Why Data Needs To Be Your Top Business Priority In 2015

Today’s most successful companies don’t view each customer interaction as a one-time opportunity for a sale. Instead, they’re in it to win it, and that means the first point of contact is only the beginning. Long-term business success comes from cultivating a relationship with your customers over the long haul – creating multiple touch points, not just for a period of weeks or months, but potentially even for years.

Effectively engaging with customers is the key to keeping the relationship going. From social media and email communication, to delivering relevant offers and loyalty programs that demonstrate your understanding of their wants, needs and interests, there are a mix of outreach tools and channels that are transforming marketing today. These efforts can also be taken to the next level through personalization, which translates into a more relevant, tailored experience for each customer.

Data-Driven Marketing

To get a handle on the communications demands of today, marketers need data. Data holds the key to capturing insight about buyer preferences and spending habits along with the effectiveness of digital marketing efforts and more. And that, in turn, positions you to convert more prospects into customers and close more business deals with the customers you already have.

Whether your marketing messages are going out on just a few channels, or you’ve got a complex multi-channel program in place, one thing is clear: marketing is no longer an art – but a science – and it has become nearly a 24/7 responsibility.

If you and your extended team are good at gathering customer and prospect data, as your campaigns proceed you’ll gain unbeatable insight that will allow you to master the science of marketing. This will enable you to adjust and optimize not only the way you communicate with your target market, but also the way you manage and monetize it.

Expand Your Reach

If your data strategy isn’t quite where it needs to be, or your existing marketing efforts aren’t yielding the results you need, you might consider data acquisition to help you expand your reach and effectiveness. That’s where a reputable business contacts service comes in.

How does it work? Take email marketing as an example. If you’ve got a “house” list of contacts that continues to generate a return on investment for your business, then you’re in good shape. But most companies can’t – and shouldn’t — rely on their house list alone. In fact, experts say that the email contacts within your house database atrophy at a rate of 2-3% a month, meaning 25-30% of your email data can go bad in one year.

The reality is, every house list, even those that are scrubbed and updated regularly, can use an infusion of new data. And clearly, finding new customers, no matter what stage your company is in, is vital.

Beyond email, business contacts data can also be used to drive social media expansion, website traffic, telephone marketing campaigns, direct mail and more. With the data provided, you can zero in more effectively on your precise target markets – across a variety of industries, demographics, executive titles and more. The goal is to uncover new prospects that you might not have otherwise been able to find, and to start creating a first point of contact that can ultimately lead to a full lifecycle of opportunities for your business.

And if you haven’t used a data acquisition service in the past, or if it’s been a while, take note: some providers will let you download and keep the data that you buy. Check their policies in advance. Also, the cream of the crop in this space will stand behind the quality of their data, which is a big plus for marketers.

Make It or Break It with Data

There’s no doubt that data can make or break a business today. It’s the engine of the new sales and marketing economy — the fuel that allows companies to outperform and outsmart their closest competitors, while cultivating stronger relationships with their customers.

As 2015 draws near, think about the data that’s driving your business growth. Whether you’re planning to build it or buy it, the important thing is to start using it.

 

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 Speaking of data quality, we’ve got big news this week: BizFACTZ is once again transforming the business contacts world by announcing a data quality guarantee that shows just how much we trust the validity of our data. While our competitors are delivering only 50-70% data accuracy with email data, BizFACTZ consistently exceeds that amount with 90% email accuracy.

 

Designed to take the fear out of data-driven marketing, the guarantee states that, for any BizFACTZ order in which performance results show that the email campaign fell short of a 90% accuracy rating, credit will be issued for those emails that hard bounce, meaning the email address is invalid. The credit must be used within two weeks of the initial order. You can read more about it here.

 

If you think you might want to give BizFACTZ a try, use offer code INTRO and receive a 20% discount on your first order. Click here to find out more.