Are You Customer Data Ready?
Do you regularly sort out, clean and centralise all your Customer data? During the Covid pandemic this was an ideal time to do this but now that we have come out the other side, the need is still there. So consider all the sources of information you have that relate to your customers and prospects and commit to storing them all in one centralised and secure environment – effectively a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM).
As your business has grown over the years, you have accumulated multitudinous amounts of customer data which lies within box files, business cards, spreadsheets and in your PC’s, laptops and servers which you are using across your company’s departments.
Once you have done this;
You will have relevant data so you are only talking to those customers and prospects where you are most likely to do business so saving time and effort
This in turn will mean you can target your marketing more accurately and save on your campaign costs.
You will undoubtedly have an edge against your competitors as many businesses don’t manage their data as they should, especially when it comes to finding out more about their Customers.
5 steps to get Customer Data Ready:
Clean your Data
Find out where your data currently resides – as paper documents in files, on spreadsheets, on other PCs, on servers
Where you can, export that data as a CSV file into one master spreadsheet. Physically add data from paper files onto the spreadsheet. Column headings should include name, address, company and job description (where applicable) products and/or services purchased, value of these products/services, dates bought. Create new columns for any other data captured and populate these accordingly
Organise the data by company or address
Make sure the name of the person/persons are cleaned so you have one contact name e.g Mr J Smith may also have been added as J Smith or James Smith. This is also called de-duplication
Make your Data GDPR Compliant
Make sure that the data you now have is checked for compliancy. Only keep those contacts where you are sure that you permission to contact them
Profile Your Data
Get all your data onto a spreadsheet and do an 80/20 profile analysis by value so you can see who your best paying customers are.
This top 20% profile will essentially show you the kind of customers you do your best business with. You can then use this to create your avatars or personas and target similar new customers in the future
You can also look to engage with the other 80% and move them up the value chain
Centralise your Data
Now that you have clean data, you need to import it into a centralised and secure Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) so all the information can be shared with all the stakeholders in your business.
Talk to your Customers
Start talking to your top customers (20%) and understand what their concerns and plans are for the future and how you can help. This is where you start to build a long lasting and trusted relationship
Make sure that you capture all this information in your CRM
After this, look to engage with the rest of your customers (80%) picking those that you feel you can move up your value chain.