To carry out a successful business venture in the long term, it is essential to work in the relationship with your customers. And one of the best ways to do that is to take advantage of the information you get from them! That is why today we will teach you how to create a database of your customers to maintain and increase your sales.
In this post blog ,you will learn what a database is, what type of information you can collect and what are the benefits that can bring to your business. We’ll also show you how to create a database and best practices to get the most out of it. Take note!
What is a Customer Database and what is its importance for your Business?
As explained by Marketing Specialists, a Customer Database is a collection of information for each customer that is relevant to your business. But what do we mean by “relevant”?But what do we mean by “relevant”? This relevance depends on the nature of your business and your specific needs..
Thus, a customer database can include from contact data (mail, telephone etc.) to specifications and details about the transactions performed. The type of information that you are requesting from your customers always depends on the utility that you have for your business and your marketing strategies.
For example, a real estate business owner knows that people usually buy a house only once in their life, so you will not need to store as much information regarding your buyer’s preferences, unlike a hairdresser whose clients usually make one or more visits per month.
So creating a database is the best way to keep your customers’ information tidy and up to date. It also allows you to contact your customers and prospects, build loyalty, provide a better service and promote your sales.
To Recap, What Is A Database Worth From The Marketing Viewpoint?
Having information from your customers, from contact information to their particular preferences allows you:
- Increase your sales through techniques such as email marketing, telemarketing or telephone marketing, etc.
- Retrieve old or undecided clients by taking advantage of the remarketing strategies.
- Offer personalized promotions tailored to each customer based on their profile in your database (preferences in payment modes, purchases made previously, etc.)
- Keep your customers and prospects informed about your novelties, special offers, etc.
- Provide quality care, that is possible thanks to the registration of the specific characteristics of each client in your database.
What Kind Of Information Can You Collect In Your Customer Database?
If we think about how to Create a Customer Database, there are three major sources of information that largely determine the type of data you can collect. They are the following:
- Your Business
- Your Website
- Your Social Networks
Your Business
It allows you to obtain the most “hard” or specific information related to real customers: you can register the name of your buyers, their address, telephone or email, their credit card, the product they bought, what date they did it, etc.
Your Website
In addition to being the “virtual cover” of your business, or your cover letter, your website is a very complete and valuable source of information on getting specific information about your audience, that is to say, those people who are interested in your proposals, which cover your online offers, etc.
Using a free tool like Google Analytics you can know who visits your site, what sections or products they have explored, where they came from, how long they’ve been on your website, and more.
Your Social Networks
Besides to being the virtual space par excellence for the capture of your audience and the positioning and promotion of your brand, Social Networks are an excellent source of information for your database.
Beside to analyzing the profile of your followers, after posting a post on Facebook, Twitter, etc. You can study the impact of each type of publication on people interested in your proposals, reviewing the amount of times shared, receiving Likes and getting Comments.
That way you can register what your audience likes best and improve your content marketing strategy. You can also analyze users that enter into a particular demographic profile, based on criteria such as age, gender, and location, as a complement to your market studies.
How Can You Use Your Customer Database? Introducing The 3 Most Important And Profitable Uses
As you may have noticed, the information you can get from your customers and prospects, as well as the ways to get it, are very diverse. Now let’s see what is the concrete meaning of accumulating such data, that is, what a Customer Database serves.
According to the specialists, the uses you can give to the information collected are diverse and even depend on your creativity. However, roughly we can distinguish the 6 most important and profitable uses:
1- Purchasing Analysis
First, we must mention the analysis of purchases, that is, to study what the items purchased by each customer and how they arrived at them. This is especially useful for improving your website or eCommerce, by optimizing the user interface, the possibility of recommending related products, etc.
This use is based on the assumption that it is feasible to predict the behavior of a user or client, based on their past actions. Such information regarding the purchase can be very useful for all types of businesses and industries.
For example, you can evaluate the use of credit cards to prevent fraud (this is essential for online sales sites). Another possibility is to analyze telephone usage patterns, Ex. If you have a mobile phone company you can relieve the customers who buy all the new features you offer and give them special offers.
2- Sales foresight
A strategic way to use your Customer Database to increase your sales has to do with predicting when they will buy back, considering when they did it earlier.
Thus, according to the type of products you sell and through this strategy, you can create systems of programmed obsolescence or create kits or complementary products to sell. Along with this, it is recommendable to analyze the number of customers that make up your market and try to predict their behavior.
For example. If you have a cafeteria you can ask how many similar businesses there are in a kilometer around, as well as how many competitors, register what is your average sales per day and compare the information with your market study to give you a view of how you are positioned and What can come..
3- Database Marketing
Another very useful and almost obligatory way in relation to the use that you can give to your Database of Clients has to do with the strategies of Marketing. A great deal of it is analyzing the buying habits, demographics data, and psychological attitudes of your customers to build buyer profiles.
These profiles allow you to optimize to the maximum your trading strategies, as well as generate new sales techniques that respond to each type of buyer built and even generate products specially designed to fit into each category created.
Alongside this, after creating your categories you can dedicate yourself to email marketing and send much more personalized promotional emails to different groups of customers, identified from the previous analysis.
How to Create a Customer Data Base?
Now that you know the importance of having relative information about your customers and their different needs and buying habits, we give you a list of methods on how to create a database of customers, to help you collect information about your customers and prospects (e.g . . . your followers on Social Networks).
- Conduct questionnaires and surveys via mail and through your Social Networks (e.g. Twitter includes a function to do surveys easily).
- Request the email of your buyers, their address and their phone as part of the purchase process.
- Make competitions (in your business or through your social networks) with prizes such as discounts or free kits of your products, which are required to participate in the registration of specific data (e.g. name, age, sex, city, email, Telephone, last product purchased, etc.).
- Include in your blog or website a field to enter email addresses, so that people, who want to subscribe to your newsletter and receive your offers, can easily do so when they visit your website.
- If you are selling occasional purchase products (e.g. ink for printers) enter the item, date and time of purchase of each customer, and register it in their profile within your Customer Database (in this way you can estimate your Next purchase and get ahead with a convenient offer).
- Place forms in your store or business for your clients to enter their data, and accompany it with an “Enter Your Data to Receive Our Discounts and News” sign.
That’s all for today! We hope this article has resulted useful for you to value and take advantage of the information you get from your customers. Doing it strategically can not only multiply your sales, but ensure to your business a successful long-term commercial performance.
As a complement, we recommend the following readings of our blog:
- How to Apply the Users Experience (UX) to your Email Marketing Campaigns and Make a Difference in Your Market?
- 25 Tips So You Can Choose the Perfect Email Marketing Tool
- How to create a Twitter remarketing strategy that works and helps you get clients in only 5 steps
Did you like this blog post? Leave us your comments! And do not forget to share this article with your co-workers. Until next time! 🙂