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Easy ways to collect customer data for email marketing

Ten insightful nuggets of customer data you should be collecting for your marketing

Assuming you’ve already collected a name and email address for all of your contacts, what other information would make a big difference to the quality of your marketing?

Essentially, the more information you can collect, the better. The majority of Brits (84 per cent) aged 18-34 don’t mind sharing personal data with brands – just as long as they get something worthwhile in return. Moreover, 59 per cent of all UK adults are happy to give brands personal customer data if they’re informed of how it will be used.

We’ve already given you some ideas as to how you can collect customer data. So, what data should business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) companies collect? Here are ten insightful nuggets of customer data that could transform your next campaign.

Useful data for B2C campaigns:

1. Age

Most brands have products or services that will appeal to some age groups more than others. Banks, for example, target their ‘Over 50s Life Assurance’ policies towards – you guessed it – customers aged over 50. Likewise, clothing retailers can segment their contact lists by age to send out emails promoting the freshest new lines and mature, classic ranges to the appropriate audiences. Additionally, a unique birthday email to each contact is extremely effective.

2. Gender

Gender stereotyping is a tightrope you might not want to attempt to cross; however, with analysis and segmentation you can pull off gender targeting without resorting to lazy old conventions. Instead of simply splitting your email list up by male and female, you could drill down into deeper analysis to discover subgroups within each gender based on purchase history or pages viewed on your website.

3. Interests

Some of the most valuable customer data that B2C marketers can collect is the hobbies and interests of their contacts. Not only can this make your emails far more personalised (for example, your football-themed emails to contacts without known interests in football were probably ignored or overlooked), but the more you notice a particular interest popping up in your data, the more you might consider tweaking your offering towards that group.

Useful data for both B2C AND B2B campaigns:

4. Postal address

Whether it’s at home or at work that they have an interest in your product or service, it’s always worth having a qualified mail address for your contacts. Your emails might target recipients based on their geographical location (a discount at a certain branch, for example), or you might just want to conduct a direct mail campaign alongside your email marketing.

5. Mobile number/DDI

For the same reason, a mobile number or DDI number will allow you to conduct text message marketing and telemarketing campaigns – providing the contact has given permission for you to do so (ensure the number is not on the TPS/CTPS list).

6. Job

In the same way that you might want to segment your contact list by subgroups of age or gender, both B2C and B2B companies could do the same with job titles. In B2C, you could base your entire email design around a particular job role, or maybe you have a product that people who work in offices will love. It’s B2B, however, where this information is crucial. You must know who it is in prospective businesses that you’re trying to get your marketing message in front of, and that’s going to be based around a series of job titles and roles.

Useful data for B2B campaigns:

7. Pain points

It can be really difficult for B2B marketers to come up with the best angle, the best words, and the best offer to send to prospective new customers in businesses. After all, they’re usually at work when they’ll receive your emails, so they’re going to be busy; your email has to grab and entice them from the off, answering the question “how can you help me?”

What better way to do that than by getting them to TELL you what their pain points are before you put your emails together? Ask them to provide information on their pain points when they sign up for your emails, or alternatively include the option to do so in your welcome emails.

8. Industry sector

Whereas job titles and job roles are great for extremely targeted campaigns, sometimes you won’t want to get that specific. In those instances, knowing your prospects’ industry sectors is perfect.

9. Employee band

Not only does this information allow you to segment your prospect list, but you can improve the results of your email campaigns by removing the chaff from the wheat. For instance, say a cleaning company has collected a list of 5,000 contact emails at businesses. Their service is high-quality, so ideally they’re looking to get big contracts at larger offices and establishments, whilst avoiding the one-man-bands and small, one-room office businesses. The ability to segment businesses by employee bands such as ‘1-5 employees’, ‘5-20 employees’ and so on up to ‘200+ employees’ is pivotal.

10. Turnover band

In the same way as employee bands, if your business only has very expensive services, it’s unlikely that prospects with turnovers less than the cost of your product will be interested. If you can segment your contact list by their turnover, this also gives you an indicator of its employee band.

With all of this potential data out there to gather, there’s really no excuse for not knowing your customers and prospects!

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