News
 Find
the Upside in the Downturn: Quality Customer Data
By Tom Atkinson, sales &
marketing consultant, D&B
The Chinese word for “crisis” literally translates
to “danger plus opportunity.”
It's a pretty apt description of being a marketer in
today's volatile economy. There's no question that
2009 will continue to be a challenging year.
Organizations of all sizes and across industries are
scaling back budgets, but not expectations.
That's the danger side. Here's the opportunity:
marketers can stand out by taking a long, hard look
at their customer data and making sure it is as
accurate as possible.
None of the latest and greatest marketing programs
and technologies will succeed without the
fundamentals. And the quality of your customer data
is as fundamental as it gets. Here are some tips to
help you unlock the hidden potential in your data.
Start with a clean customer view. An accurate view
of your customers is the foundation for effective
marketing, especially in a tough economy. Whether
identifying cross-sell/upsell opportunities or
providing top-notch service to retain your best
customers, you need a clear answer to one question:
“Who are my customers – really?”
Start by cleansing, standardizing and linking your
data. In 30 years, I haven't yet met one customer
without significant data issues.
A recent study from b-to-b marketers SiriusDecisions
highlights the issue: It takes $1 to verify a record
as it's entered, $10 to cleanse and de-dupe it, and
$100 if nothing is done, as the ramifications of the
mistakes are felt over and over.
The good news? There's plenty of help, from
postal software to full-service information
providers. And don't forget the external
information. Supplementing your internal customer
information with third-party
demographic and industry information rounds out
your customer view, improving targeting and response
rates.
Don't forget to revisit your data rules and
processes. Even if you have a data process, take
another look at it.
Lastly, think across the life cycle of your
customer. Customer data impacts not just marketing
but the entire customer life cycle, from acquisition
through retention.
We recently worked with a publishing company with 25
different billing systems. Customers were getting
multiple or no invoices, reducing the company's
ability to get paid quickly.
We worked with the publisher to cleanse and
standardize its data, then set up data hub software
to automatically update new information. As a
result, the publisher was able to get paid on time,
as well as identify its top customers and design
retention programs to keep them.
In these volatile economic times, it's clear that a
return to fundamentals is a must – and it all starts
with a closer look at your customer data. The
opportunities are there. It's up to you to find
them.
---Source:
DMNews May 13, 2009 (www.dmnews.com). Tom Atkinson
is a sales & marketing consultant for D&B. Reach him
at tatkinson@dnb.com.
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Melissa Data
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