From the customer information you acquire through online contact forms and other lead sources to sales transaction data, every possible interaction you or your business has with a prospective client gathers valuable insight. In fact, businesses have access to so much data today, it can be easy to feel swamped by the volume and lose sight of the value of it.

If you’re considering new initiatives for client acquisition, or thinking about how you can re-engage existing customers, take the opportunity to review the assets you have and consider whether you’re using them to full advantage.  

Consolidate data

It’s a good idea to consider all functions of your business and any siloed pots of data that may have fulfilled their initial short-term function but which, when consolidated, offer significant untapped potential in the longer-term.

For example, your sales team could be sitting on a potential gold mine of ‘prospect’ lists that they’ve compiled manually, but haven’t had time to call. Enhanced with email, these lists of qualified prospects could provide a valuable feed for targeted email nurture, generating leads and moving them along the pipeline until they are sales ready.

Investing in ways to consolidate data can also help ensure that all of your business functions share a more comprehensive view of each customer, which will in turn provide a more informed and consistent customer experience. With a more complete picture of your prospects’ situations, issues can be acted on promptly and opportunities for upsell or cross-sell seized early by your sales team with an increased likelihood of conversion.

Prioritise your key accounts

The Pareto Principle highlights that, in many instances, 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes; applying this to the business world, it is often the case that 80% of revenue can be attributed to 20% of returning, high-value customers. If this is the case for your business, prioritising your key customers via strategic account-based marketing can help to increase your customers’ lifetime value. Investing in a small number of high value accounts, strengthening your relationship with them and building intelligence around them, is a more profitable approach than grappling with an unwieldy, ever-growing database of unqualified companies and contacts.

Putting the time into researching your best customers, reviewing their previous habits and buying behaviour, and talking to them to find out more about their pain points and key needs, allows you to tailor programmes strategically and anticipate evolving requirements. This, in turn, allows you to deliver an exceptional experience that will sustain and grow a small number of highly profitable client relationships.  

Identify your brand champions

As we previously highlighted in our article on earning customer loyalty, there are numerous approaches organisations can take when it comes to building up loyal clientele, but it’s important to ensure that hard-won loyalty is used strategically as part of a referral or loyalty programme. Maintaining strong, personal relationships with your key customers ensures you have a base of trusted clients willing to refer your business to other key prospects, provide testimonials that can be used across marketing collateral and external review sites, and champion your proposition within their sector.

Clean and enhance 

Aside from common issues around data quality such as incorrect or duplicated data, the issue of incomplete data, which lacks actionable insight, is perhaps the biggest barrier to businesses realising the value of their assets.

Do you have lists of prospective businesses you want to target without the relevant decision-maker contacts for your proposition? Or perhaps you have some part-qualified leads that showed interest in your product or service, but didn’t convert, without email addresses with which to nurture them?

Before you plan to invest in new data, it is always worth considering whether your existing data could be cleansed and enriched to provide a more relevant and qualified base for your sales and marketing campaigns. Ultimately, whatever your plans for the next year involve or which new strategies you are looking to test, do not overlook the value in existing data assets and ensure they are used to their full advantage.

There are many data services available in the market from cleansing, enhancement, deduplication and number appending to deeper levels of enrichment through human interaction. At The Telemarketing Company, we provide a full range of phone-based data services to help your business achieve healthier, qualified assets to improve your customer engagement and support your sales and marketing strategies. If you’d like to speak to a member of our team about your requirements, please get in touch.