The value of big data to marketing analytics is clear. With it, you can monitor every aspect of your marketing and gain insight into correlations only big data could reveal. What does big data mean for your customers, though, and how can it enhance their experience with you? It’s no secret that satisfied customers are repeat customers, and big data can help make it happen.
Using Behavioral Data to Deliver Better Service
It may seem like a paradox, but big data helps you offer better service on the smallest scale: the individual customer. With segmentation and customization, you’re able to speak to each buyer personally and identify the most useful content for each prospect. Grouping similar customers together is not a new idea, but big data allows for far more accurate and finely shaded segmentation. It also lets you incorporate behavioral data to paint an even clearer picture of your customers; when you know who your buyers are, you’re better able to serve them.
Let’s take a look at an example of how big data affects one buyer’s experience. A leading HVAC company works with both commercial and residential ventilation systems and our customer here is a restaurateur who’s building a new steakhouse. His trajectory through the HVAC company’s website focuses on the site’s commercial pages. Based on this behavior and on prior data collected about customers who matched his profile, the company can then display commercial ventilation content first and extend an invitation to subscribe to the commercial HVAC newsletter instead of the one for homeowners.
Welcoming Back Lost Customers
Customers fade away for many reasons, but until you know what those reasons are, you aren’t able to correct any perceived problems. Your quantitative data may point the way to the gaps in your sales pipeline through which customers are being lost. Analyzing unsubscribe and opt-down data can tell you in detail what your prospects want, and following up on those preferences helps turn shoppers into buyers. When you’ve identified why a past customer left, you’re able to reach out with new information to win their attention again.
Sometimes, customers don’t leave you because they want to be lost. They lose touch with you after a job change or a move and simply forget to come back to you once they’ve settled in. Using big data to append information to customer records helps you keep track of your customers from your end, ensuring they receive uninterrupted service no matter how their digital footprints change.
Pinpointing Locations in the Sales Pipeline
Let’s go back to our steakhouse owner. He wouldn’t serve customers or present them with a bill until after they’d seen the menu because service has a natural progression. That’s true of service in B2B industries too, and big data helps you locate where your leads are along that progression so you can deliver the right content at the right time. A company that delivers timely, relevant information at just the right speed is a significant asset to potential customers who often have a limited time in which to make a buying decision.
Big data isn’t just big news for you; it’s also a major improvement for your customer base.
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