Download the most important customer data point

O N E T O U G H Q U E S T I O N : A N A LY T I C S
THE MOST IMPORTANT
CUSTOMER DATA POINT
When it comes to understanding
customers, all data isn’t created equal.
There are many useful
data points about
customers. These pieces
of information vary in
importance depending
on industry, channel,
goals, and the like. But
there will always be one
that’s most important to
marketers in their quest
for engagement, loyalty,
and revenue growth.
Perhaps it’s the last item
purchased; or it could be
a customer’s value.
Direct Marketing News
asked several marketing
insiders: What’s the most
important data point
about a customer, and
why? Their responses
speak volumes.
-GINGER CONLON
TABLE OF CONTENTS
7 Scott Houchin Managing Principal of
Digital, eClerx
Derek Slayton CMO, NetProspex
8 Barry Lowenthal
President, The Media Kitchen
4 Anna Rosenman Director of Product
Marketing, Salesforce.com
5 Rob Seaman VP Product, WibiData
James Green CEO, Magnetic
6 Bonnie Crater
President and CEO,
Full Circle CRM
9 Damon Waldron Director of Demand
Generation, Leadspace
David Petsolt Founder and President, buyCalls
ANNA ROSENMAN
Director of Product Marketing,
Salesforce.com
@ARoseLVNY @salesforce
The most important data point about a customer is the one that they want and expect
you to have.
Customers want targeted, personalized
experiences. And expectations for superior
service and richer relationships grow higher every day. They expect that companies
will meet them halfway: understand their
changing preferences, deliver better products and services, and recommend the next
step to take.
For example, if I move to a different city I
want my insurance rep to call me and recommend the right renter’s insurance. As I train for
a marathon, I want to be reminded to upgrade
running shoes as I hit 500 miles on my Fitbit.
If a certain product is not moving through my
grocery store, I want my distributor to reach
out, evaluate the inventory and supply chain,
and recommend a trade promotion.
The data that customers share has
evolved. The way that they use our product
should inform a company how to improve
product design. Customers communicate
their purchasing preferences with their dollars at every point of sale, and ask for help
with each download of a white paper, visit
to a company website, or engagement on
an app or community.
Across industries, lines of business, and
channels there are endless points of relevant data. But if companies can’t respond to
what customers share with us, it’s as though
they aren’t even listening. If companies don’t
have a platform for customer success and
business insight, the mountains of data they
have are irrelevant.
ROB SEAMAN
VP Product, WibiData
@wibidata
A customer’s most valuable data point is the most recent one—whether
it’s a click for more product information, a phone reboot, a call to a call
center, or a store check-in without a purchase. Customer lifetime value
becomes your opportunity cost if you’re not serving a current need. When
marketers overlook the most recent data, customers get recommendations for products already bought, offers for new services when they just
want their cable box to work, or packages sent to a former address. Or
worse, the hellish experience of recounting the same complaint multiple
times to different customer service representatives.
“Real-time data” is a buzzword in many industries, but few companies apply
real-time information about each customer’s experience during the experience to morph and meet their current need. It’s not enough to merely collect
data in real time; marketers need to collect and use clicks, hovers, product
usage, and customer support data as triggers to deliver personalized recommendations and experiences for individual customers within milliseconds.
In today’s lightning-fast world, where technology has enabled consumers to be more fickle than ever, taking real-time action based on real-time
data is what’s necessary to increase conversions, counteract propensity
to churn as it arises, and improve your shot at winning customer loyalty.
JAMES GREEN
CEO, Magnetic
@jamesANGreen @magneticIs
What’s most important is having the most complete and obtainable customer profile, and this involves Big Data.
We live in an age where it’s possible to know every click that a customer has made within your website. When you combine that with myriad
other data points—such as purchase history, search activity, Facebook
and Twitter behavior, and more—it becomes challenging to determine
that one of these, even last item purchased, is more important than another. In fact, any single data point taken in isolation can give you a
warped view of the customer. Big Data takes into account a multitude
of elements that can reveal purchase intent of what consumers are most
likely to buy.
If you have a holistic view of your customer, you can toss aside what’s
not important and glean intent from what’s left.
BONNIE
CRATER
President and CEO,
Full Circle CRM
@BonnieCrater @FullCircleCRM
The most important data point
for prospective customers is
deal velocity. Deal velocity is
the total time that a customer takes to make a purchase.
What’s so important about deal
velocity? This metric is a lever
for increasing revenue, reducing
sales cost, and identifying bottlenecks in your sales and marketing processes.
Increasing revenue is the first
thing that comes to mind. When
I was at Oracle we used to talk a
lot about programs that would
reduce the sales cycle time.
Anything we could think of that
would shorten the sales cycle
was a high priority—and it was
simple math. Shorten the sales
cycle by 50% and you’ll get
twice as much in sales output in
the same amount of time.
Reducing sales costs is also
an obvious benefit. If salespeople can be twice as efficient, the
cost of sales is going down. Better velocity drives higher profits
and the new profits can be used
to fuel more growth.
Last, you can use velocity
metrics to identify bottlenecks
in your sales process. In the
positive, you can identify and
fund campaigns that drive the
shortest velocity.
SCOTT HOUCHIN
Managing Principal of Digital, eClerx
@ScottH_eClerx @eClerxFS
Customer lifetime value (CLTV). Companies use CLTV to understand customer behavior and quantify customer economic value. With the availability of Big Data and sophistication in statistical modeling analytics, marketing leaders can convert this data into
actionable insights to help grow their business.
CLTV models use historic transaction data to predict expected margin from individual
customers. The CLTV metric is determined by combining the predicted value of margin
and probability of customer survival.
Beyond gauging a customer’s propensity for repeat purchases, CLTV is a powerful
metric to use for predicting the lifecycle stage of an individual customer. With the right
mix of technology, data, and modeling, marketers can use CLTV to predict when a
customer will purchase and where they are in the decision-making process—answering
the questions “What are they researching and where?” and “What purchase factors are
they weighing?
Using CLTV a vendor can not only analyze where the customer will likely execute their final purchase, but can also influence that purchase journey through delivery of decision-specific messaging and marketing.
Rather than focus on the value and use of a specific data point, CLTV coupled with lifecycle analysis turns multiple data
sets into a single decision tool used strategically to segment customers for targeted, tailored content specific to their
predicted decision stage.
DEREK SLAYTON
CMO, NetProspex
@DerekSlayton @NetProspex
I’ll take this question in two parts, and use ourselves as an example. For existing customers, and this is from a B2B perspective, the most important data point is how much
value they have received from being one of our customers. This helps us focus first on
working with them to determine the value metric at the outset of the relationship—
which our customer success team is pretty religious about. Then, moving forward, we
understand how to look for opportunities to increase that value–potentially, with other
services and products that offer upsell and cross-sell opportunities. But it starts by
working with customers to measure and document the value they’ve received.
For prospects, there are two important data points for us from a marketing perspective. The first being, are they in our target market. We define this pretty tightly by
company and buyer persona. The second point is whether they’re ready to engage with
us. That is, have they shown the digital (or physical) body language that indicates that
they’re actively interested in learning more about the space our products play in? If no, we need to nurture them more in
marketing. If yes, we need to get them over to our sales team so they can do their thing.
BARRY LOWENTHAL
President, The Media Kitchen
@BarryLowenthal @TheMediaKitchen
As campaign information became more readily available, clients started to quickly get information overload. So did agency folks. We started measuring
everything simply because we could. While we were
being proactive and thorough, we were also contributing to the problem. We reported on impressions,
site visits, click-throughs, shares, updates, completions, bounce rates, conversions, and sales, to name
just a few of the data points we tracked.
What quickly became apparent was that not all data
was created equal, and just because one data point
mattered for one campaign it didn’t necessarily matter for the next. We solved the problem by investing in
data visualization tools that allows clients to customize their own campaign dashboards.
But that still didn’t solve the problem of helping
clients understand which data points are most important. Our clients that sell products will tell you
that sales is the ultimate KPI. Their problem is understanding how all the other touchpoints in a marketing
campaign contribute to sales. We’ve used fractional contribution studies to evaluate digital campaign
contributions, and we’ve used marketing mix studies
to measure how offline media contributes to sales.
We’ve also started deploying cross-device measurement tools to understand how exposure on one device affects sales.
Our clients that don’t sell products but advertise
to bolster and shape their reputations say that brand
favorability is the ultimate KPI. But favorability isn’t
something that can be measured and optimized in real
time. For those campaigns we often use engagement
as a proxy since we know that customers who engage
with a brand’s marketing feel more favorable toward it.
Revenue (growth) is the data point that serves as the
clearest measurement tool. But along the way, there’s
a lot of other campaign-specific data that matters and
also requires measuring, reporting, and optimization.
DAMON WALDRON
Director of Demand Generation, Leadspace
@damon_waldron @Leadspace
While there are many helpful customer data points, what we call the
Persona Score is the most essential. In short, is this person the right fit?
How closely does he match your ideal customer profile?
The key to making this Persona Score effective is using unstructured
data from the open and social Web to understand the behaviors, interests, and expertise of a given person. With one number you can then
make the decision of whether to pursue the prospect.
Behavioral data is fantastic and can give you a clear hand raise. Unfortunately, that hand raise is useless if the hand is attached to someone who is
not a potential buyer. In contrast, once you’ve identified the right person,
you can use every marketing channel you have available to get her to engage, from targeted emails to SDR outreach, among many other tactics.
DAVID PETSOLT
Founder and President, buyCalls
@davidpetsolt @buyCallsTeam
There’s one data point for us that determines everything about
a customer: contribution. Many variables affect it—sales price
and volume, variable and fixed costs—but it’s the only true
assessment of the profitability a customer is adding to the
organization. It’s also one of the most efficient ways to
determine whether a campaign or sales strategy needs
to be realigned.