Boost your customer experience: a competitive differentiator. Effective Customer data management can do it for you! (Source: Forbes)
Customer data management
To prove, firms that lead customer experience outshine laggards by nearly 80%. (Source: Forbes)
Certainly, effective customer data management will lead to better customer experience.
Further, most of the business people claim that along with customer journey, data privacy and protection arm in arm, leading to better customer experience.
To conclude, customer data management empowers every business unit to target customers in a more precise and effective way.
Here, collecting data is very important, but it doesn’t mean to collect it from all touch points which are irrelevant to your business that leads to security issues in the long run. Instead, focus on factors that can add value to your business.
Here in this article, you will get answers to all probable questions for customer data management from scratch.
What is Customer Data Management?
Types of Data Collection for Consumer Data Management
Why is Customer Database Management your Utmost Priority?
Customer Data Management Best Practices from Industry Experts
Business Benefits of Customer Master Data Management
Choose the Right Customer Database Management Software
Let’s start!
What is Customer Data Management?
Customer data management (CDM) involves the process of collecting, managing, and analyzing customer data management from various touchpoints of the customers’ journey. On the whole, it’s forming a single view of the customer employing effective technology and software.
The ultimate goal of the customer data management process is to deliver-
Real-time,
Personalized,
And channel-agnostic customer experiences.
Customer data management strategy consider mainly-
Customer gain, satisfaction, engagement, and retention rates.
Transparency in customer communication strategies.
And increased data quality & revenue.
As we have already mentioned, it is like a burn of money and time if you collect data from all touchpoints of your customers.
It might have raised a question in you: How to gather customer data? And which type of data to collect?
Let’s discuss here to get a clear idea about how and what type of data to collect.
Types of Data Collection
Types of Data Collection
To ensure you, you’re collecting the right type of data for your business. Here we have categorized the type of data into four types-
Identity,
Quantitative,
Descriptive,
And Qualitative data.
Let’s put light on it individually-
Identity Data
To explain, the identity data you usually get when customers do sign-ups, enter payment details, subscriptions, or to get notifications for a particular product or service arrival in stock.
The example of identity data is- name, date of birth, area, gender, contact or address details, social profiles, user ids, payment preferences, and many other personal details.
Quantitative Data
This data refers to collecting the data of the individual based on the interaction your customer made with your brand, their preference, and inclinations. You can obtain this data from-
Web analytics tools,
Tracking cookies on web pages,
Tracking pixels in newsletters,
Transactions history,
Customer support history,
And social media activities.
Examples of Quantitative Data are-
Online/offline transactions,
Inbound/outbound communication,
Online activity,
Social network,
And customer service.
Descriptive Data
This data aims to collect the more precise level information of the customers that can help them to predict seasonal-
Growth, decline, and buying conducts
And lifespan of the customer cycle.
You can collect this data from-
Conducting surveys,
Questionnaires in website
Analyzing the behavior based on some factors
Targeted group interviews
Advanced lead forms
Examples of descriptive data include- Family details, lifestyle, properties, career growth, hobbies, income, and education details.
Qualitative data
This data involves some efforts in a tricky way. It mainly consists of predicting the choice of customers based on their conduct.
By focusing on typical questions like- who, how, where, why, and what. You can collect this data from-
Analyzing the behaviors of the customer on social media using monitoring tools.
Tailored newsletter sign-up process.
Reviewing the industry-related websites
Examining the rate or review system.
Analyzing the replies to the feedback forms.
The example of qualitative data is the things which motivate them, their-
Choices,
Interest,
Preferences,
Likes/dislikes,
Rating system,
Inclination value,
And many more.
effective sources of marketing data
Here’s a Breakdown of Why is Customer Database Management your Utmost Priority?
Customer Data Management
The expectation of customers and the rapid evolution of customer data has shifted the marketing strategies. Basically from persona-based marketing to Personally Identifiable Information (PII) based marketing by using AI-driven technology.
In other words, Customer data management is the primary factor that helps marketers to perform data-driven marketing or advertising.
Using these Adtech and Martech strategies, marketers can easily target their audience based on their precise level of information.
Customer data management helps marketers to utilize their first-party data better and activate the same using various marketing channels by practicing omnichannel, cross channel, or multichannel marketing strategies.
To leverage completely from customer data, it became imperative for marketers to have a strong customer database management strategy.
Eventually, an effective customer data management system will deliver persistent customer experience.
Still, these didn’t convince you? Look at these stats from Forbes.
Statistics from Forbes
80% of customers replied they are more inclined to brands with a personalized experience.
96% of customers replied that customer service is the primary factor that determines their loyalty to the brand.
Firms who use data-driven marketing experience a competitive advantage and profitability. Also, six times more profitable year-by-year.
64% of marketing executives have a firm believe that data-driven marketing is significant in the economy.
Let’s have a look on-
Key Components
Key Components in customer data management
Customer data management helps marketers in the free flow of real-time customer data across various business operations.
CRM data management ultimately helps the companies to reach their marketing goals, such as- personalized experience to every customer across their buying journey.
Marketing is no longer dependent on the channel or brand instead of the customer.
To achieve this customer data management is classified into these four Key components include-
Data collection and integration, Data management, Data analysis, and Data activation
Let’s know each of them in detail-
Data Collection and Integration
Data Collection & integration in customer data management
It’s the first step to build a strategic and integrated customer data model as CRM customer data is coming from various sources across various touchpoints of the marketing channels, devices, and platforms.
To leverage the maximum benefit from data, marketers need to be ready with a plan like- which data is helpful for the company and which is not.
This analysis helps the company to build a customer data management system strategy more effectively.
The collected data must be centralized by going through the process called ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) that involves-
Extract- Ingesting the significant data,
Transform- Transforming it (removing the duplicate data and formatting it in a standard way)
Load- And then loading to bring all data together into the preferred customer data management platform such as CDP, CRM, DMP.
The result will be the data of your need in one place, in your preferred format.
Data Management
Data Management in in customer data management
It involves building a single view of the customer by connecting all the data points of the individual customer. For first-party data of MarTech applications, it mainly includes-
Probabilistic or deterministic identity resolution,
Creating identity graphs,
A single view of the customer,
And integrating customer consent to ensure regulatory compliance.
And for Adtech applications, that make use of DMP needs first to anonymize the data to build a ‘lookalike’ segment.
Data Analysis
Data Analysis in in customer data management
Here in this stage, you are ready to make use of data. Marketers can now build their targeted audience lookalike profiles, can run predictive analysis to build effective campaign results, and so on.
Data Activation
Data Activation in customer data management
Now the data is ready to activate in various marketing channels. Here your task is to select the best marketing technology platforms to run data-driven marketing campaigns.
The next step comes to integrating data with performance tracking and analytics systems via marketing systems to better optimize campaigns in real-time.
Now you have got better insights on the key data components of customer data management.
Let’s take a look at-
Best Practices from Industry Experts
Adhering data privacy policies must be your priority.
Use a consent management platform to take consent from the customer with clearly defining which data you’re using and for what purpose.
Collect data of your concern instead of collecting every information about your customer, which saves time and money and helps you in avoiding security issues.
Make it easy for your sales, marketing, and all other departments to access data.
Practice data onboarding by connecting your online and offline data.
Avoid making use of excel sheets for maintaining customer data, shift to customer database management systems.
List the features you need in your customer database software and then select the one which is of your business.
Always maintain the backup of your customer data.
Clean the customer data, which you have previously collected by removing irrelevant information and duplication of data.
Invest in training your employees.
Use customer data management tools to monitor, validate, visualize, and control data.
Don’t build a single customer view for every individual.
Avoid data siloed structures.
Segment your CRM customer data into various factors at the beginning so that it will be easy for your sales and marketing team in the long run to make better decisions.
Better customer insights will ultimately help the business to perform better and improve the trust of their customer, partners, stakeholders, and many others related to their business.
Business Benefits of Customer Master Data Management
Acquire Customer Insights
Obtaining customer insights is the stepping stone for the business to make their business decisions in the long run.
A master data customer helps the companies to make decisions like where to invest, on which product, for how much time, and many others.
That, in turn, related to returns on equity, reducing uncertainty, sustaining growth, and accelerating future cash.
Customer Segmentation
Customer master data management helps businesses to categorize their customers better based on their preferences, interest, behavior, and many other precise levels of factors.
Also, generate the lookalike customers from your targeted customers. So that marketers get ready to use customer segments for targeting campaigns.
Better Business Decisions
Changes in technology are a never-ending process. To have a competitive advantage, adopting state of the art technology is mandatory for the business.
Customer master data management helps the company to understand their customer better using-
AI-driven techniques,
Aligned with your business goals,
And effectively run marketing campaigns.
Building Effective Communications with Customers
Building Effective Communication with Customers
Building your customer database will also cover which channels your customer more interested in, their preference, and other details.
Altogether help the marketers to reach their targeted customers at the need of the hour with the right offers and compelling messages.
Creating Customer Loyalty
Acquiring customers is not the right figure to see your progress in businesses. Maintaining and retaining your customer plays a significant part in improving customer experience.
Customer database management will help in maintaining good relationships with customers by taking care of customers’ needs at the right times.
Monetizing your Customer Data
The unified and segmented data of your customer you can use for generating revenue.
By activating your data across various advertising channels with the help of platforms like- Audienceplay.
Better Targeting
Customer data management helps the companies to build a single view of the customer by connecting the data of the audience both in online and offline sources. By finding out your offline audience online using their PII.
And effective customer database management will help in targeting your customer everywhere wherever they present online.
Choose the Right Customer Database Management Software
As we know, Customer database management is a strong foundation for the business. You can’t take the risk by selecting the wrong.
Have a look on this-
Right customer database management software
The below image can help you in making better choices according to your business.
Customer data Platform vs other data systems
Takeaway
The foundation of excellent customer experience lies in maintaining extensive customer data management.
Customer database management can help in providing-
Personalized experience,
Tailored communication,
Proper recommendation,
And many more benefits to the customer.
By using proper software, you can use your organized data for customer data extension, segmentation, activation across various marketing channels.
To achieve this, you need to collect the relevant data from all touchpoints of your customer, save it properly, and follow security measures.
If you are successful in achieving this with the latest customer data management tools and software, it can help you in meeting your business goals now and even in the long run.
Audienceplay is one such platform with all such features which CRM, DMP, CDP platforms have. Along with additional features of onboarding and monetizing your data using AI technology. Give it a try to leverage benefits from it!
customer data management customer experience
You May Also Like
audience extension
What Is Audience Extension and How Is It Useful?
Why DMP
Know Why DMP is So Important for Your Business
App marketing strategies
[Infographic] 7 Great Strategies to Incorporate in Your App Marketing
About the Author: Khadeer Sultana
My urge to learn something new and passionate attitude changed my interest in being a professional content writer. My constant efforts and experience in the marketing field have built a first-rate conception of Martech, Adtech, and digital marketing in me. Currently, I’m putting my efforts in delivering content on advanced marketing & technology techniques to confer a benefit to entrepreneurs.