Carlos Ankora

@thedonkarlos
¡ Customer Relationship Management is really
important for many businesses, as it is the focus
point of sales and marketing strategies.
¡ At the centre of a business’ CRM is their
customer database, which is a really helpful tool
enabling them to:
§ identify customer trends
§ create customer loyalty and
§ increase their customer communication.
¡ All businesses have a customer database,
whether it is a computerised system or a piece of
paper with names and details written on.
¡ An effective marketing database will enable
you to communicate better with your
customers.
¡ analyse sales/service data and individuals'
personal information
¡ focus your marketing activities more
precisely and save money
¡ improved marketing communications
¡ measure the effectiveness of your marketing
activities
¡ As with many business operations, it is
always a good idea to start by setting
objectives.
¡ Setting objectives for your customer
database will also help you identify what data
you need to collect from your customers.
¡ When creating your database it is important
to remember that it must be easy to add and
update files.
¡ Therefore ensure your database has a clear
and easy to use structure and is stored in an
accessible area for all database users.
¡ With data analysis, it’s important to analyze
trends within the aggregate data. You need to
be able to segment the data into categories,
so you can analyze the data of specific
customer groups and create marketing
campaigns that are more relevant to each
unique customer.
¡ To protect your database, ensure yourself or
whoever is in charge, takes frequent backups.
¡ These backups should then be labelled clearly
and stored in a safe location, so that if an
error does occur you do not lose all your data.
¡ One of the most critical aspects of managing
customer data is ensuring all data remains
current.
¡ Under the Data Protection Act, you are
legally responsible for ensuring that any data
you store is accurate and up to date.
¡ It is also important that you ensure your data
is up to date so that you are not wasting time
and money using incorrect data.
¡ To keep your data up to date, regularly ask
customers if their data has changed from that
which you already have.
¡ Data cleansing allows you to omit any
incomplete, incorrect, and outdated data,
which can substantially improve data
analysis.
¡ DBMS software helps to manage large
quantities of data, so you can rid your system
of the dirty data that is slowing your analysis
down.
¡ Measure the success of your database by
reviewing the data it contains and the
activities you have used it for, at regular
intervals.
¡ Keep an eye on the rest of the market as well
to see if there are any other activities you can
use your database for, and generally offer a
better customer service.
¡ Customers that receive marketing
communications that are inaccurate or not of
interest may find it annoying. This can affect
your reputation.
¡ Sending materials to the wrong person or
address is also a waste of budget.
¡ Keep accurate data, communicate with the
right people and do it at the right time.