Database management is a kind of direct marketing that deals with customer relationship management.It involves a systematic way of accumulating, amalgamation, and processing consumer data. The database contains a body of information relating to customers as well as potential customers. It is gathered from different sources and stocked at a single place to help the analysing body come up with the right prediction and analysis.
This database can work as a powerful marketing tool and can help an organisation come up with strategies to hit the market successfully.Any organisation, be it technology vendors or retailers, can make use of its database to ensure more sales. The larger the customer baseis, the better your chances. Marketing database solutions openup many new approaches and aspects to your business.
The Benefits of Database Marketing
Marketing strategies have evolved extensively over time. Today we rely on databases more than ever. It gives us access to important customer data which helps us craft more effective and relevant marketing messages that the existing customers will find useful and potential customers will be attracted to. Let us quickly look at the benefits:
- It helps you segregate customer groups into loyal customers, flying customers, high-value customers, etc.
- It helps you understand customer behaviour and interest.
- Builds loyalty programs
- Improves your company's customer service.
- Design personalised emails and messages
- Help you understand the problem of customers better.
- Gives insight into the workings of each group
Challenges One Might Face and How to Overcome
No system or process can be perfect. Similarly, you might face some problems with database marketing. But the assuring part is that they can be managed with the right measures.
Data Decay
Data decay refers to the data in your system becoming irrelevant or invalid. This happens when a customer changes his email address,phone number, address, etc. This can happen 2 to 3% each month. To avoid this, you should employ a data cleansing service that keeps your database up to date.
Data Accuracy
No database can be absolutely accurate but you should try to eliminate inaccuracy as much as possible. Most inaccurate information comes from the end of the customers. You can combat this drawback by using checkboxes or drop-down menus for customer inputs.
Handling of Data in Time
As soon as customer data is collected and analysed, steps to capitalize on this must be taken quickly. This is where you can get immense help from marketing database solutions or tools that might help you in this purpose.
The Sources Database Marketing Uses for Customer Data Collection
Several internal and external sources of information are used to contrive a single customer view database
- Acquisition data: what brought a customer to the respective app/website
- Demographic data: basic information such as age, family status, education, gender etc.
- Website and App History: the record of online activity. It includes the pages and website visits, games played etc.
- Purchase history: what a customer has purchased over a span of time. It sometimes takes into consideration the products he browsed and did not buy
- Campaign response history: campaigns received and responded to
- Loyalty program: points and promotions earned and redeemed
- Social media activity: brands and topics discussed, details of the profiles, app ratings, promotions and ads watched, etc.
- Correspondence history: the record of interactions between the brand and customer.
All these sources come together to bring about a unified body of customer data that can be narrowed down and analysed by experts to help the business organisation.
Database research is the present and future of marketing and one cannot think of making a brand big without a sound database.
