Big Data is the term for massive data sets that can be mined with analytics software to produce information about your potential customers habits, preferences, likes and dislikes, needs and wants.
This knowledge allows you to predict the types of marketing, advertising and customer service to extend to them to produce the most sales, satisfaction and loyalty.
Skilled use of Big Data produces a larger clientele, and that is a good thing. However, having more customers means you must also have an effective means of keeping track of them, managing your contacts and appointments with them and providing them with care and service that has a personal feel to it rather than making them feel like a number.
Thats where CRM software becomes an essential tool for profiting from growth in your base of customers and potential customers. Good CRM software does exactly what the name implies offers outstanding Customer Relationship Management with the goal of fattening your bottom line.
With that brief primer behind us, lets look at five ways that the integration of Big Data and CRM is shaping todays marketing campaigns.
Achieving Targeted Multi-Channel Reach
The data acquired by marketers tells them where to find their customers and potential customers. The information you leave, for example, when visiting a website allows the site owner to find you on social media and other platforms. Not only do they market to you on those channels, they gain additional information from them regarding your likes and habits to tailor ads, coupons, offers and comprehensive marketing strategies to capture your attention and ultimately your business.
Finding the Optimal Price
Companies want to find the sweet spot between price and profit. If the price of an item or service drops, sales will go up but profit per sale drops. If price rises, sales will likely drop, but the profit per sale rises. Big Data points companies to the price that will produce the greatest profits, according to McKinsey.
Improving Customer Responsiveness
Having scads of data about you allows a company to craft its outreach to you in the most attractive way. The marketing/advertising outreach to your neighbors and cyber-neighbors will be different based on what the company knows about them. In addition, as you respond and begin to interact with the company, it will use what it knows already and what it is learning about you to tweak its marketing approach.
This is the technique that salespeople have always used in face-to-face and phone sales. They make observations and ask questions to learn about you, and then they use that knowledge to offer goods and/or services that you will be interested in. With Big Data, the data acquired about you is the observation/interview that leads to the right marketing strategy.
Focused, multi-channel marketing that provides value to you as a customer or potential customer increases the companys chances of converting the outreach and interaction into sales. Forrester Research concluded that using Big Data in this way produces, significant increases in customer engagement, customer retention and upsell and cross-sell revenue.
Better Management of Leads and Clients
As we noted, effectively using Big Data produces more leads and clients/customers. However, without integrated CRM, what should be a big benefit can become a big problem. If those leads and customers/clients arent served effectively, they become ex-leads and ex-customers pretty quickly. The time and effort youve invested in them are wasted, and your brand can suffer significantly when those people go negative about you to their neighbors and cyber community.
CRM tools are now available for a wide range of professionals. Real estate agents use specialised, cloud-based CRM to manage every step from lead to settlement including staying in touch with clients and scheduling open homes, showings, calls and appointments from any device. Doctors and dentists employ CRM for scheduling, securely posting medical records for the patient to view, pre-visit and post-visit instructions to patients and much more. These are just two of many fields using industry-specific CRM.
Successful Customer Relations Producing More Sales
The bottom line remains profits. The combination of Big Data analytics and specialised CRM, according to Forrester, allows users to get beyond campaign execution and focus on how to make customer relationships more successful, which means more profitable.
The Bottom Line for You
Are Big Data analytics driving your lead acquisition and marketing? If so, do you have effective CRM software to help you turn more leads and customers into growing sales, satisfied, loyal customers and increased profits? How you answer those two questions might be an accurate predictor of what your bottom line will look like with your current approach.
