Data Collection – The Ins and Outs

Welcome Reader! Today we want to talk about data collection, which customer data is available and which of your company’s departments benefit from data collection!

This blog is the first episode out of two. Later on, we will share our insights on data collection forms, data management and data collection within the general data protection regulation (GDPR).

B2B lead generation requires collection of customer data to think strategically for the future! The customer data collection will benefit customer relationships.

To clarify it from the beginning: To be successful when it comes to data collection it is important to know who you are as a company and to know who your customers are! This way you won’t be only able to collect relevant data but reach out to your customers via outbound campaigns as well.

Big data collection is relevant because this way you actually get to know your customers. – If you are consistent and fluent with your customer journey. Being able to make the customer journey as smooth as possible for each of your target will make it easier for you to collect their data and adapt your sales strategy accordingly.

So, in other words, data collection is basically understanding the customer environment: If they are decision makers, how they end up on your website, their motivation, pain points, and how your product or service triggers their pain points. With understanding the customer environment and collecting data buyer engagement is triggered as well. The more you know about your customers, the more you are able to engage them into your message strategy because you can make your messaging more adapted and personalized with using online behaviour data.

All in all that means, data collection gives you better insights when generating leads since you can create a data-driven persona.

And now let’s dive deeper into the topic of customer data and which department can benefit from which data collection!

Customer Data Collection -Which data?

The customer data collection will provide you with perfect insights to give the customer the right experience at the right time! Therefore, customer data always needs to be accurate and up-to-date. But different departments require different data and that’s where we want to dive deeper!

Marketing Department

The marketing department is the starting point and basement of data collection. Collecting data here will benefit several other departments and the customer lifecycle. Moreover, data collected for this department includes general information on the customer such as name, email, and business/company name. The emails of course can be used for further marketing, email automation, and remarketing.

Tip! To have all the information collected automatically and to have the information at one place, we advise you to install a customer relationship management software.

When using Improovy, you gather all of your leads’ information, and you can easily integrate those leads and information to your CRM processes making your sales process more effective and productive!

Another important data building block is how the customer interacts and engages with the company website. This information will help you to understand the interaction and how to improve your website. Preferably, this results in a decreased bounce-back rate and increased engagement and conversion rates!

Crucial to mention here is that the website serves as a tool to collect new data through data collection forms to retarget! Moreover, here you can collect several data about your segment and targets which will help you to personalize your messaging and focus your efforts on the relevant people.

Another relevant information for the marketing department is the subscription preference. Let your customers opt for their preferred communication channel at the very beginning of your website through checkboxes. On the one hand, this is part of the general data protection regulation. On the other, this information is useful for you as a company to know what your customers like the most.

Through lead scoring, the collected data will not only benefit the marketing department but the sales department as well. Lead scoring includes webinar sign-ups, downloads of content, newsletter sign-ups, and e.g. time spent on the website. Here, you can make conclusions about positive and negative reactions of your customers which can help you improve your performance.

Sales Department

When closing a deal, the first data the sales department should collect is the deal information. In other words, your sales department should create a folder with all the information of a deal including general information, as well as billing information and so on.

In addition, the customer lifetime value should be calculated through data. It is calculated with following formula:

Purchase value x purchase frequency over average customer lifespan = customer lifetime value

The result will help you to calculate long term revenue and based on that other important decision such as huge investments can be estimated.

Moreover, to save effort and time, all the information about the client’s contact person and decision-maker should be collected. It will make retargeting easier and you will not embarrass yourself having contact with the company again and not knowing anything from the person you are talking to.

Again, make the data collection relevant here as well for segmentation purposes. Collecting, understanding and using the data will benefit you for email automation and for a constant messaging strategy in general!

Attention! The sales department should not only collect data about deals made, but as well data about lost deals. This information will help you to optimize your performance and efforts!

Customer Service Department

Customer data collection for the customer service department is important to optimize the customer experience. This data can be collected with customer happiness metrics which include e.g. the net promoter score or the customer satisfaction score.But how to collect this information? Easy! Use repeated surveys at set intervals. How often did you already read the question about how likely you were to recommend company x to your employees/friends/family/colleagues? This is the perfect example of how to get to the needed information!

In addition, use the information you get out of your ticket data. Here, especially customer satisfaction can be measured! What is the problem? Why did the problem occur? How can you fix the problem? But not only satisfaction can be measured, but also chunk risk! It is normal that not every customer stays forever. But which customers were most likely to leave and why? Optimize here!

Understand the customer chunk risk and happiness reasons, record them, and act on this data collection in order to improve your overall performance!

In conclusion, every department needs different data for different purposes. But all in all, data collection will help your company to improve in the future and offer your segment the best experience!