Selling in the Brave New Economy

Are we out of the dark days of recession? Or is worse still to come. I'm no Nostradamus nor a economics wizard to predict the flight of our economy but I feel the positive sign in the air; economy shed fewer jobs.

Despite the silver lining, glory days of B2B marketing are still a long way. But in this interlude, how can we align our sales mast to catch the trade winds.

Raising the sales mast

So what's the magic bullet? Answer is not in big budget marketing plans but in efficient management of your customer data. Information about customer act as the beacon to reach prospective buyers.

To survive in today's choppy economic seas, sales organization need to add customer information with relevant value bits. successful sellers creates demand by responding to customers on the basis of specific customer insights.

Golden goose - Locate most profitable current customers

Focus your marketing to improve customer experience through one-to-one communication and develop brand loyalty. Such collated efforts will enhance the time-value of your customer and improve the share of revenue from this customer segment.

New kid in the block - new customers for long-term relationship

Newbie customers should be given a preferential treatment by way of specaila treatment. Let your content make them feel special. Make best use of the content of your trasactional emails to build the trust and loyalty.

Blast from the past - Past Profitable customers

Even though they are not big spenders to your coffer, they remain loyal and know about your business. They require less marketing, but they can be nurtured to promote your brand across your market space through word-of-mouth marketing initiates.

The Point: Don't go along the tide, take advantage of gusty trade winds – to move further in the sales horizon. Learn to differentiate your customers with value proposition that'll push them to create more demand.

How to Gain more customers from data mining

Data mining unearths new, unique and hidden facets about your customers/prospects. It can predict future trends and behaviors, allow you to make proactive, and knowledge-driven decisions in your business & marketing. In this way, you can map unknown customer behavior for intelligent customer interaction.

Gain insights about customer/prospects

Statistical analysis of your customer database can fetch new patterns about your customers needs, market trends, customer behavior etc. Many data mining tools are available that will suggest the “location” of similar clusters based on the given data.

Data mining can help your marketers:

• To understand geographical segments of customer/prospects (eg. mid west, south, south west)

• To identify new market & business opportunities

• To find new customer behavior and online traits

• To find transaction value segments (e.g. <1000)

• To measure the satisfaction level of customers
  

• To understand the effectiveness of current marketing
  

• To spot new trends in buying

• To device the most effective customer-centric marketing techniques
  
  

• To find preferred channel usages (e.g. phone, eMail, in-person)
  
  
  
  Predictive analysis of your customer data
  
  Through predictive analysis you can gain new insights about your customers and create appropriate marketing campaigns for optimal response. If you think data mining is too cumbersome to follow, you can always take support from external specialists.
  
  

  Data mining can counter customer defections

  Unlock hidden value from your customer database through in-depth mining of customer data.
  
  Customer data analysis from Data Check Central offers a comprehensive line of solutions designed, developed and priced specifically for small and medium businesses.
  
  Contact us now and learn how to harness the power of b2b customer data!

  
  

Before You Hit Send - Email Checklist

Before you hit the "send" button of your bulk mailing program, it's advisable to give a second look at the email template for any costly left-outs. The whole idea is to prevent any glitches in your email - before it hurts your ROI!

Here are few recommendations for email campaign checklist:

* Have you tested the readability of your subject line?

* Does your subject line contain the main hook?

* Does the link point to the correct landing page?

* Have you checked on how your template will look in different email clients?

* Does your offer contain a powerful call-to-action?

* Have you checked the spam score of your content?

* Can this email be shorter?

* Does it have a "tell a friend" link (pass it on)

It's not an exhaustive list for you to follow - few short points that can get you started on building an in-house email checklist . As you get experienced in email campaigns, you can update the email checklist with more follow-through points.

Good luck

Clive

Plan for 2009 holiday season sale

Pardon me, If I'm far fetched on this! This post is to remind you about the 2009 holiday season sale. True, year-end-sale may be too distant, but it's time to prepare your database for maximum ROI from online marketing.

“By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail."— Benjamin Franklin

The message is to plan ahead: well before customers prepare for the holiday season.

Preparation must start with the effort to improve the number and quality of data in your repository. Take up these two steps to refine the data:

• Optimize your landing pages in your website for sign-ups

• Verify your existing customer records

• Analyze your campaign delivery rates. Segregate the hard bounces to acquire the correct email address
  

Clean your list, segregate the dead woods ( those who haven't opened the last 15 emails). Invest time and resources to re-connect and renew your relationship with your customers.


Explore beyond the figures of yoru database. Contact us today for a free consultation and see how Data Check Central can make all the difference!

Data - lost and found

I'm quite perplexed by the way email has profoundly affected our personal life and in biz. Email as a mode of communication has permeated across the globe, thereby coined a “flat digital world”.


Now, from the top organization to the small time marketers, customer data is leveraged for market expansion, customer acquisition, and for customer retention.

But customer data has limited shelf life. The current economic upheaval has resulted in many changes across the business world. Result is the high rate of data churn!

So, how can a biz regain or recover customer contact information? Do they have the time and resources to regain prospect data?

This is where “Data Check Central” plays its part. We use new proprietary ways to mine the most recent information and return it for effective lead generation.

Our new data models can help enterprises improve their customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives, by replacing inconsistent data with fresh and refurbished customer database.