A Guide To Collecting Data For Business Growth
Businesses everywhere are constantly collecting data on their customers, using it for studies, understanding and business growth. With technology and the convenience of instant communication channels, an organisation’s ability to capture, analyse, and use data has never been better before. Having the sufficient amount of right data makes businesses much easier, giving organisations greater insight into what their customers and consumers want.
1. The importance of consumer data collection
For many businesses, consumer data is the key to their success. But how does data help in businesses? Data is important and great for getting to know customer’s interactions with different departments within a business from the beginning.
Customer experience is becoming a bigger deal with younger consumers who are willing to spend more in exchange for a better or an extraordinary experience. Customers are growing and getting used to businesses catering to their individualized needs with hassle-free shopping experiences, personalisation and Omni channel shopping platforms.
Data is the essential element to learn about customers, of what they want, where they make purchases, and even who they are. If a business chooses not to ‘hear their customers out’, consumers will eventually shop elsewhere, looking for a better replacement.
Marketing is way different than it once was. While personalisation is the key, marketing campaigns being stretched across multiple platforms largely increases product exposure, creating better and repeated product awareness. The more complete data an organisation has, the more accurate and successful their marketing campaigns will be as they will be able to know their target audiences better.
Data allows businesses to rethink and refine their marketing strategies to improve conversions and sales through personalisation and curated campaigns.
2. The importance of consumer data collection
There are multiple types of data to collect as the more detailed the data is, the more the business will be able to create loyal customers. The following shall be the primary types of data to be collected for any businesses
Contact details are essential to allow an organisation to communicate with its customers. Whether to introduce a new product or to get valuable feedback, it wouldn’t happen if there are no contact details for the business to connect with the customer.
As not everyone is willing to give out their personal details such as name, gender, age and address, this is one of the best data to be collected as this allows an organisation to accurately deliver the right message to the right group of target audience.
For instance, a customer’s name could be a good use in marketing to send personalised messages or email subjects. E-mails with a personalised subject line are more likely to be read than disposed before reading.
Gender, age and address could be used for future business planning. These statistics could determine your next new product, location of your next physical shop and more.
Getting customer experience data helps an organisation to understand how well their services and products are performing. This allows organisations to be informed of their services and products flaws (if any), dissatisfactions and room for improvement. They might also get brilliant suggestions from their customers too.
One of the best ways to obtain purchase decision data from customers is to ask them directly for their feedback. It is important to let the consumers know that the organisation values and appreciates their feedback for business upkeep and improvement.
Purchase decision data allows an organisation to get to know why the consumer buys its products whether it’s due to convenience, pricing, discounts, promotions, recommendations or so on. This will allow the organisation to refine their industry position and keep targeting the right group of people. To retain success, a business should always know why people buy from them instead of its competitor.
If a business doesn’t know how their customers discover them, they won’t be able to scale on an agreeable level. When they know how their customers are finding them, they can double down on their entry point and make themselves more visible to more people.
If a business is already running multiple marketing campaigns, it is even more important to know where their customers get to know them to measure the effectiveness of the marketing campaign. Sort out which platform or which type of exposure suits the business more.
Some customers come and go, but why? How inspiring if an organisation gets to know why their customers are leaving them. Churn happens to every business, but with the reason and data, the business can at least improve and innovate on the reasons of people churning.
If a certain account hasn’t logged in for a period of time, maybe it is time for a business to retarget that customer in an attempt to reduce churn.
However, an organisation can only do this with close supervision and the right tool to measure interactions. If there are such cases detected, all the organisation needs to do is send out an email to that group of people who hasn’t logged in for a while to ask why and let them respond instantly to prevent ignored mail.
3. How to Collect Customer Data
One of the biggest challenges that businesses face when collecting data is how to get the data? With more and more data scandals happening these few years, consumers are on their guard and becoming more vigilant in giving out their information.
Fortunately, there are a few soft methods to collect consumer data and here’s some of the best ones:
It is 2020 and most of the businesses already embrace intelligent business tools in some way such as online business operation platforms, POS systems, accounting systems and so on.
CheckNow, primarily serving as an online authentication platform, also provides a great feature to record customer’s data through QR code. It is one of the most polite and less intimidating ways to obtain a customer’s data. Check out more on CheckNow here.
One of the most common ways we see today for businesses to collect data is through a form, be it hard copy forms or online, to collect basic yet essential data. A membership would be the best reason for a customer to fill in the form. There onwards, the organisation can have the data as well as keep track of each transaction history for each account.
As mentioned above, feedback is important as it serves as a ‘wake-up call’ to many underperforming services and products. It is like a second chance to retain a customer and an opportunity to create loyal customers.
Most of the businesses that use feedback or surveys to obtain data offer an incentive to ensure people are willing to answer the questions. Be it a small discount code or free gift, this always does the trick until today.
If there is no suitable incentive to get people answering your survey form, an event or competition might be another good way to gather mass data. But be aware that the data requested from a survey form and competition may not be the same as competition may attract potential customers which have not experienced your product/ service to give feedback.
It is also very common to see online businesses run social media campaigns frequently to increase exposure and obtain data. One example is on Instagram by asking the followers to simply tag a friend, like that post and provide an email address to participate.
4. Data Protection
Last but not least, it is important for an organisation to implement legal customer data protection policy so that the customers know that their data is being protected and not misused. Transparency leads to confidence and trust from customers. It is best to seek advice from a legal firm to obtain a proper data protection policy as every organisation uses data differently.
As a conclusion, a business will be able to personalize its marketing strategy so that communication flows 2-way and engagement with customers goes up by collecting data. Collect the right set of data that will be needed, analyse it, use it wisely, and grow the business.
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