These days everyone is talking about Big Data. Technology has enabled us to collect and store increasingly detailed consumer information. More computing power means ever increasing detailed information, thus the term “Big Data Analytics”. This refers to the process of examining large sets of data, across multiple areas to uncover hidden patterns that can reveal important trends in consumer behaviour. Having access to “big data analytics”  has changed the face of sales and marketing. Now, to improve customer relationships, and to understand their needs and establish trust, basic information and traditional methods are not enough.

We’re in the Zettabyte Era, the entire customer journey is surrounded by information. Big Data allows us to capture and interpret an enormous amount of real-time, static, structured or unstructured data. Why not use it to improve customer relationships and ultimately increase retention rate? With big data and analytics, it’s possible to understand what makes customers tune in with the company, tweak the pain areas and resolve any bottlenecks that may be responsible for customer churn.  At the same time, analytics plays a vital role to analyze and generate meaningful insight from that data, allowing companies to develop new business strategies.

The type and detail of data collected by companies vary between industries. For example, service companies generate different kinds of data than an e-commerce company. A service company such as an airline may generate data like how often you fly in a year; whereas an online retail store may track your purchase behaviour data like how often you are buying a product or what kind of products you are looking for. Companies can gather an enormous amount of information about their target audience.

Once companies have their customer’s historical data they can begin to analyse it to improve sales and marketing activities going forward. However, one golden opportunity that this data provides is a platform for developing stronger relationships with your current customers and building a new target audience by better understanding their needs.

Focus on existing customers, but how?

Companies can achieve many benefits by strengthening their relationships with the customers they already have. As service providers know, it is always much cheaper to maintain clients than it is to acquire new ones. The question is how to improve that relationship? To focus on existing customers to target their needs and develop a strong relationship just needs to analyse their historical data and understand their pain areas or what they are looking for. So here the “Big Data and Analytics” comes into a picture and play the vital role to understand not only their existing customer but also target a new audience for the companies.

Stronger relationships lead to increased customer loyalty and growth of the company as well. Not only can your company save money through customer retention, loyal customers will also yield more revenue than a customer who purchases from you a few times before switching to competitors. Additionally, loyal customers are more likely to turn into cost-effective brand ambassadors who will voluntarily promote your product or service to their peers. Brand ambassadors are becoming increasingly important as social media encourages consumers to trust what their peers say about your company over advertisements that they see.

According to Datanami: ‘64% of companies are already trying to combine five to 15 sources of data in their quest to find richer, more meaningful insights and additionally, break the silos of data repositories that have emerged in their legacy data infrastructure over time.’

Loyalty Relationship is now not limited to traditional ‘Reward Points’ only. Companies now tend to build a strong following of loyal customers through data-driven strategies for a more sustainable growth. Not just economically, loyal customers prove beneficial to the company in many ways:

• Eased Retargeting
• Converged, accurate analysis
• Free Brand Endorsement
• Word of Mouth
• Increased Brand Equity

Data Formats and Collection

While there is a seemingly never-ending array of data out there, it all generally falls into three categories:

Big-Picture Data:

Typically, demographic information or high-level trends, this type of data can help you see the big picture when it comes to your target audience(s). Big-picture data can frequently be collected from third party companies.

Transactional Data:

As the name suggests, transactional data is information on what purchases a customer or client has made. This can include you purchased or liked product or services, a frequency of interest and used payment gateways.

Granular Data:

The opposite of big-picture data, this kind of data gives you an idea of an individual person or company’s attitudes and behaviours, and it can be collected via different surveys and campaigns or third parties.

What can we achieve with consumers’ data?

1. Segmenting Customers with Personalization

Before segmenting customers, a service provider must know their customer’s needs with their specific requirements. Specificity gives your business the flexibility to directly cater to your customers’ unique needs and desires. Some traits of segmentation include: categorising their general interests, targeted services/interests and of course their budget.

According to AdAge.com, when the computer technology company Lenovo implemented this method, its “click-through rates increased by 30% and resulted in greater conversions and sales.”

These actions could be taken: –

• Define segmentation within your company.

• Design advertisements with the customers’ needs in mind.

• Develop smart campaigns with consumer data.

2. Behaviour-Triggered Email Campaigns

Email with a purpose. Through automation, you can produce email campaigns that engage consumers and convert them into buyers and also it could be a meaningful data collection that can be used for different purposes.

These actions could be taken: –

• Analyse your consumer’s behavioural patterns.

• Use predictive modelling techniques to know the future needs of your customers.

• Keep your customers “active” in your brand with ancillary tasks and activities.

 

Conclusion:

There’s no doubt that “big data and analytics” helps companies to grow and improve customer relationships, turning leads into loyal customers and increasing retention rates exponentially. And the best part is that there’s no need to hire an entire building full of computers and servers with enormous processing capabilities for that: all you need is a platform with behavioural analytics, event tracking and automation.

Does your company have its own big data and a data-driven strategy to improve customer relationship? If not, are you planning to do so in the future? Tell us in the comments below!

We hope you like the blog and share it with your network. Please reach out to sales@bistasolutions.com for any query pertaining to Big Data and Analytics solutions.