Data is nothing more than a collection of different types of information that businesses use to add value to their goods or services.

As consumers, we might wonder how that’s is possible, but it’s true, and as business owners and officers, it is important to know how businesses can benefit from that consumer data.

Let’s take a look at how customer data could help you increase your business’ value. Let’s start by understanding the special characteristics of customer data.

Customer data attributes

Various types of consumer data differ in their features and can be useful in different ways. Consumer data can also be gathered in many different forms:

Fundamental Information: this includes basic information about the consumer, their name, email address, demographic data, etc. This does not include tracking any of the behaviours of the consumers.

This fundamental information is most often considered Customer or Consumer Master Data.

Interaction Data: This data includes how the customer is involved with a product, which websites they perhaps visit, which eBook they download, etc. This offers potential for helping to personalize the services that a business may offer or consider offering by understanding the behaviour of the consumer.

Consumer Attitude Data: This is often first-hand information obtained by companies by conducting surveys. It helps a company to understand the personal qualities, preferences and opinions of the consumer which can then be used to tailor services towards those consumers.

Your business may have some of this data already or may also be looking to leverage mechanisms to get access to data like any one of these data types. The real question, is after you have this data, what can you do with it and what is it worth?

How could consumer data add business value? 

Here are some thoughts on how your business could take advantage of the data that it has and derive the most business value.

Insights about market and customer choice: The more comprehensive and complete the data that you have for your customers or prospects, the more appropriate your understanding of the market and customer choices will be. In the absence of data, your understanding of the market can only be guesswork. You can rely on the statistics of sales and service to tell you about customer choice but if you don’t have good statistical data then you will have to make a lot of assumptions about customers’ preferred choices and market preferences.

Improved Decision Making: Consumer data, when aggregated, summarised, sliced and diced, assists a business in making informed decisions. Decisions that can increase business productivity and efficiency. You could, for example, more easily understand which of your products is more in demand, this could, in turn, lead to a focus on targeted marketing or promotion strategies that will drive increased sales and revenue. Quick and effective decisions call for fast and accurately delivered data.

Personalized Approach: In order to maximize the potential revenue or engagement of customers and prospects a degree of message customization will bring tremendous advantages. Personalized communication has never been more appropriate or affordable and can jumpstart marketing and sales campaigns. Marketers can now create and send individualized emails to specific target groups with specific needs. A personalized approach gives a business a better understanding of the audience which puts an emphasis on relevance and should be expected to drive more engagement and business opportunities.

Don’t allow your marketing campaigns and business plans to stagnate because you continue to labour under the traditional model of underutilized business data.

Instead, start with upgrading to a newer and better Customer Master Data Management approach with the Pretectum CMDM – contact us for more information.

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