Baesman, a customer loyalty technology firm and agency dedicated to helping brands create relevant and personal connections with their customers, recently published an e-book titled Customer Acquisition 101: How to Use Customer Analytics to Earn New Customers. The book is aimed to educate brands on how best to leverage their data to deliver hyper-personalized communications that will engage end-users and drive brand loyalty.
Mark Johnson, Loyalty360 CEO, spoke with Cassie Preston, Director of Client Services, CRM and Loyalty, for Baesman, about how brands can collect and analyze data to understand their customer, drive engagement and boost customer loyalty.
With the degradation of the cookie and increased customer privacy regulations, brands today must learn how to leverage the data they have to create an experience that customers connect with, and more importantly, drives brand loyalty. Baesman is a unique partner in the industry that provides end-to-end customer engagement support for brands. The company provides support throughout the entire process, from loyalty and CRM strategy fueled by data and analytics, to loyalty management and campaign execution.
Ultimately, the company focuses on managing the one-to-one personal connection between brands and their customers, and the new e-book can help other businesses do just that.
Guide to Customer Analytics
Customer Acquisition 101: How to Use Customer Analytics to Earn New Customers, works as a guide for any business that needs assistance with knowing how to collect customer data and how to use it to build powerful consumer relationships. The e-book references steps brands can take to make informed marketing decisions, especially in today’s turbulent economic landscape. One of the most essential pieces for marketing efforts is learning how to use customer data.
The new publication focuses on the cleanliness of customer data, and the importance of organizing that data for the greatest benefit. Readers will learn how to manipulate and leverage data to fully understand who their customer is and what drives the customer’s buying decisions.
Employing data-driven marketing strategies is key to supporting brands’ customer loyalty efforts, but knowing how to translate that data to best serve the company is a challenge. According to Preston, “At the end of the day, two-thirds of retailers have their data sitting in fifty different places.”
Baesman encourages brands to find the data and learn how it can give a full view of the customer: demographics, buying habits, and behavior. Once a brand can capture and understand that data, it can harness it to drive customer behavior.
Cleaning Data for Best Results
Brands may be collecting customer data from multiple sources and different formats, including zero, first, and third party, and the challenge is consolidating that data to form a cohesive loyalty strategy and drive actionability.
At Baesman, they ask their brand partners:
- What’s important to you?
- What’s important to the customer?
- What is your goal?
With the correct KPIs and business strategy in mind, brands will have an easier way of organizing the data to meet their needs. The key is understanding what the business aims to accomplish, and having a strategic data partner can help streamline this effort tremendously.
Often data can feel unclean because it is incorrect, siloed, outdated, or perhaps there are security concerns from a privacy standpoint. It is critical to have those issues resolved to market to the most people. By setting a clear goal, a company can develop an actionable plan to consolidate the data.
Ask and You Shall Receive
If brands do not have the data they want from their customer base, Baesman has a simple solution: ask for it. Customers are seeking personalized experiences and are willing to share information with brands to get it. Brands need to get into the habit of asking the customer for the data they need to create personalized loyalty plans that will benefit both users. With the added privacy laws, marketers are wary of infringing on customers, but customers are willing to engage if they see an immediate benefit.
What data should companies collect? It depends on the brand and its goals. Baseline data should always include contact information, address, email, and opt-ins to communicate both legally and at will. In addition, buying behavior is critical to understanding the customer and knowing how best to serve them in the future. There is truth in the adage: past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.
There is a sweet spot in understanding the customer and providing a personal experience without overwhelming them. Personalizing communications with a first name or how close a customer is to earning a reward is a great start, but the more in-depth data can be used to personalize the entire touchpoint or timeline if organized correctly and accurately. It is this one-to-one connection that is most critical in building brand loyalty.
Baesman focuses on generating a close relationship between the brand and its customer. Though in today’s fluctuating environment, customer preferences change often and quickly, and brands need to be able to change with them.
A Fresh Perspective on Analytics
Not every brand needs a partner in data analytics; many studies can be done by an in-house analytics team. However, it is always valuable to get a fresh perspective. By understanding the customer as a whole singular view, brands will learn how to influence that customer’s behavior.
The Baesman team stresses the importance of segmenting data as well. Performing a basic data segmentation and layering it onto the marketing campaign can influence the buying cycle. In addition, predictive analytics can take past behavior and predict what could happen when a brand adds a new benefit or touchpoint.
Having an analytics partner who can provide a fresh perspective can help brands learn the best action to take to get the biggest benefit from their data.