It may sound like a simple topic, but housing all of your customer data in an easily searchable database is something that if done from Day 1 saves you a considerable amount of pain, time and money later down the line.
Becoming data-obsessed may seem a bit overkill initially, but the strategy you use which is extracted from a well organised database creates an efficient revenue machine.
Let us start off with a definition.
A customer database is the collection of information that is gathered from each person. The database may include contact information, like the person’s name, address, phone number, and e-mail address.
The database may also include past purchases and future needs based on the interaction with your website. And finally, it could include information around your social networks and where people hang out who may find your product.
Having a database helps you to do many things.
It helps you keep in touch with your current customers and potential prospects either through email marketing or print and gets you to focus on what is important to those customers.
Imagine if you had a product set that was relevant to 18 to 35-year-olds; this is a large demographic and if your database was arranged in such a way you would be able to segment these customer types out into their relevant buckets and market to them appropriately. A 35-year-old male will consume media and shop in a very different way to an 18-year female.
Not only can you target those who are engaged and active in your customer segments, but you can also use your database to target those who are not yet buyers.
Perhaps those customers who thought about buying (card abandonment if you are involved in e-commerce?) and fell at the final hurdle. Having a database that tracks these can not only target those people, you would be able to send an automated email as a reminder for those people who had things in their cart and did not buy – you would have no doubt seen this with many businesses.
Having these strategic insights can encourage serious growth in your sales because it will give you a data-driven plan of attack. That could be how to target those most receptive or likely to buy and whether you are targeting them for net new sales or upsells.
Lastly, you need a place to house all of this critical data.
A CRM resource like HubSpot will cater to all possible eventualities when it comes to database management, ensuring your privacy policies are kept up to date, GDPR compliant, and the like.
It allows you to automate email marketing outreach both as cold emails and also follow-ups, finally giving you the opportunity to see how successful you are by offering robust reporting and segmentation.