You should be collecting more than just money from your customers. You should also be collecting key data about them to more fully understand them. Why? Because learning about customers’ buying habits, demographics and even personalities allows you to better serve their needs.
When you can tailor a sales message to a specific group—or even person, you drastically increase the chances of them buying from you, and boosting your overall revenue.
But what types of data should you be collecting? Increase your marketing efficiency and productivity by capturing the following:
Contact info
Before a customer leaves your premises, you should have collected their name and email address, at the very least, and physical address as well if possible.
This allows you to send additional marketing materials to customers, which you can personalize with their names—a strong determining factor in message opening rates.
Transaction history
When you analyze customers’ records, you learn about their preferences for products or services, and when and how often they are likely to buy from you.
With this information you can send customers details about a sale on a similar product, or call them to promote a discount on a service. Offer your customers incentives—email store coupons for example, for providing you with these details.
Demographics
Uncovering gender, age, marital status, home ownership status, whether they have children or pets, ethnic backgrounds and the like can be trickier because people aren’t always quick to offer that information. However, the more information you gather, the better you can decipher your target customer, allowing your business to target them with more relevant offers.
Capture demographic information by sending customer surveys via email or mail, running contests, and posting polls on social media.
Occupation and income level
This information is key to helping you to set prices your customers can afford.
Hobbies and interests
Drilling down this far can allow to you really segment your lists and fine-tune marketing messages that speak to a particular audience.
For customers who are reluctant to hand over information, a good way to glean details is to offer a benefit for doing so. In addition, always explain to customers how you plan to use their information. Finally, don’t insist on attaching a name to the data. You can learn so much about your target customer by asking general questions and allowing them to respond anonymously, especially when it comes to demographics and other personal details.
When planning your marketing strategy, decide how you will source information from your customers so you can personalize and tailor your marketing materials to fit your key demographic. This personalization makes your offers more relevant to your customers—and them more willing to open their wallets.