How To use your Sales Data to drive Targeted Marketing

Capture and analyse sales data

To turn sales data into more meaningful information for your business, make it tell you where the customer came from.  You can do this with promotional codes, for instance by labelling each of your different ad placements with a separate code.  Keep track of which ‘promo’ code a customer uses when making a purchase and you will build up a picture of which ads work, which products each customer likes, and which ads work for which customers for which products!  That’s targeted marketing. (Click diagram below for close-up).

A diagram illustrating how data drives targeted marketing via two interlocking cyclical processes

Placement

How do you measure how effective one ad placement is over another?  Some companies will sit back and wait for a sales spike.  It would be likely that you can attribute the spike to the ad.  But, you are guessing.  And how do you compile that information with other ads to make a bigger picture?  Set up a well thought through system to record the data before you place the ad.  Make the recording of the data label part of the sales process so that you capture the data for each sale.

Place ad with promo code

A simple way to ‘tag’ or label your sales data is with a promotional code.  A ‘promo’ code is similar to a coupon or voucher.  Placing these codes on your ads gives two advantages.  First, it further entices a customer with the promise of a discount or other incentive.  Secondly, it allows you to determine which advert drew them in.

Customer places order

Making the entering of the promo code part of the sales process is key.  The customer has an incentive to identify where they saw your ad.  In addition to the sale, which is nice all by itself, you are capturing high-value data.  The customer is telling you which advert worked for them.

Which ads are generating revenue

Use separate promo codes on each advert you are running.  You can then identify which advert caused which sale.  You might have the same advert in to two different places or two different ads in the same place.  Label each of them with their own individual promo code.  Compile your sales data and it will tell which publications and websites are working for you.

Refine placement strategy

Armed with this data-driven information you can now place increasingly targeted adverts which will increase your return on each placement.

Customer Profiling

The better you know your customers, the more accurately you can offer them something they want.  Building customer profiles requires capturing, compiling and analysing the sales data.  Developing data-driven models of your customers will allow you to sell to them more effectively.

Customer places order

When a customer places an order with a promo code they are giving you valuable information.  They are allowing you to know which advert in which publication has worked for them and for which product or service.

Pull sales data into customer profiles

Each promotion and sale will generate a new piece of data on that customer.  With a good database system you can compile these into accurate, dynamic customer profiles.

Group together similar profiles

Your data will then start to show how your customers can be segmented.  In may be that you have a group of customers coming from publication A and a second group from publication B.  These two publications will probably have a different style and appeal to people a different way.  You can target these two groups in a different way to reflect this.

Send targeted up-sell offering

Armed with this data-driven information you can now make targeted offerings to existing customers which are connected to their existing purchases.

… the next step?

The next step is to combine these two levels of data. You can then tell which type of adverts in which publications/websites appeal to which kind of customers. As an economy, we are moving from a small number of large markets to a large number of small markets as described in this BBC article. In essence this means that people are becoming more particular about what they want and how they want/expect to be sold to. Today’s technology allows companies to market to specific customers more thoroughly and easily. In a way it is applying the scientific method to sales. We have data and we analyse it to get the real picture of what is happening rather than what we think it might be.

With a well thought through strategy and a database that can deliver you are sure to increase the return on each advert you place and promotion you run. If you would like help with your data or database, contact us.

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