3 Steps of How to Use Customer Data Platforms to Benefit Your Business!

Businesses need to figure out the best ways to analyze information from their consumers to build better marketing strategies, create comprehensive consumer profiles, and figure out how they can increase their business efficiency. By having a few strategies and ways to analyze information from their consistent consumers and clients, businesses can use data and personality analysis to see what is working for their business and what needs to be changed.

Let’s see a few ways in which businesses can use quantifiable and quantitative information to boost their marketing strategies, consumer experiences, and other facets of their company.

3 ways to use a customer data platform to boost your business!

Although you may have decided it is time to use a customer data platform, you may be unsure of what this exactly will do for your business. This platform is an online software program that is in charge of organizing customer data by using various markers and analysis properties. By combining with other software, networks, systems, and marketing methods, it can use all of the comprehensive data from users to help create personalized customer profiles for a business to better understand their target market.

A simple definition of a customer data platform is a software that helps create a singular customer database with personalized profiles, with the database accessible to other systems in the business for increased efficiency. This technology helps build profiles by using figures from various sources across the business’ lifespan, such as your web online forms, contact forms, social media profiles, e-commerce buying, and transactions for your business; you can visit the site for more information.

The benefits of these platforms are to help businesses find out more about customer behavior – why they are acting a certain way and how businesses can influence the behavior for the better.

But why does customer data exist? The main reason is that it helps businesses comprehensively use online and offline data to form customer profiles to figure out the behavioral profiles of their target market to see how they can tailor their marketing efforts to reach their target market more effectively.

Here are a few ways you can use the platform to boost your business efficiency and strategy!

Step #1: Gather identity data

Identity data is the main focal point of each customer profile when it comes to a customer data platform. This type lets the business provide a unique perspective on each customer and prevent grouping customers together with their personality traits. Identity data focuses only on quantifiable data and easy information, such as name, demographics, location, contact information, professional information (job title), social information, and account information.

Step #2: Gather descriptive data

The second type that is influential in changing your business’s strategies for marketing and customer experience is descriptive data. Unlike identity one, which focuses solely on quantifiable numbers and data, descriptive type expands on the basics to help provide a more personalized profile for each customer. The categories of this type can oftentimes differ depending on the business sector of the company and the type of company using the data.

The main basics of descriptive one include the following, regardless of the business sector:

• Career information – employment history, education history, income level, job qualifications
• Lifestyle information – a type of home (apartment vs. the house), a vehicle owned (yes or no), pets, children, etc.
• Family information – number of children
• Hobby information – what the customer likes to do in their free time, such as running, gym, shopping, subscriptions, reading, etc.

By combining descriptive with identity data, you can help create a more full=picture profile of your customers. Instead of just using numerical data to figure out the basics about the customer, a descriptive one adds to the basics and helps provide a more complete picture to let businesses know the background, lifestyle, and education level of their target market.

Step #3: Use quantitative and behavioral data from your clients

Quantitative data lets businesses better understand how each customer reacts to their business, how they interact with their company, and why they are doing those actions. If you find that customers are constantly being offended by a sign in your store, you should use quantitative info to realize the detriment this has on your business and remove the sign.

Furthermore, quantifiable figures help categorize clients and figure out their personalities by observing actions, transactions, and reactions to actions performed by the business. The basics of quantitative info include the following:

• Transaction information – this information refers to the number of products purchased, the number of times they have left their carts while shopping online, previous orders, and order dates of past purchases. This specific info collection is especially important to figure out how often the customer makes purchases, how much they spend per purchase, and how recently the customer made a purchase.
• Email communication information – This type allows businesses to figure out the effectiveness of their email communication strategies. Do your emails frequently go unread and go straight to the trash folder? You need to figure out a better way to contact and change the subject lines to increase click-through and open rates for your marketing strategies.
• Online activity – This type helps categorize website visits, click-throughs, product views, and engagement to see how your customers interact with your website. If your website is non-engaging and basic, customers may not get as far on your website as they possibly could with a more dynamic platform.
• Customer service information – By analyzing communication dates, the nature of the queries, and the communications between service representatives and clients, business ideas can see if their customer service experience has helped or hurt their overall sales.

Conclusion

By using the three types of data, identity, descriptive, and quantitative, businesses can build a comprehensive customer profile that lets them tailor their marketing strategy and ideas to work with their target market. By analyzing the personalities and buying strategies of their consistent customers, businesses can alter their marketing, communication, and selling methods to best suit the needs and wants of their consumers.