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Building Strong Customer Relationships with Quality Data
Today, engaging your audience and keeping it engaged is difficult. Find out how one company
tackled this common marketing predicament with data insight.
Regardless of your company’s size or popularity in the media, engaging your key targets and
maintaining long-lasting relationships with them is a difficult marketing task. Even multimilliondollar organizations struggle to successfully create a secret sauce that makes their brands
irresistible to the public.
Take Sophos, for instance, a leading IT security firm relied on by such brands as Pixar, Xerox, and
Ford to secure their networks. When you’ve got big accounts like those on the line, retention and
reputation are everything. Think about it – Sophos must effectively engage its clients to ensure that
they will continue to do business with the firm for the long haul. In addition, it must cultivate strong
business relationships with its buyers to produce positive feedback that will gain the company the
interest of prospects.
Like many organizations that are hitting a wall with retention and acquisition, Sophos realized that
perhaps the challenge goes deeper than designing marketing campaigns, right down to the quality
and use of the data on which the campaigns are based. The firm turned to Dun & Bradstreet to help
its marketing team more effectively identify and target prospects. Dun & Bradstreet was able to
improve the accuracy of Sophos’ business contacts database, as well as the quality of information,
by completing missing information such as industry, company size and hierarchy.
By implementing Dun & Bradstreet data-enhancing services, such as Hoover’s to complete business
contacts information, and Market Insight marketing analytics and targeting solution, Sophos was
able to improve the size of its lead funnel by 10%, campaign response rate by 39%, and sales close
rate by 39%.
In other words, Sophos grew its customer engagement and its bottom line by implementing a datadriven marketing strategy. That is, the company spent more time improving and validating its
business contacts information and garnering more actionable insights from marketing industry
analysis.
Sound like something your company needs to get on board with? Then let’s talk about the
particulars. Below are in-depth advantages of taking on a data-driven marketing strategy to drive
customer engagement and retention:
More Quantifiable Leads
When your marketing database is comprised of complete and accurate business contacts
information, your marketing and sales teams can more effectively gauge which entries are aptly
suited to be ideal customers. In other words, by knowing a prospect’s industry, job title, and place
in the company’s hierarchy (i.e., are they a decision maker or an assistant?), you can better rate
their propensity to buy. By filtering through your business contacts so that you only send marketing
messages to the most quantifiable leads, you can experience results like Sophos did. As a result,
you’ll be able to more consistently and effectively fill up the pipeline with sales-ready leads.
Improved Targeting and Personalization
When it comes to conquering targeted and personalized marketing campaigns, you need a
combination of industry insights and accurate business contacts to win big. In fact, a recent survey
by LiveHive revealed that 42% of corporate executives said that outreach (sales or marketing
emails, for instance) personalized to their company’s industry is “absolutely essential” while 47%
said it was “very important.” Clearly, personalization is the crux of the matter for improving lead
generation and conversion rates. As such, companies ought to turn to available high-quality
industry insights to learn more about their existing and prospective clients’ industry challenges,
trends, and advancements. You can then provide content in alignment with these findings. What’s
more, you’ll be able address the content best-suited to particular leads and get it to them when your
business contacts information is accurate, thereby increasing the effectiveness of your targeting
and personalization efforts.
Stronger, Long-Lasting Relationships
When you have access to in-depth insights about your clients’ respective industries, you can more
aptly address and solve their pain points on a regular basis. As well, when you can start off the
relationship on the right foot by providing personalized and targeted content that resonates with
your audience, they are more likely to trust your brand in the long run.
For instance, when Sophos improved its use of industry analysis and the quality of its business
contacts database, it was better able to engage and communicate with its audience. As a result, it
could cultivate relationships based on mutual trust and understanding because the firm was able to
prove its status as a “trusted advisor” by providing the content, services, and advice most relevant
to its client base.