6 Tips To Leverage Database Marketing To Increase Your Conversions

6 Tips To Leverage Database Marketing To Increase Your Conversions
Robert Kneschke/Shutterstock.com
Summary: The face of database marketing is still continuing to evolve despite being around for nearly three decades. Many marketers are yet to implement database marketing, but... wait a minute, what is database marketing?

How To Leverage Database Marketing To Increase Your Conversions

Database marketing is the practice of classifying, collecting, and then scrutinizing customer data to deliver tailored, relevant, and effective marketing messages to customers. The database is compiled using data acquired from a range of internal sources including CRM, email correspondence, data warehouses, and external sources like social media and discussion forums. The primary aim of database marketing is to use this information to implement marketing strategies that ultimately upsurges profits. But there is more here; there are more than one ways in which you can leverage database marketing to increase conversions.

Here are 6 suggestions to drive your company’s marketing ROI for long-term success in the millennial marketplace:

1. Start By List Segmentation

Breaking up your contact lists into smaller segments is the first step in database marketing. These segments can be cut and combined in a number of different ways using a combination of value, life cycle, demographics, psychographics, industry, company size, etc. to develop more personalized messaging strategies.

The basic level of segmentation involves sorting or arranging customers and prospects by key attributes like type, size or potential, sales revenue, employees, product purchases, purchase interest, etc. A higher level of segmentation involves profiling or scoring customers and prospects based on their customer journey and key insights like buying timeframe, market influence, and the likelihood of repeat purchase and expected profit margin.

Profiling and scoring help in prioritizing your accounts and in designing effective data strategies by identifying frequencies; for example, 80% of ABC Corp’s profits are derived from the top 20% of customers or let’s say Software vertical comprise 35% of ABC Corporation’s customer base. A well-segmented targeted database can drive 66% higher conversion rates.

2. Expand Your Universe

Identifying and connecting with high potential prospects is the primary goal of most marketers. For this, knowing your ideal customer profile (ICP) and the total addressable market (TAM) is very critical. Analyze and do a quick TAM analysis to figure out your current market penetration. Based on your buyer personas—"heavy users" that fit your predetermined criteria, expand your total addressable market (TAM) by identifying companies analogous to your ideal customers.

3. Grow Your Existing Market Share

There has been a long-standing belief that there are 2 distinct types of salespeople: hunters and farmers. But what do you do in a mature market where there seems to be little to hunt and no new fertile ground? The key is finding pockets of profitable, micro-growth opportunities within your existing accounts. It’s easier, faster, and less expensive to sell more to existing customer than acquiring new ones.

Do you feel there’s more scope to infiltrate your existing customer accounts? Are there more purchasing decision makers you want to reach?

Expand your existing accounts by targeting the audience who have already shown interest in your service offerings or who have their colleagues who already are your clients. Your company’s client servicing, operations, and account managers play an important role in making this happen.

4. Ensure Customer Retention

Bringing in new customers is hard, but losing them is easy and costly. That’s why customer retention is critical. Increasing customer retention by 5% increases profits 25-95%.

To shift the focus from acquisition to retention, consider updating CRM, become your customer's trusted advisor and keep them happy, send frequent communications, interact on social media, turn complaints into opportunities, run loyalty programs, etc.

Customer retention will give you visibility, trustworthiness, and competitive edge to stand out in your industry and hold onto your hard-earned gains.

5. Focus On Optimal Channel And Touch Points

Several direct marketers were able to improve the effectiveness of their programs by implementing optimal contact management strategies and incorporating the impact of reconnecting into their audience selection strategy.

Communicate with your audience on all the channels they leverage, including web, mobile, and email. Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s "Rule of Seven" states that you must contact your buyers a minimum of 7 times in an 18-month period for them to remember you.

Knowing that you need a minimum of 7 touches, calculate upwards from there based on how much information you need to convey. If you can address your target account’s specific business challenges and give them the information they need to make a buying decision, your company earns their trust and gains credibility.

6. Measure Results And Iterate

Database marketing allows you to manage members, events, and contacts while at the same time keeping in touch with customer feedback and behavior. So how do you know if it’s working?

The great thing about database marketing is that everything is measurable, from open rates and click-through to sales. But from the outset, be clear about what you want to measure. Your goals might include increasing sales, generating leads, encourage referrals or getting a booking for an event.

Once you’ve identified your goals you want to measure, identify the performance indicators you’ll use to gauge progress towards those goals. This could be in the form of the volume of leads generated, conversion rates, average sale value, and the number of new purchases, revenue, and net profit.

Finally, the most important thing to remember is to put your findings to work—refine and develop future database marketing campaigns based on your results. Each campaign you run gives you better and more accurate statistics about you. Record all feedback, track, and yardstick your success from the very beginning to improve your strategy.