Customer databases are your very own personal and direct road to the people most likely to buy your services. Whether you think of it as ‘contact relationship management’, ‘customer relationship management’, ‘database marketing’ or anything else, you cannot afford to ignore it. It’s six times easier to keep an existing customer than to win a new one! A customer database is a crucial tool to help you keep customers happy, returning for more, and raving about your products and services. If you do not currently have a customer database… then get one!
Here are 9 ways to use your database to generate more business:
1. Build your very own personal expressway right to your customers
A database takes you the direct route to your customer. You avoid the clutter of T.V. ads, social media posts, internet banners, pop up ads or billboards.
2. Communicate effectively with your customers
You know what your customers value, and what they want. Therefore, you can communicate with them on a more personal level. Because you have specific information on each customer, you’re able to offer targeted campaigns and special offers of interest to your individual customer or customer groups. You can also choose to communicate with them in a form that suits them best. This could be over the phone, on Skype, through newsletters, email, or face-to-face. Check out our blog post on how to write newsletters.
3. Develop a long-term relationship with each of your customers
Your database will help you to understand your customers’ needs and expectations. You’ll also be able to track these and to see how they change over time.
4. Focus your marketing
A database enables you to track changes in your market, your customers’ buying patterns, product sales and any changes in taste. You’ll be able to see which marketing campaigns are working for you.
5. Improve the level and consistency of your customer service
A database can keep everyone in your business informed of what is happening with each customer. This enables you to offer a consistently high, professional level of service, even if the person they usually deal with is out of the office at the time they call.
6. Never miss a sales opportunity again
The information on potential customers or new sales leads can all be stored in the same place. You’ll be able to track all of your sales opportunities and follow up on them.
7. Protect yourselves and your customers from the competition
If you use your database to develop loyal relationships, you can deliver exactly what your customers want, when and how they want it. This is something that your competitors cannot easily copy.
8. Add value all around
A business that knows who its customers are retains them. If you have systems in place that are working, you have an additional asset to put a value on when you want to sell your business.
9. Develop a real point of difference
In a competitive marketplace, having a database and using it effectively can be just the thing to make you stand out in the crowd.