Using the Power of Data to
Drive Sales

---

Share this Post:

Do you ever feel like you don’t really know your customer? You’re making content and managing your various marketing activities––but is it the right content? The right marketing mix? What many businesses don’t realize is that they may have a lot more intel than they thought. Find out what customer insights you may be missing out on and how knowing more can make all the difference in your marketing efforts.

Find out What You’re Missing

Most businesses already have a sizeable amount of data about customer behavior and preferences from a variety of sources including:

• Web activity
• Email response
• Search behavior
• Media tracking

With some analysis and strategic use of the insights you find, you stand to reap some significant rewards, from more purposeful and popular content and smarter media targeting to improved ROI and all around increased marketing performance.

How to Mine Your Data

So how do you turn this raw data into better use of your marketing dollars? First, you have to know what you’re looking at. Take a step back and consider your digital ecosystem and all the information that may be available to you, based on your current channels.

Let’s look at your emails, for example. Consider your open rate and click through rate. What are your most popular emails? Look for aspects they have in common. Try to find patterns. You may notice more opens for certain types of subject lines. Perhaps stronger calls to action in the email content win more click throughs. Determining helpful trends can help lead you to higher performing emails in the future.

Consider your audiences. Does one audience interact on social media while another seems to visit your site more often? Determine which interactions with your digital ecosystem produce the most leads. Also look at how your users are crossing over from one channel to another. How you can use one channel to connect your user to another, or all, of your channels?

To make your data analysis most efficient–and powerful, consider gathering it all in one spot for easier analysis. Creating a structured measurement model and data dashboard with key performance indicators helps you put data collection on “auto pilot.”

Empower Your Strategic Approach

Once you have some trends and insights, you can construct a strategic approach informed by this new knowledge, such as:

• Smarter audience targeting by digital touchpoint
• Search-powered editorial calendars for your blog
• Data-inspired refinement of your emails

Then, after you look at your channels on a micro level, make sure they work together at a macro level. Connecting them together, for example your CRM tools and your Google suite of products, allows you to better segment your audiences, craft stronger audience personas and measure more efficiently.

Your Prize Potential

What makes all the data mining and channel integration worth it? Your business stands to gain a lot more than knowledge. It improves the whole process, right down to your bottom line. Harnessing your audience behavior data leads to a better performing sales pipeline. By connecting outcomes, you can truly understand your impact on generating leads and revenue. And when you better understand your impact, you can better increase it. Then, when you use real time data to measure performance and program optimizations, your future investment decisions in your marketing activities are that much stronger and more confident.

Customer Data: A Success Story

This is exactly what our client, Zontec, has experienced. We helped optimize their digital communications and marketing technology infrastructure. Zontec was able to better target their most high-value potential customers and maximize their ROI. Spoiler alert: within three months of launching an integrated platform, digital conversions increased by 91% versus the previous three months. Read our case study for the whole real-life story on how one company tapped the power of their customer data to strengthen their marketing activities and build sales results.

Share this Post: