Don’t let the quest for the ultimate customer data derail your marketing plan!
It is remarkable how often clients tell me that they are just six months from being able to use customer data that has been cleaned and scrubbed to to perfection. Usually, when I check in a few months later, I hear the same story – only a few months away. All those powerful marketing ideas,just sitting aging in the closet, waiting for the data to get ready. And if it is not, then you have the perfect excuse for lack of progress – blame it on the IT team.
Well, in today’s world, excuses just don’t cut it anymore. No Excuses Marketing starts with the premise that you have to use what you have, right now, to help you make your goals. No waiting, no stalling – it is time to get to action.
Once you let perfectionism go away, you find there is a lot you can do with the data you have. Remeber, even if 50 percent of your customer information is accurate, it is 50 percent more than you had the week before, right?
The approach goes like this:
1. Evaluate your customer data and put any incorct or incomplete data on the side.
2. Combine all the information you have on each customer to develop at least a partial picture of customer behavior.
3. Identify opportunities to tailor communication to customer groups based on what you know.
Remember in your communications to leave a little wiggle room – some of your customers may have had more interactions with your brand than you have captured, and some of the data may not be totally correct. So generalize your statements to include words like probably, and our best customers often, etc.
Then get going! Put some programs in the market, making sure you have set control groups and built the campaigns to be measured. Read the results and keep improving.
As data improves, rerun your initial analysis, as well as others, to add new customers to your groups.
Move quick, use what you have and don’t get stalled.
