What can you do with contact details?

Clients change on a daily basis, new ones arrive, existing ones make additional purchases, some never buy again, others die, many more move, and some will never have a need to contact you again.

How well do you know your contacts?

All this needs to be reflected in the data records you hold - and maintaining an effective and up-to-date client database is time consuming.

So let’s assume you have made the investment and your data is a clean and current as it could be.

Now what – is it just a reference point or does it have the potential to become a rich asset to help you grow your business?

There are many ways of doing this – a simple method is segmentation. Segmenting your data can be and should be related to purchase history, but the real fun starts when you add a bit of informed intuition.

Why not consider profiling by potential lifetime value?

Take a look at all your existing clients and consider what they have purchased, the value, the channel, the time or times they have purchased, the size of the company, the contact point, the relationship you have now and in the past, the profitability based on all the associated costs of serving the account, 

and crucially what potential they have to purchase more from you.

Segment in to High, Medium and Low potential.

Now review the results and set some realistic growth targets and set about creating suitable cross-media marketing communications plans to support sales and account teams.

This activity will give you a good idea of the value of your proposition, the markets you serve well, the potential you miss out on, and importantly what changes you could make to products, services or processed that would improve your profitability and competitive advantage.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net