No matter the size of your business, keeping your database fresh, constantly adding to it, and nurturing it is absolutely essential to your business success. You’ll see a variety of benefits, such as:

• Owning your contacts
• Speaking directly to audience members
• Identifying buyer personas.
• Segmenting your buyers.
• Creating loyalty programs that increase repeat buying.
• Kickstarting your customer service into high gear.

Before we dive into strategy, let’s look at a few challenges you may encounter with database marketing.

Data decay and obsolescence: People move, change jobs, change names, abandon email addresses, and start new ones. Life changes like these could render their information relatively useless.

While there’s no easy way to avoid purposeful typos, avoiding accidental errors is possible with drop-down choices instead of blank comment boxes. You can also confirm people’s information when you speak with them.

It’s important to clean up your database frequently, purging contacts with out-of-date or inaccurate information, and merging contacts with multiple profiles. This allows you to focus on reaching the people who could be your next customer or client and take care of those who already are.

If you’ve ever received an email two years after doing business with someone, it’s probably come as a shock. Chances are, they don’t update their database in a timely fashion so they completely missed the window to build rapport with you after that first interaction.

Don’t make this mistake. Once you receive information, greet them in some manner and then touch base with them on a regular schedule to nurture the contact. You’ll also want to keep their information to yourself.

Put your database to work for you by creating a sound strategy from the very beginning. Here’s how:

Identify who you want to reach:

Who is it that you’d like to do business with and what do they look like on paper? This can include demographics like age and gender, marital status, income level, and location. It might also include psychographics such as their interests, activities, and opinions.

Create an ideal customer profile or persona and then use this to determine what information you need to capture for your database.

While it may have “marketing” in the title, database marketing can be influenced by multiple departments in your organization. The marketing, sales, and customer service or support departments all have contact with potential and existing customers. Look for feedback from them to build the most effective database.

Use the right tools.

There are countless database marketing software options out there to meet your needs. Do some research, ask for recommendations, and find one that suits your business best. Once you’ve chosen a solution, provide your employees with the training they need to utilize it fully.

• Demographic Data - This includes gender, age, marital status, parental status, health, and financial status.
• Psychographic Data - This includes interests, actions, and opinions. What do they value? What type of lifestyle do they lead?
• Acquisition Data - Through what channel did they enter?
• Technographic and Activity Data - How do they connect with your brand? Is it through a desktop or mobile device?
• Transaction and Correspondence Data - How often do they purchase from you and what do they buy?

 Keep your data clean and safe.

It’s very easy for data to become outdated and useless. Review it frequently and back it up so if something happens to your database, your entire customer history is not lost.

Don’t be creepy.

You can find out a lot about people on the internet. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Respect your customer’s privacy and don’t collect or brandish information on them that won’t help serve the end goal of earning the customer and serving them better.

Acquiring customers is important, but if you can’t keep them, you’re just spinning your wheels. Your customer service team should have access to your customer database. This allows them to review a customer’s buying history when they call in with an issue.

Imagine knowing exactly what product they are calling about and expressing your ability to help with that product before they even launch into the problem. Your approach will be personalized and will save them time explaining.

Having a chat about the weather is a great way to build rapport with a customer or potential customer. Do you know what’s an even better way? Not trying to sell them things they don’t need.

For example: Looking at a customer profile, you can see that they live in a high-rise apartment, have no pets, and have small children. You can skip trying to sell them the latest doggie door.

When you understand who buys frequently and in large amounts, it becomes easier to identify options for upsells.

There are a variety of ways to reach your existing and potential customers. A well-rounded marketing plan will include many of these. However, if you’d really like to get the most bang for your marketing buck, make sure that you include database marketing.