We’ve spoken a lot about effective CRM strategies and how the success of your customer relationship management ultimately relies on data – and with good reason.
Ultimately, your CRM strategy is only as good as your data. From data analysis used to review past campaign performance to data science to plan for the future, if you’re going to solve your marketing challenges, make intelligent, informed decisions, and deliver exceptional customer experiences, it all comes down to data.
In today’s world, data is absolutely everywhere. Every action is captured, every customer is monitored, and every decision is measured. That’s all very well and good – but how can you filter out the noise and tell which data is important? And how can you really trust your data?
Over one-third of Chief Marketing Officers don’t trust their data, so it’s an important question to ask. With that in mind, read on to discover eight important ways to make sure you can trust your data…
8 ways to make sure you can trust your data
1. Audit your data
Inaccurate data is costing you. It’s as simple as that. Whether you’re experiencing lost time and earnings from inaccurate customer records, or data mistakes in your CRM platform are resulting in lost leads, if you want to deliver compelling customer experiences, you simply can’t afford for your data to be inaccurate.
Generating a data audit will help you to understand the state of your data and insights so you can identify areas that you need to improve and ultimately eliminate data mistakes. This way, you can make sure your data is relevant and that you are reaching your customers in the right way, at the right time.
2. Make sure your data is regularly cleansed
Unfortunately, although it would be great to be able to just audit your data once, if you want to completely trust your data and make sure it remains relevant, you need to regularly cleanse your data so that you can get the most out of it.
In fact, companies with the most successful CRM strategies regularly audit and cleanse their data to keep their databases current. Life happens, and situations change – and by updating client profiles and purging old contacts regularly, you can ensure that your data remains accurate, which will enable you to deliver more effective campaigns.
3. Make sure your data is well managed
Once you’re confident that your data is accurate and up to date, if you are going to trust your data, you need to make sure that it is well managed, well organised, and stored in a secure, efficient way. In fact, having the right data management strategy in place is more important than ever before as the world shifts away from relying on third-party data.
Essentially, by managing and validating your customer data ethically and efficiently, you will earn the trust of your customers and ensure that you have the most accurate information to segment – giving you the power to unlock the full potential of your data.
4. Put a data strategy in place
Your data is key to delivering exceptional customer experiences, which ultimately result in increased retention and loyalty for your brand. However, to be able to understand the pattern and characteristics hidden within your data and start making decisions that make the most out of it, you need to process, access, and analyse it. Basically, you need a data strategy.
A modern data strategy brings together data science and data analytics and combines the use of first-party data and insights to map the customer journey, predict customer behaviours, and identify ways in which you can utilise your data to interact with your customers and deliver improved experiences.
5. Make sure your data is based on trust and transparency
It’s not just about collecting and using your customer data, though. If you are going to be able to truly trust your data, you need to make sure you are collecting “good” customer data in the first place. Yep, when it comes to data, it’s most definitely about quality over quantity.
To access the best data, you need to get it first hand, directly from your customers, and then retain and grow your customer relationships and engagement from that point. With the shift from third party to first party data, and changes to both cookies and the types of data accessible for marketing purposes, data privacy and clean data is more important than ever before if you’re going to be able to trust your insights.
6. Ensure your data is secure
This leads us on to our next point. As your business continues to grow, the sheer volume of data you have can be huge. Whilst this is great for customer segmentation, it could reach the point where the volume of data you are responsible for is no longer manageable, which could ultimately result in mistakes being made.
Data breaches are costly, both financially and in terms of your customers’ trust in your brand. So, if you and your customers are going to be able to trust your data, you need to make sure that it is efficiently managed, compliant, handled properly, and stored accordingly to GDPR rules. This way, you can unlock the potential of your data, improve customer retention, and ultimately deliver higher return on investment.
7. Use your data to gain insights
Although managing your data effectively might seem like a lot of work, trust us, it’s most definitely worth it. By monitoring trends and reviewing past campaigns and performances you can use your first-party data to access brand-changing insights, unlock in-depth customer profiling and data analysis, mitigate risk, and plan for the future.
Through profiling and segmentation, predictive models, and data analysis, you can get closer to your customers and understand their wants and needs before they do, so you can continue to deliver exceptional customer experiences and create continuous, tailored marketing campaigns. And at the end of the day, that’s what your CRM strategy is all about!
8. Seek expert help
Finally, if you are going to truly get to grips with your data, be able to get the most out of it, and use it to generate predictive insights and deliver unbeatable customer experiences, it makes sense to work with an expert data agency such as Edit.
When you work with us, we will enable you to deliver real-time decision making via your data platform so you can maximise your marketing campaigns and increase your ROI. Plus, because we are also experts in how your data can impact your CRM strategy, we can help you prioritise where to invest your marketing spend, too.
Need further advice on all things data?
Here at Edit, we consider ourselves to be data wizards. When you enlist the help of our expert team of Editors to help with your CRM strategy, we will strip everything back and use real data and sophisticated decision-making and analytics tools to ensure we create powerful, bespoke CRM strategies that work hard for you.
The result? Better sales, award-winning campaigns, and unforgettable customer experiences. To find out more about our Intelligent Data and Transformational CRM services, be sure to get in touch today.
