Whether it is the matter of marketing products/service or providing excellent customer services, data has become an integral part of numerous business operations these days. as a lot of technologies and solutions are available that extract and analyse data, businesses of all types should be able to contextualize customer & other marketing data and gain new useful insights from it. IoT and AI are two major technologies that can be used to capture and analyses data not only to improve day to day business operations and making fertile business decisions but to learn about their customers and interact with them effectively.
As customer data is the main area of focus for all businesses, they are collecting, storing and analyzing customer data on a regular basis. Even some of the companies have built their operations and overall business model around the customer data obtained from different resources. If you are also seeking how to gather customer data without upsetting them, below we have listed some customer data collection tricks and tips that can help you effectively collect more data about your customers.
1. Asking Directly from Customers
Many brands and companies ask directly for data from their customers at some points, especially early on when building business relations with them. As companies want their customers to fill up a form when they need to subscribe to a particular service, create an account on the website or order something online. These forms usually come with data fields like name, email address, and phone number, etc. Data submitted by the customer in such forms can be used by companies for a variety of reasons, such as for marketing, contacting their customers and to provide them with a personalized experience.
2. Social Media
According to the stats, millennials on social media usually spend one-fifth of each day, not only to communicate effectively with their loved ones but to learn more about their favourite brands and businesses as well. In simple words, social media is the best place to reach your target audience as they spend most of their time there. After connecting with your audience on social media, you can utilize different tools and solutions that can help you gather customer details conveniently. For instance, you can export LinkedIn contacts by using a special tool designed to extract data from LinkedIn profiles. In this era of advanced technologies, businesses and brands are skillful at data pulling from different social media sites. Adding a sign-up button to social media profiles is also a great way to encourage your customers to give you their personal details like name and email etc.
3. Customer Service Records
When people contact companies and businesses to get their issues resolved or return recently purchased products, it is the best opportunity for customer care agents to ask them for more of their personal details, interests, and needs, etc. Having information collecting checklist at place can help them ask customers right questions to gather their data and information effectively. Most of the companies also dig deep into their old customer service records to see how they have connected the business and what communication methods they prefer when it comes to interacting with the business. In this way, they can build a strong customer database that can later be used in various business processes for positive growth.
4. Data Companies
There are many companies in the market selling and purchasing customer data from third parties. Big data companies are the best customer data providers in every industry and can help you gather, analyse and use customer data for the betterment of your business operations to boost your bottom lines. Most of the ISPs also sell their customers data to marketing companies and business owners that they use in their marketing practices and to reach the target audience effectively.
5. Target your Ads
Running targeted marketing ads is another best way to collect customer data without spending much. As digital marketing channels like Google and Facebook run location and interest-based advertisements for their clients using the device’s IP address, interests of users and location, etc. companies can build a personalized customer database that can later be used to make major improvements in business processes and operations.
6. Email Newsletter Sign up
Your official website is one of the best places to gather customer data smartly. You can add appealing calls to actions on your website to encourage your visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter. Visitors will need to provide personal details like name and email address in order to receive your periodic newsletters. As a result, you will be able to build your email list that can be used in different lead generation marketing tactics like email marketing.
As data capture and analytics solutions become more affordable and sophisticated, brands and companies have more effective ways to collect customer data from different digital channels and platforms to make smart and fertile business decisions.
