Effective management of the customer base with the Marketing Automation system

Management of the company's database of current and potential customers is an indispensable element of marketing campaigns conducted on the Internet. Collection of detailed behavioural and demographic data, division of the database into categories or advanced segmentation options allow marketers to reach out with their message to specific people with specific characteristics, preferences and interests. This in turn leads to better sales results and enables building long-term customer relationships.

79.6% of marketers believe that managing customer data is a key element of their work, according to the Global Review of Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising report prepared by the Global Data & Marketing Association (GDMA).

The key role played by a properly managed contact database in conducting effective marketing activities makes it one of the most important elements present in Marketing Automation systems. Systems in this class, such as iPresso, offer much more possibilities than traditional CRM solutions. We are not dealing here with collecting data of individual leads or clients, but also with advanced possibilities of categorization, segmentation, tagging, lead scoring, creating links between individuals or assigning system users permissions to specific groups of contacts.

Creating precisely defined segments within the contact database gives marketers the opportunity to reach a specific offer or information to a group of people who will be really interested in it. Importantly, such a segment does not have to be based solely on data on gender, age or place of residence of the person concerned. In iPresso, the criteria on the basis of which a customer is included in the segment can be extended to include current information about his or her behaviour, such as visiting the company's website, downloading a file with information about a given product or opening an e-mail.

An example of such an activity will be the selection of a group of people with desirable demographic characteristics, e.g. inhabitants of Krakow aged 30 years, who also performed a specific activity - e.g. downloaded a price list from the seller's website. The data collected in the system will allow this group of people to send them a carefully selected and personalized message containing an attractive offer of purchase of the product they are interested in.

Thanks to such individualised - although possible to carry out on a mass scale - campaigns carried out in Marketing Automation systems have a much better chance to translate into sales results.

Lead scoring

Another function of the system enabling companies to target groups of customers and run loyalty programs is lead scoring. This option consists in allocating (or subtracting) points to contacts on the basis of their characteristics and behaviour. A retailer, such as a car dealer, can use a range of demographic and behavioural factors defined by the dealer to effectively reach a potential customer. In this case it is enough to define the rules of scoring, and the system will automatically add and subtract points of contact. An example can be awarding 10 points to people living in the Mazowieckie Voivodeship, 20 points for entering the monitored website, 25 - for getting acquainted with the e-mail, 30 - for downloading the price list for the purchase of a car. With a well-structured way of awarding points, such evaluation of contacts will allow marketers to quickly find out which of the contacts are closest to the purchase, and which should be encouraged by conducting further lead nurturing activities.

An important option to improve the management of the database of current and potential customers is also the ability to give individual employees or departments of the company rights to specific groups of contacts. This allows for separate access - e.g. for marketing, sales and management departments.

This option also allows you to define persons authorized to modify the data of a specific group of contacts and carry out operations on them, such as sending an email or SMS campaign.

Wide possibilities of Marketing Automation systems in the scope of collecting, categorizing, segmentation or evaluation of contacts, allow to improve the company's sales results through individual and personalized communication with the customer.