How well do you know your customers? How often do they buy? What motivates them to make multiple purchases? How can you ensure long-term loyalty? How can you attract and retain new customers?

And, most importantly, how can you cost effectively align your marketing campaign to ensure that you are sending the most relevant message to each customer segment at the time they are most likely to buy?

The number-one asset of a company is its customers, and a close second is the information about those customers gained through operational customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Leading marketers have taken advantage of the powerful benefits of sales force automation, call center software and other CRM systems to identify customer demographics, track purchases, monitor shopping habits and identify product preferences. As a result, they have been able to maximize the interaction between company and customers, increase sales and build a loyal customer base.

Managing this wealth of valuable customer information as a strategic asset, however, is what makes the difference between simply tracking customer behavior and capitalizing on that information to understand and optimize the financial value of each customer.

Predicting customer product preferences and purchasing habits—and crafting the most relevant marketing messages around this information—requires a carefully orchestrated mix of intuition and an analytical framework that supports fact-based decision making.

Subscribe today...it's free!

MarketingProfs provides thousands of marketing resources, entirely free!

Simply subscribe to our newsletter and get instant access to how-to articles, guides, webinars and more for nada, nothing, zip, zilch, on the house...delivered right to your inbox! MarketingProfs is the largest marketing community in the world, and we are here to help you be a better marketer.

Already a member? Sign in now.

Sign in with your preferred account, below.

Did you like this article?
Know someone who would enjoy it too? Share with your friends, free of charge, no sign up required! Simply share this link, and they will get instant access…
  • Copy Link

  • Email

  • Twitter

  • Facebook

  • Pinterest

  • Linkedin


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Colin Shearer is vice-president of customer analytics at SPSS Inc. (www.spss.com), a global provider of predictive analytics.