Category: Automate

The role of AI and machine learning in enhancing CDP capabilities

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Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are becoming increasingly important for businesses as they seek to manage and leverage their customer data. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are playing a crucial role in enhancing the capabilities of CDPs and helping businesses to make better use of their customer data.

The role of AI and machine learning in enhancing CDP capabilities

One of the key ways that AI and ML are enhancing CDP capabilities is through advanced data analysis. AI and ML algorithms can process vast amounts of customer data quickly and accurately, identifying patterns and relationships that would be difficult for humans to see. This information can then be used to inform marketing and sales strategies, helping businesses to target the right customers with the right messages at the right time.

Another way that AI and ML are enhancing CDP capabilities is through personalised experiences. By leveraging customer data and AI/ML algorithms, CDPs can provide personalised experiences for customers, such as personalised product recommendations, targeted marketing messages, and customised offers. This level of personalisation can help businesses to build stronger relationships with customers and improve customer loyalty.

AI and ML are also playing a role in improving the accuracy of customer data. By using AI and ML algorithms to analyse customer data, CDPs can identify and correct errors and inconsistencies in the data, improving its accuracy and reliability. This, in turn, helps businesses to make better decisions based on their customer data.

One of the challenges of using AI and ML in CDPs is ensuring the privacy and security of customer data. With the increasing use of AI and ML, there is a growing concern about the privacy and security of customer data, and businesses must take steps to ensure that their CDPs are secure and that customer data is protected.

Another challenge is the need for skilled personnel. AI and ML require specialised skills and knowledge, and businesses must ensure that they have the right personnel in place to design, implement, and maintain their CDPs. This includes data scientists, software engineers, and other technical experts.

Despite these challenges, the benefits of using AI and ML in CDPs are clear. By leveraging these technologies, businesses can achieve a deeper understanding of their customers, provide personalised experiences, and improve the accuracy of their customer data. This, in turn, helps businesses to make better decisions, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and drive growth and success.

In conclusion, AI and ML are playing a crucial role in enhancing the capabilities of CDPs. By leveraging these technologies, businesses can improve their customer data management, provide personalised experiences, and drive growth and success. However, businesses must also take steps to ensure the privacy and security of customer data, and ensure that they have the right personnel in place to design, implement, and maintain their CDPs. By doing so, they can take full advantage of the benefits of AI and ML in enhancing their CDP capabilities.

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The challenges and best practices for successful CRM implementation

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Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business strategy designed to manage interactions with customers and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Implementing a CRM system can bring significant benefits to a business, including increased sales and revenue, improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, and more efficient operations. However, implementing a CRM system can also be challenging and requires careful planning and execution to ensure success.

The challenges and best practices for successful CRM implementation

One of the main challenges of CRM implementation is selecting the right system for the business. With many different CRM systems available, it can be difficult to determine which one will best meet the needs of the business. Some factors to consider when selecting a CRM system include the size of the business, the type of customers the business serves, and the budget for the system.

Another challenge is data migration. When implementing a CRM system, it is necessary to transfer all of the existing customer data into the new system. This can be a complex and time-consuming process, and if not done correctly, it can lead to data loss or corruption. To minimise the risk of data loss, it is important to have a well-planned data migration process and to use a trusted and experienced data migration partner.

Integration with existing systems is another common challenge. Many businesses use a variety of different systems to manage different aspects of their operations, such as accounting, marketing, and customer service. To ensure that the CRM system integrates smoothly with these other systems, it is important to choose a CRM system that is designed to work with the other systems used by the business.

Another challenge is ensuring that the CRM system is properly configured and customised to meet the specific needs of the business. This includes setting up the system to store and retrieve the right data, and configuring the system to work with the other systems used by the business. To ensure that the system is configured and customised correctly, it is important to work with experienced CRM consultants and developers.

Despite these challenges, there are best practices that can help to ensure the successful implementation of a CRM system. One of the key best practices is to involve all stakeholders in the planning and implementation process. This includes employees, customers, and partners, as well as IT and marketing teams.

Another best practice is to start small and then scale up. This can help to minimise the risks associated with a large and complex CRM implementation project. For example, businesses can start by implementing the CRM system for a specific department or business unit, and then gradually expand the implementation to other departments and business units.

It is also important to ensure that employees are properly trained on how to use the CRM system. This includes training on how to enter and retrieve customer data, how to use the system to manage customer interactions, and how to use the system to generate reports and insights. To ensure that employees are properly trained, it is important to work with experienced CRM trainers and to provide ongoing training and support.

Finally, it is important to measure and monitor the success of the CRM implementation. This includes tracking key metrics such as customer satisfaction, sales and revenue, and employee productivity, and using these metrics to make adjustments and improvements to the CRM system over time.

In conclusion, CRM implementation can bring significant benefits to a business, but it also presents a number of challenges. To ensure the successful implementation of a CRM system, it is important to involve all stakeholders, start small and then scale up, provide proper training, and measure and monitor the success of the implementation. By following these best practices, businesses can increase the chances of success and ensure that their CRM system delivers the desired benefits.

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Why is CRM Software Crucial for SMEs to Boost their Business?

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A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a competent tool for businesses for customer management throughout their lifecycle. For Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs), CRM is a dilemma – to use or not to use. 

For large enterprises, it is a need, but SMEs are still figuring out if they need to adopt CRM. The slow penetration of CRM in SMEs can be attributed to a misconception about the product. The first misconception is that it is only for large companies, and the second is that it is an expensive tool for SMEs. These misconceptions and many more exist in the market. For these reasons, the CRM system is not used by SMEs. Today, we will discuss everything related to CRMs and how they boost business for SMEs.

Why is CRM Software Crucial for SMEs to Boost their Business?

What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a tool or technology system that manages business relationships with their customers and with potential customers. The goal of CRM is to ensure that businesses improve relationships with customers. 

Once this is achieved, it helps increase the company’s revenue and the sales teams’ efficiency. Onboarding a new client has many steps, and if you don’t have a streamlined process in place and miss a process in between – it may not appear good later to get back to customers and tell them you missed something in between.

When you have a CRM system – it streamlines all the day-to-day processes within your company and allows you to implement a foolproof onboarding process for new clients. Also, it keeps customer satisfaction at its peak. Ensuring customers are happy has always been the top priority for organizations. It may make you believe that CRM has been for a long time. However, they are relatively new, and the best thing is CRMs are improving with every passing year.

Take a look at the below mentioned CRM industry trends for 2022:

  • The digital marketing software with the quickest growth rate is CRM.
  • By 2028, it is predicted that the CRM market would be worth $146 billion.
  • The value of the CRM market is anticipated to increase by 13% each year between 2022 and 2030.
  • Because their existing platform does not have the functionality they require, 66% of firms transfer to a new CRM.
  • CRM solutions are used by 91% of companies with 10 or more employees.
  • CRM solutions are used by 82% of businesses for process automation and sales reporting.

How does CRM work?

Before we discuss how CRM can help SMEs, it is crucial to understand how the tool works. To start with, it is essential to know that CRM can do many things. Therefore, once you plan to implement a CRM system within your company, you must find the features that would work best for your company and are specific to your sector (industry). Also, every company is different, when it comes to how it works with its customers. Therefore, you must consider that while selecting a CRM tool.

The first step is pretty generic – the CRM process starts by organizing customer information – such as their contact details, website, social media data, and everything else you can think of concerning your customer. 

The advantage of using CRM is that it can store more personal data. For example, how your client wants to communicate – via phone or email. If required, CRM can also work with applications such as virtual document signing or survey apps and make the whole process smooth and easy for your customers and your business.  

CRM tools can also generate insights that can help you understand your customer base comprehensively. Once you understand your customers better, you can better appeal to them and interact with them in your business transactions.

The latest CRM tools can even automate administrative tasks using artificial intelligence technology, which is a great feature to have for any company, including small and medium enterprises. An example of an administrative task that CRM can handle is data entry work. As an SME, if such tasks occupy your team for long hours, using CRM, employees can free up their time and focus on other crucial things that can help the business grow.

Why is CRM critical for SMEs?

As per the data available, only a small percentage of SMEs currently use CRM software. A recent study was conducted, and it was found that 34% of SMEs have no plan to use it in the future as well.

Most of these SMEs still rely on the old paper and pen method, and some have moved to MS Excel to track their customers. However, these methods impose some major issues which today’s businesses cannot afford:

  • It can lead to incorrect customer data
  • Tracking and follow-ups with customers can become difficult if the count is high
  • Marketing may sound too time-consuming as everything is manual

The beauty of using CRM is that they help SMEs in every area of business. The business areas in which CRM can help include:

  • Marketing: Every organization, including SMEs, needs to track their returns on marketing activities. CRM tools allow them to accurately measure the return on investment for each campaign. It eventually helps SMEs understand which activity should be continued.
  • Sales: SMEs need to understand the sales life cycle to improve sales. CRM ensures the processes in place maximize all new business opportunities.
  • Customer Service: CRM smooths the process for your company and leads to greater customer experience.
  • Finance: One integral part of any business is cash flow management. CRM gives visibility to financial transactions, which offers visibility on the accounting transactions.

CRM Software is crucial for SMEs to Boost their Business

Now that you have a fair understanding of CRM, we can move to the important part – how CRM software can help SMEs to boost their business. Small and medium businesses have smaller teams and hence there is a need to focus more on optimization from a digital source. CRM tools help SMEs stay organized, raise revenue, stay functional, and contrary to popular belief, help save money.

SMEs are more agile than large businesses and can move quicker in any process. Therefore, they can implement and get started with CRMs faster and actualize their benefits at a high level. 

Below are some ways CRM software can boost SMEs’ business:

Customer Relationship Management 

The core functionality of CRM is to act as a customer relationship management tool. CRM software is only as good as its customer retention and customer satisfaction. It gives SMEs the ability to enable a customer relationship and help move people along a sales pipeline that helps with the sales process and importantly, build a relationship.

Both marketing and sales teams are of utmost importance for the growth of any business. However, these teams need information and ideas at their fingertips for higher sales conversion (or success rate). The CRM helps your team with exactly that – all the required information is available at your fingertips.

Increase efficiency 

No one will argue that a computer works faster than an average human mind, and for this reason, you may want to have CRM software in your company. It allows you to automate certain tasks, and they can be done much faster. The available bandwidth from these tasks can be used to focus on something else. CRM can also provide you with information and insights with a few clicks – an employee may require an hour to access the same information without a CRM tool.

Automate Sales tasks 

If you are an SME with core operations around sales, CRM can help you boost your business significantly. It can automate crucial sales tasks such as lead follow-ups,  tracking sales appointments, and post-sales activities. You can track all the sales and marketing activities in one place. It also provides you with an alert when you are required to pay attention to a hot lead.

Integration with other software

CRM is not only about sales, but it can easily integrate with other business management solutions such as project management, data processing software, web services, and accounting. It gives you a more holistic and complete view as you can match your customer information with all other business processes. 

You can also do integration with email and social media, which makes it super easy for you to manage, prioritize and respond to customer email and social media notifications on a real-time basis. With this, you can convert more leads from email by turning your email into a conversion funnel. In short, it helps you better manage your email campaign.

Insights into sales performance 

To increase your sales, you need to understand where you are going wrong or can improve in the current process. CRM software analyzes your present sales performance and works as an opportunity management tool. CRM tools using technology like Artificial Intelligence can determine the scope of future revenue and scrutinize if the current sales process requires more focus. 

The insights can help you understand if your team needs further sales training to deliver better results. On top of all this, CRM software helps you diagnose potential service and support issues to make your business more proactive to customer problems.

Upselling opportunities 

Getting a new customer is a long and costly process. If you have an existing customer base, why not do most of it by upselling? A CRM can help you in this respect also and boost your business. Upselling is a technique where you can add additional services or products to the original purchase. 

Based on all the past interactions that a particular customer has had with the company and analyzing that information intelligently, a sales team can conclude what can be offered to the customer that he is more likely to buy. CRM helps you in this entire process.

Reports 

The CRM software can organize information into reports which lack human errors and biases. Sales reporting can be difficult when done manually. Analytics requires attention to detail which is a time-consuming process. With CRM, sales reports can be generated in no time and can be customized as per requirement. For example, a sales performance report tells you how well your sales team is doing in terms of closing target deal numbers and gives you an estimate of the actual and expected value of deals in the sales pipeline.

Team collaboration becomes easy 

CRM software keeps all the information centralized and helps your team members centrally track sales probabilities and pipelines. Users can easily access and edit the data shared with them about every customer touchpoint. You can better manage product supply by clearly analyzing the impact of marketing campaigns. Once you have CRM software in your company, it ensures every team member is on the same page – anyone can add notes, mark actions and act on problems.

Grievance Resolution 

As mentioned above, getting a new customer is not easy and also costly. Hence, you must do everything to ensure you don’t lose a customer. One of the main reasons you lose a customer is that there is an unresolved grievance that they have either due to bad quality products, poor service, later delivery, bad management, etc. Without a CRM system, it could be quite impossible for you to keep track of all the customers’ complaints. Since CRM generates a unique id for each customer, tracking everything related to them is easy.

Does your business need CRM?

You now know how CRM can help you boost your business. However, if you are still in doubt about whether it is useful for your business or not, let us try and help you. To get the answer to this question, you need to answer the below question for yourself:

  • Do you find it difficult to track customer-related documents?
  • Do you track leads from different sources in one place?
  • Do you miss giving enough priority to hot leads?
  • Do you feel you are unable to track campaign results effectively?
  • Are your customers from diverse backgrounds?

If the answer to the above problems is YES, then you need CRM software for your business, whether you are a small or medium business.

Conclusion

There are endless benefits that CRM software can bring to SMEs. If you want to expand your business or improve the existing process in your company, you need to consider investing in CRM soon. As mentioned at the start, CRM is a flexible tool and has a lot to offer – therefore customize the tools as per your requirement. If required, you can hire dedicated developer to develop a CRM for your business. 

CRM Vs CDP: Differences, Similarities, Applications & Use Cases

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You probably know about CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools quite well. After all, it originated as a concept in the 80s, and as a product in the 90s. You may know some things about CDPs – even though you’d be surprised to know that they’ve been around for more than a decade.

And while you might think that CDP is just one of the (multiple) acronyms in your life, there are a few firms who’ve no doubts about CDPs whatsoever. Among them is the world’s No.1 CRM, Salesforce, which is developing its own CDP – earlier Customer 360 Audiences, now simply Salesforce CDP – by leaps and bounds.

Then, there are the good folks at Adobe and Oracle, who are on the bandwagon too.

Why?

In this article, we’ll answer that. As well as give you a detailed analysis of their differences, similarities, and areas of overlap. After reading through, you’ll know which tasks they’re best suited to, and which one (or two!) will help you increase conversions and drive ROI. Plus, we’ve got some illustrative use cases to explain it all perfectly.

So read on! And yes, it’s a long read. So get comfortable. Or,  skip to the TLDR part at the end of each section. And get your hands on the pdf version for future reference.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

  1. How Customer Experience is Driving the Unstoppable Growth of CDPs & CRMs
  • What is Customer Experience (CX)
  • Why is CX the Gamechanger Today?
  • CX from a ‘Personal’ Perspective 

How Customer Experience is Driving the Unstoppable Growth of CDPs & CRMs

What is Customer Experience (CX)

Customer experience is defined as how a customer feels about your brand across the sum total of interactions with you. It’s about how welcome, cared for and catered to they feel with your product, your people, as well as all your digital interfaces & touchpoints.

Why CX is a Gamechanger Today?

According to a Gartner survey, 75% of companies can prove that higher customer satisfaction increase revenues. This growth is driven by higher retention rates or a greater lifetime value. As Raj Gautam, CEO, QL Tech, says, ‘Simply creating a better product is not enough. You need to constantly deliver more value to your customers.’

Delivering value means providing the right content to your audience for their stage in the buyer’s cycle. Give them timely assistance right where and when they need it. Keep your ear to the ground, and get the right feedback to continuously improve your product. Keep up with their changing behaviour and buying habits. And make them feel that they’re well cared for in general.

Giving CX that ‘Personal’ Touch 

In short, game-changing CX is all about providing that personal touch. Every interaction, message, ad, and solution that you deliver must seem like it was made just for them. And the rewards of doing so are immense.  

86% of shoppers will pay extra for an extra nice CX. And a more personalised experience has triggered 49% to make impulse purchases. Understanding your customer better and delivering just the right trigger will pay rich dividends.

 

CDP –  What it Does, and How

  1.  collect, understand and act on data to influence customer decisions whenever the customer is ready to act. Some customers may be looking for real-time interactions, and some may want to take things slow. Based on data
  2. Breaks down silos – presents a unified view of the customer and deliver a uniform CX across channels
  3. a wide variety of integrations that can unify data from disparate channels as seamlessly as possible. Every data channel should be connected
  4. The CDP should be data source-neutral unifies all customer touchpoints and makes data useful to every team and every technology within the enterprise. Rich customer data within the supply chain, call centres and other places outside the shopping cart should be utilised.

 

CRM Vs CDP Vs DMP

CRM is an operational system for sales and customer service agents; it has detailed data but isn’t designed to let other systems work with that data.

DMP holds summarized data used primarily to support ad campaigns. 

In short: big data and data warehouse overlap with CDP while CRM and DMP are pretty distinct and you’ll probably need both.

 

CRM Vs CDP in Detail

Rating CRMs and CDPs on the Most Critical Components of CX:

  1. Enabling elegant, painless interactions (66%)
  2. Providing speedy service (66%)
  3. Ensuring that customers feel understood (65%)
  4. Making relevant information easy to find (63%)
  5. Being consistent and connected across channels (63%)

 

Applications/Advantages of CRMs

Applications/Advantages of CDPs

True CDP can align with data compliance goals In the wake of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act

The best CDPs bring all customer data and preferences into a central repository, meaning opt-in/opt-outs are easy to manage, customer data is easy to eliminate completely and locating all of a customer’s data is a fast process — all critical elements to complying with modern privacy regulations.

CDP buyers should look for organizations that already prioritize data privacy best practices

AI-driven personalization is the wave of the future. Right now, the building blocks of this are being laid by CDPs that can collect and normalize data in real time. In the future, this means chatbots that can have tailored conversations with customers, but also soak up their behaviour through the buyer journey and make decisions based on that data in the future.

machine learning-enabled CDPs powering real-time, tailored decisions, marketers will also approach testing in a whole new way. Through automation, marketers will be able to more quickly and strategically test the next steps and communication methods and gather smarter data around the results. 

 

Top CDPs

It has been interpreted in different ways by different vendors and even users. So, choosing a CDP software is never about the ‘best CDP’ in the literal sense of the word but it’s about the ‘the best CDP solution for you.’

AM I READY FOR A CDP?

Your Martech stack was built organically over time, without a clear PoA, maybe even before CDPs existed.

Victim of cloud vendors who’ve overpromised and underdelivered.

In house, the IT department has delayed or built inefficient, poorly integrated software systems.

Your data is in silos, and different tools are unable to access all of your customer data.

You have constant sources of data that will not dry up

You have all the data definitions/business rules required to make sense of the data

You need to make decisions in real-time.. You handle large volumes of data, your customer’s value personlaised one-on-one communication,  

 

You’re having trouble building a consistent, relevant, cohesive and personalized ‘multi-touchpoint customer experience’

You are unable to track and measure conversion effectively across the complex marketing mix

You are finding it hard to manage dynamic customer databases- from data privacy and unsubscribes to moving conversions from the prospect to the customer workflow in real time

Omer Artun, CEO and Founder of AgilOne adds: you are probably ready for a CDP if:

You have a significant number of customers who frequently interact with your brand across channels (the greater the number of customers, interactions, and transactions, the more value a CDP will provide)

Your company gets a lot of value from 1:1 interactions (e.g., increased LTV, response rate, ROAS, etc.)

There are multiple customer profiles across multiple systems, but you could benefit from a master customer record

You need a single customer view in real-time, so all operating systems can have access to real-time customer data across different interaction points, devices, and applications

Beyond the pure customer insights, the right CDP can offer, marketers must also realize that a CDP solution can help future-proof their operations and keep pace with the evolution of technology like AI for years to come.

% of companies that are going to be competing solely on customer experience.. Gartner!

CX -> marketing + sales + service

Not good to outsource CX initiatives

 

The success of digital transformation will not be measured by how much companies invest in innovative technologies, but by how well they use those technologies to elevate and maintain the customer experience. 

In the experience economy, transactions that used to occur face-to-face are being rapidly replaced by digitally-enabled interactions, person-to-machine engagements or, even, machine-to-machine experiences across a diverse and dynamic spectrum of digital gateways or digitally-aided, in-person situations.  

Customers knowingly or inadvertently give you their data – the behavioural, financial, relationship, location, and personal identity information that gets exchanged – knowingly or not – in return for an ever-improving, loyalty-building customer experience. 

 

capture and analyze interaction data in real-time

brands face the problem of stitching together fragmented data from interactions that stretch across email, web, mobile apps, call centres, chatbots, in-store transactions and more. To meet customer expectations for contextually appropriate responses, companies need unified, actionable data for which legacy technologies like data warehouses, data lakes, and customer relationship management systems (CRMs) are just not up to the task. 

In the ever-expanding digital ecosystem, customers engage across multiple channels at any time of day or night from virtually any location or device and expect a brand to respond with an immediate personalized response.      

delivers the most current intel about a unique customer from – structured and unstructured; real-time and historical; anonymous and identifiable – data that is collected from multiple sources. 

 

A CDP is an evolution of something all modern marketers (should be) familiar with – a marketing database. In this case, a CDP is a marketing database, purpose-built for the API-driven world and ‘pick and mix’ marketing technology stacks in mind, while also allowing for the integration of offline sources and legacy database and infrastructure”. This gives you some idea of who could use a CDP

 

WHAT BASICS NEED TO BE IN PLACE BEFORE INVESTING IN A CDP?

We identified the symptoms, diagnosed the problem and prescribed a good strong CDP as the possible cure. But –  have you checked for allergic reactions?

It appears that true, data-driven personalization across all touchpoints and throughout the customer’s journey would be difficult- if not impossible – without a CDP.  So, if that is your goal, and you have clarity on exactly where you are stuck with using your customer data more effectively, you should be ready for a serious investment decision. But it’s not all about what you don’t have. You also need to think about what you do have in place today for a CDP to deliver tomorrow.

 

Consider these:

  1. A plan: document your journey and plan: what are the realistic expectations and outcomes along with milestones for the CDP investment? Who are the people accountable and who are the decision-makers?  What will your KPIs and metrics be? What will you prioritize in case there is too much data?
  2. Data: you need some amount of ongoing customer data from multiple sources with a reasonable level or capability for integration to be in place before CDP can work to move you forward. In essence, you should be at least at the bottom of the pyramid in the Graphic above. Even if it’s unconnected, siloed and inaccessible, you still need the inflow of high-quality data from multiple sources.
  3. Data skills: you don’t need the tech chops of a data warehousing expert but some analytic and application experience is required within the marketing team to manage and own the CDP project, right from the evaluation and requirement mapping stage to regular use post-deployment, and of course the turbulent deployment stage in the middle. Get the right people on the team before moving to the next stage.
  4. Management and user buy-in: it’s unlikely you will get a budget without management buy-in, but don’t forget adoption- will the users- the people that make up your marketing team – be able to accept this level of integration, transparency and measurability?
  5. Marketing Automation: you need a fairly mature marketing automation solution or stack in place for optimal CDP outcomes. Having connected and real-time data in place won’t be much good if you don’t have a robust outbound/ inbound marketing automation system in place to use the data and execute personalized campaigns.
  6. Integration capability: for CDP to deliver, data needs to flow. Ensure you have checked with internal experts on the integration capabilities of existing solutions and what it would take to get the data flowing both ways, as well as plug in the analytics solution.
  7. Compliance: with GDPR and other data protection data privacy laws in effect or due to come into effect soon, a unified customer view will go a long way in ensuring compliance. It is useful to understand the compliance requirements for your industry and geography and figure out whether and how a CDP Course Changes Build Customer Loyalty

 

According to Gartner, a course-changing digital experience leads customers to shift their perspective or approach and begin to take confident steps toward their goal. A positive course change can impact brand preference by 37% and behavioural advocacy by 54%.

“When customers do something different with confidence after a digital experience, that creates a lasting brand impression and inspires customers to share their memorable experience with others,” said Ms LaRocca-Cerrone.

 

Self-Reflective Learning Drives Course Changes

Customers’ self-reflective learning during a digital experience has 2x the impact on driving customers’ course changes, compared to user experience functionalities. This is because customers change course when they feel empowered and ready to do something different, not because of a slick or intuitive user interface. “To trigger these valuable customer course changes, CMOs must invest in building a new class of digital experiences that slows customers down at key junctures and rewards their self-reflection,” added Ms LaRocca-Cerrone.  

How to Use Customer Analytics to Grow Your Business?

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No business in the world can undermine the value of customer analytics. It not only helps businesses to make informed decisions, but it can help them build their entire customer lifecycle for their brand.

Now some might be wondering what customer analytics is. Well, it’s the collection, processing and analysis of customer information to gain insights into customer behaviour. As for why you need customer analytics? Well, this goes without saying, there more you know about your customers, the better your business can prepare itself to attract, convert and develop a long-lasting relationship with them.

Businesses use various tools to gather customer business analytics effectively. In this article, we are going to discuss all the steps involved and why customer analytics is necessary for your bottom line.

 

How can you collect and store customer analytics data?

The way your business collects and stores customer information makes an immense impact as it paces the way towards how can use the data as effectively as possible.

Data collection

The first step is figuring out ways to collect data for this your marketing teams can use Google Analytics to collect customer information such as the behaviour of visitors to your business website.

There are other tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Optimizely that work just as well as Google Analytics.

Data sorting

The data that you have collected is mostly unstructured, you need a way to sort it and direct it for further analysis. A customer data platform (CDP) can be very helpful in doing this, will help you do this. CDP directs your data to the place where it needs to be. 

CDPs connect multiple tools and ensure the data collected is standardised. Properly sorted data is much easier to sort and analyse.

Data storage

Now that you have your customer data all sorted your CDP needs to send the data for storage in a data warehouse where it’s unified. Redshift is one of the most popular data warehouses among users, but there are plenty of others like BigQuery and Postgres.

Once you have selected the data warehouse that you’re going to use to store your data, now’s the time to start that process of customer analytics. 

Data analysis

Lastly, you’ll need some way to analyze your data with business intelligence tools like Mode Analytics, Looker, or Tableau. But there one thing that you should note is that these tools are that they require specific knowledge of SQL. 

In case you are not proficient in SQL, you can also consider having a look at a tool like Chartio.

Need for customer analytics for your business

Customer analytics will help every department within your company, especially when it comes to building highly personalised, timely marketing campaigns.

Customer journey analytics can also help your sales team understand your customers’ behaviour to help them reduce your sales cycle. Your development team can use customer analytics to build a better product as per customers’ preferences.

Similarly, the marketing teams can use customer analytics to streamline your marketing funnel more so that your audiences convert more effectively.

Summary

Today’s well-known brands have an immense understanding of their customer analytics. If you want to take your business to the next level by creating a more personalised experience for your customers, you need to take the time to build a customer analytics infrastructure.

If you have any questions or need help setting up your customer analytics pipeline, please feel free to book a 30 minutes free session with us, and we will try our best to help you out.

Cheers!!

Useful Blogging Tools That Will Save You Time

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In today’s cut-throat digital world writing a decent blog is just not enough. You need to do the research, find the right keywords and market it so that it helps you grow your audience and reach out to your customers.

By the time you’re done with all these activities, it’s time for the next blog and the cycle begins again. This rarely leaves you time to do anything else, in fact, most bloggers have to cut some time from their blog prog promotions.

What if we tell you that certain tools can drastically reduce your blogging time? Sounds interesting? Well, it certainly is and we are going to be discussing these blogging tools in this article. So without further adieu let’s get started!

Awesome Blogging tools for all your needs

Todoist

The Todoist tool takes your to-do lists to a new level by allowing you to create multiple tasks so that you could make a list of blog posts, schedule, and collaborate with others.

With the ability to personalise your views that fit with your style it simplifies workflow by connecting your emails, calendars, and files. Not only this Todist can integrate with multiple other apps, including Dropbox and Alexa.

As of now, Todoist has around 187k Google reviews with a 4.7 rating.

Evernote

When it comes to capturing anything from text, photos or audio notes, Evernote is the finest. With this digital workspace, you can save drafts of your blog posts in the app and then publish them when you’re ready.

Another function that Evernote specialises in is clipping images and screenshots while you surfing the net. Evernote’s a powerful search feature and keyword tags easily find what you need to capture and sync your notes with other devices if you want.

Flipboard

The Flipboard app can be used to collate all kinds of content like news, blogs, videos, photos, social media posts, etc. As of now, there are stories from nearly 30,000 topics on Flipboard.

You can then turn the unified content into personalised stories to share with social media followers or used for your blog. It has an easy-to-use interface that is highly customisable by topic interest, making it great for niche blog promotion.

Agorapulse

Agorapulse is an all-in-one digital marketing platform that is used for monitoring, managing, and analysing your social media marketing campaigns. It helps you analyse the impact of your marketing strategies so you can decide on what’s working and what’s not.

You can schedule social media posts in advance so that you don’t miss any opportunities to engage with your followers. Agorapulse specialises in performance tracking to identify your best-performing content and the implementation of analytics to understand which content is getting the best response.

These blogging tools will help you in simplifying most of your blogging activities and help you save time. We will keep updating you when we come across other tools that you can use. Till then keep reading our blogs and drop us a line in case you have any questions.

Cheers!!

How can you best use customers’ information for your business?

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The way your brand collects customer information determines how your marketing, sales and service teams interact with them. And this determines whether your business can make long-lasting relationships with or lose to your competitors.

This is why it is important how you collect, store and use the customer for your communication with your prospects and customers. The way you do that will help your brand deliver highly personalised interactions that can be scaled. 

Now the question is, how to collect, store and make use of the information so that all your teams can make the best use of it? In case you’re wondering that same then keep reading we are going to be discussing just that.

Let’s get started, shall we!!

Customer Data for Marketing

Customer Data For Marketing

Marketing is always at the forefront when it comes to interacting with new audiences. Drawing attention to your brand, using strategies like forms and other lead gen tools to convert that audience to contacts, and nurturing them to become sales-ready leads.

1) Website Engagement

At the initial stages of a new lead’s engagement with your business, it’s important to make sure your website analytics is well built to help you understand how they are interacting and how you can streamline their user experience.

Let’s say you have an e-commerce business website, for example, you could utilise your website activity to recommend other likely products that each person might prefer via email or retargeting ads on social media.

2) Segmentation Inforrmation

The data that lets you compartment wise a contact’s info into groups and lists is one of the most useful types of customer information that you can collect early on. This can include data such as team size, industry, and individual roles.

Not only can this data gives rise to the most personalised messaging and marketing automation but it also helps you calculate the lead score.

3) Lead Scoring

Lead qualification data such as lead scoring is one of the most powerful ways for marketers to assist their sales colleagues. With automated lead scoring in place, points are given for positive interactions and behaviour and removed in the case of negative indicators. 

It’s the quickest way to instantly analyse how likely is the prospect going to purchase your product, and ideally starts as soon as a visitor converts to a lead. Here are some examples of lead scoring metrics.

  • Value of the market or industry
  • Identification as decision-maker
  • Adequate budget
  • Amount of time spent on your website

Customer Data for Sales

Customer Data for Sales

The sales create and boost the bridge for interested leads to convert them into happy customers, and nurture each prospect to the right product or service. Here is the customer information necessary for your salesperson.

1) Information About Decision-Makers

Your sales team gets a granular view of how each client’s company operates. One of the key components included in this is identifying and recording who is involved in the decision-making process.

This helps you to avoid the unpleasant scenario of them remembering you while you look anxiously at a blank record, or giving the deal to a colleague who has even lesser background information.

2) Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

Estimation of a customer’s lifetime value is a really useful metric to forecast long-term and repetitive business.

You can calculate this by multiplying their purchase value by purchase frequency over your average customer lifespan. When you use the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Customer Data Platform (CDP)  that has calculation properties, you can keep this up to date automatically for your active customers.

Lastly…

All this information can be efficiently tracked and stored in a CRM or CDP platform so that your marketing and sales teams can make the best use of and effectively convert your leads into your customers.

However, there are so many Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Customer Data Platform (CDP) available in the market it’s difficult to choose the right one that is suitable for your business needs. In case you have any questions regarding CRM or CDP systems or need some assistance in setting up and their customisation, please feel free to contact us anytime and we’d love to help you out.

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Why CRM is the perfect choice for Marketing Automation?

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Marketing is more than attracting people, it’s about creating value within your brand so they can relate to your offerings and approach you themselves. This way you can create long-lasting relationships with your customer and get returning business from them.

Needless it used to require a lot of effort from cross-functional teams to implement optimum marketing strategies. However, with recent technological advancements, it’s possible to automate the majority of your marketing campaigns, and one of the bests tools for marketing automation is a customer relationship platform (CRM).

In this article, we are going to discuss how the CRM platform help in streamlining your business’s automated marketing endeavours, so without further ado let’s get started.

What is customer relationship management software?

CRM is a marketing automation software, designed to take care of all your major customer relations needs, and automate crucial elements within your business. It plays the role of an ideal secretary. It is constantly working for the betterment of your marketing strategies, marketing designs, customer feedback loops, and more.

Some of its major functions include historically tracking historical customer data, including dates and notes of phone conversations, past purchase records, and email interactions as they proceed through the buyer’s journey. Using tagging logic the CRM applies tags on the users when they take certain actions such as adding items to their wishlist or filling out a form and launches email campaigns to direct the leads back into your sales funnel.

Why CRM is the best choice for marketing automation?

The CRM has a wide range of benefits that elevate your automated marketing capabilities such as:

Reduces chances of Human Error

When businesses have an outdated system or process in place for lead tracking, the probability of human error that comes with managing the shortcomings increases which might lead to prospects slipping through the cracks. CRMs marketing automation enables your sales team to have the right tools to close a deal.

Unify Your Database Management

The CRM provides all the user’s information in one place, Marketing teams don’t have to go out of their way to forage customer profile information and instead are able to prepare to approach leads and prospects based on unified data management.

Provide Consistent Messaging

The marketing communication that affects the customer’s experience can be aligned when engaging with the client. It’s not as much of a challenge to provide consistent messaging when you have all the contextual information available in CRM.

Lastly…

The CRM is truly a wonderful platform fully capable of automating all your marketing endeavours. However, to unlock its full potential, you need support from professional digital marketers like QL Tech having over a decade of experience in CRM implementation and customisation.

In case you need help in CRM customisation or have any questions regarding CRMs, please feel free to book a free 30 minutes session with us and we’ll try our best to help you out

Cheers!!

What is the purpose of virtual reality? – Next Future Technology

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Businesses are always looking for new innovative ways to connect with their clientele. As the customers are not as susceptible to traditional marketing tactics as they used to be, the need for a more transformative approach is crucial.

One of the Next-generation technologies that can really transform the process of reaching customers is Virtual reality or VR in short. We understand that while many of you might associate VR as a Sci-fy idea, but the potential of its Real-world benefits is TREMENDOUS.

With each & every day more practical applications for virtual reality a popping up. Which is why today we’ll highlight some of these applications as well as what’s next in the VR universe.

But first, let’s start with a bit of Introduction:

What is Virtual Reality?

It is a computer-generated environment that visualises scenes and objects appearing to be real so that the user feels completely immersed in the virtual surroundings. This virtual environment is experienced by using a device such as Virtual Reality headset or helmet. Using Virtual reality technology you can play a video game as one of the game characters and experience the game environment as your virtual surroundings.

There is a lot of confusion around Virtual reality and Augmented reality so let’s get this straightened out. The main difference between the two technologies is that VR builds a fully immersive virtual world around the user with the help of a specific headset. On the other hand, in Augmented reality (AR), the real world becomes the framework within which objects, images or sound are added best example is Pokémon Go.

Applications of Virtual Reality

  1. Recruitment and Training

Virtual Reality has benefitted the corporate sector quite a bit. Many companies apply this revolutionary technology recruiting and training their staff. Training with seemingly real work challenges and scenarios has a greater impact on the employees and helps them retain the learnings better. 

Using virtual reality that engages the employees in seemingly real work challenges and scenarios. Similarly, businesses can set up simulated interviews and recruit the best candidates for the job. Employees can practice complex processes without the risk of anything going wrong. This helps them become best prepared for the challenges in the real-world workplace.

 

  1. Leisure

The tours and travels industry is always searching for the best possible ways to showcase travel destinations to their clients. Now we’re sure you can imagine how virtual reality comes into the picture when it comes to the prospects experiencing the looks & feel of holiday destinations around the globe.

With VR Technology, the world becomes a place where people can learn and immerse themselves in a myriad of cultures and traditions. Combining with leisure can lead everyone to a greater understanding and appreciation for each other.

  1. Healthcare

Healthcare is an important field where VR can have a significant impact. Healthcare professionals can make use of virtual models to prepare themselves before working on real bodies and Virtual reality can even be applied as pain relief for burn injuries.

VR technology can also be used as a treatment for mental health issues and the Virtual Reality immersion Therapy has proved to be particularly effective in the treatment of PTSD and anxiety. 

Healthcare still has a lot of untapped potential in which the Virtual tech can be applied for therapeutic purposes.

  1. Education

VR tech has transformed education by enabling students to learn in a highly immersive, experiential way. Universities have developed apps that lets the students take a virtual tour of Ancient Rome, explore the human brain, and imagination is the limit.

ImmersiveVREducation is working on a virtual classroom/meeting room space, where people can virtually immerse themselves and learn from lecturers around the world.

What’s Next For Virtual Reality?

The leading technology companies are already working towards developing VR headsets that do not need cables and allow images to be seen in High Definition. 

There are even speculations that in the coming years they could integrate Artificial Intelligence. This will enable more devices and large user communities to be connected. Moreover, its minimal latency will make it possible for people to immerse themselves in the virtual environment, almost as if they were seeing them with their own eyes.

All this proves that Virtual Reality is no longer science fiction. It can very likely be integrated into our present and, in the coming years.

In Conclusion

The universe of Virtual reality is expanding and is not limited to the limited application descriptions above. There is no telling of the amazing ways VR will change the future. All we can do is sit back, relax and watch the glorious future unfold.

We promise to keep you updated on the next Big thing in Virtual tech. But in case you have any questions or need help in fitting this technology in your business. Simply drop us a line and we’ll get in touch with you in no time.

Cheers!!

What’s Next for Customer Data Platform in 2020?

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The year 2020 might have been awful in so many ways from start to finish. But one thing is for sure, we have made great strides in the development of the latest innovation in digital marketing platforms that is the Customer Database Platform (CDP).

Every entrepreneur is trying to utilise this technology to gain an edge in the world of online marketing and customer service. Which is to be expected as the Customer Database Platform can really help in transforming both the aspects of the business.

But before we jump the gun talking about the latest trends in CDP, for those who a fairly new to the platform, we’ll discuss a little bit about CDP and what it can do?

So, let’s get cracking shall we…

About Customer Database Platform

In short, a CDP is a Digital marketing framework that helps present a centralised, diligent and individual perspective on the customer, consolidating data from numerous channels, platforms, and tools. 

Not only this the Customer Database Platform lets the data migrate to and fro between different customer data frameworks to streamline communications and oversee customer engagement.  The information it consolidates can be easily customized that enables businesses to implement contextual marketing strategies.

Some of its main features

1) Reporting via customized dashboards

CDPs display strong utility in terms of customisation. With real-time notification capabilities, This platform can auto-generate highly refined reports for end-to-end visualisation. Its unifies dashboards will permit you to choose what data that meets your specific business requirement.

2) Automation across channels 

The CDPs improve automated advertising capability by re-arranging rough data. The platform’s programming can execute cross-channel in a systematic and easy to visualise manner.

3) Multiple Integrations

Get a guaranteed stack of options to incorporate with other platforms, so you pick so you can have one focal database for the entirety of your customer data at your fingertips.

2020 trends for Customer Database Platform

Now the awaited news on what’s all been happening on the CDP front:

  • Vendors of applications are incentivised to add CDP capabilities to their systems because some clients want them. Individual CDPs are used for each system
  •  The client will be advised by not to keep a singular CDP as their primary database as it adds value to their product and makes clients less likely to switch to another system.
  • Comprehensive accuracy of the ‘identity graph’ in finding matches between identifiers, beyond matches made using the customer’s own data
  • Additional information circulated by the vendor, both to refine the existing customer and prospect records and to inculcate new customers and prospects to the customer’s list.

Last words…

In spite of the recent developments, there’s still much work to be done in the Customer Database Platform. However, things are looking up as more and more people are getting interested in this technology.

We promise to keep you updated on this platform’s developments and as always if you hve any questions or need assistance with setting up a CDP for your business, we are just a message away.

Till then Stay Tuned!!