. Are older customers more likely to buy certain products than younger people? Are certain customers more likely to buy certain products on certain days? By using analytic software, you can map out data into graphs and more easily detect trends. This can tell you exactly which products to order more/less of, when to promote them and who to promote them to. 

Break up your mailing lists

Instead of sending promotional emails to all of your subscribers at once, consider creating email segments. Using customer data, you can target emails to certain groups of people based on certain behaviours. For example, if you run a gym, you could consider sending your new members and long-term members different promotional emails.

Recommend products/services

You can also use customer data to make personalised recommendations when it comes to products and services. By finding trends between other customers, you can work out which types of products/services certain people are more likely to spend money on. 

Send birthday gifts

Your customers’ date of birth is an important piece of data to have. Not only does it allow you to know the age of your customer so that you can offer personalised promotions, but you can also send them a message on their birthday. This could be accompanied by a complimentary gift to inspire loyalty. 

Win back previous loyal customers

You can also use customer data to win back customers who you may have lost. If a customer hasn’t purchased anything in a while, you can send out an email to alert them of new deals. A simple email telling customers that you miss them could be enough to win them back in some cases. Some of the best marketing automation software can help you to automate these emails. 

An important side note on customer data…

While customer data can be incredibly useful to businesses, it is important that you are only collecting and using data with your customers’ consent. This typically involves asking customers for permission to collect cookies when they visit your site and only signing customers up to mailing lists with their permission. This ensures that you are not accused of ‘spamming’ customers who may not want to be sent personalised promotions, while those who do want these promotions are able to receive them.