PR Company, Internet Marketing

Importance of Customer Data on Email Marketing

What do you know about your customers? Their name, address and what they’ve bought? That’s a good start, but if you did know a little more about your customers, would you know what to do with that information?

In the early days of e-commerce, small businesses didn’t tend to compile extensive profiles on their customers. The focus was on getting the website right and to an extent, SEO. The fast progression of the internet has meant that this industry is now becoming more and more sophisticated, with internet marketing at the heart of progress.

What helps internet marketing professionals target their efforts with conversion optimisation is solid data about customers that extends past what they buy, their interests, their buying habits etc.

So what does holding such data on your customers mean to your e-commerce website

Identify – identifying different behaviours and buying patterns in different groups of customers means you can sub-group your email lists and ensure that say, men and women get marketing communications that are more useful and interesting to the recipient.

Personalisation – you should be aiming to make customers feel valued. It isn’t just about saying “Hi Dave” as a salutation in an email, it could be about seeing what customers have looked at and bought before, again, being useful to them. Online fashion and home ‘catalogue’ store ‘Very’, sends customers emails to remind them of items that they have spent a long time looking at or have looked at many times without purchasing.

Flexibility – knowing what customers have bought means you can be more flexible with your campaigns e.g. if you are promoting a particular product you could ensure that a customer doesn’t receive communications about a product they have already purchased which could affect how relevant customers see your emails to be, which ultimately affects your credibility.

Relevancy – irrelevant contact from companies waters down impact upon a customer. Holding information on customers means that you can avoid being irrelevant and having your communications routinely ignored or having customers unsubscribe from your mailing list.

Remember that the data you hold is hugely valuable to others as well as yourself. Any data you hold on your customers should be stored securely with permission i.e. as part of your terms and conditions and NEVER passed on to anyone else without their explicit permission.

If you are a small business, it is hard to set up your own database and make the best use of it, but with the right direction and canny use of the data you hold on your customers, you can improve your sales and offer greater value to your customers.

To find out how JPR Marketing can help your business become an internet success story, contact David Wiltshire on 0845 544 1764.

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