Melissa IN Team | Customers | covid-19, customer data, data enrichment, data quality

To survive the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have had to reassess their marketing strategies and adapt to the world of eCommerce. People who never thought they would shop online and retailers who prided themselves on the exclusivity of their brick and mortar presence have had to look at the digital environment as the new normal. What’s remained the same is that customers still expect a high standard of customer service.

It’s not just about employing enough people to make cold calls or hiring a few extra delivery agents. If you don’t have the right number for a customer, your sales representative won’t be able to reach them. If the address is incomplete, the delivery may be delayed.

So, What Did Companies That Thrived In The Pandemic Do Differently?

If you find your company struggling, know that you are not alone. There are many companies that have been in the same position as you and knowing what they did can help you strategize a plan for the future.

Their success story is based on data-driven plans. Now, more than ever before, it is important to know your customer – their age, gender, marital status, estimated income, family size, etc. When you understand your customer, you will know what kind of products to promote to them, how to communicate with them, what promotional strategies to use, how to ensure order deliveries are made on time, etc.

To understand your customer, you need to have access to high-quality customer data. Data verification and validation is the first step to ensuring that your customer data is accurate and valid but it may not be enough. You also need to work on appending and enriching your database.

What Is Data Appending And Enrichment?

Completeness is one of the key criteria for high data quality. If you’re missing data fields in your customer files, data enrichment and data append services can help you fill the blanks. Completing your customer contact information and demographic profile, can give you more insight from your data and empower you to provide customers with the personalized service they expect. Here’s how

Get Verified Contact Details

The first step to enriching your database is to have accurate contact details for your consumers. Phone and email appending services work by tapping into reliable third party databases to validate the numbers and email addresses you have on file and add missing contact detail to files that do not have them. If a customer has changed their email address or phone number, data enrichment services will identify these details and update them with current information.

Add Demographic Data To Understand Your Customer

Demographic data enrichment includes adding details like your customer’s age, gender, income, family size, type of residence, etc. This helps you identify customer traits for targeted promotional campaigns and helps identify cross-selling opportunities.

For example, if your customer lives in an affluent neighborhood, you can promote your higher-end product range to them. Targeted promotional campaigns that have relevant content keep a customer loyal to your brand.

Geocode Customer Locations

Ensuring on-time deliveries is one of the biggest challenges for all retail brands. Geographic data appending or geocoding takes the address entered by a customer and returns precise longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates.

This enriched data helps map customers for marketing support campaigns and makes it easier for last-mile delivery agents to find the shortest routes to the customer. This helps shorten delivery timelines and improve customer satisfaction rates.

Reverse Search Contact Details

Let’s say a customer entered their email address when subscribing to your newsletter but did not enter their name or gave the wrong name. As a result, you may address them by the wrong name. This would not be your fault but it could frustrate the customer and make them turn to your competitors.

Reverse append services work by referencing the phone number and email address in your records to connect them to the correct customer names. This improves the quality of your customer communication and, in turn, increases your conversion rate.

Add Social Media Information

A customer’s social media accounts can tell you a lot about them. These accounts are typically tied to a phone number or email address. By finding the connection and enriching your customer records with information from the customer’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts, you can learn more about your customer. This information helps build customer relationships and gives you opportunities to build brand awareness.

Find Prospective Customers With High Conversion Chances

Data appending isn’t just about filling the gaps but also about finding new customers that have demographic attributes similar to your existing customer base. Thorough data analysis and completion of data records help you identify attributes that all your best customers have in common.

This helps define the potential of your prospective market and helps expand your market reach. The more customers you can reach out to, the higher your chances for success.

Reduce The Risk Of Fraud

Retailers in the digital environment do not have an opportunity to meet their customers. Fraudsters often take advantage of this. Data enrichment services ensure that you have valid contact details for customers. With this, you can use two-factor authentication or other methods to confirm purchases. This builds trust in your brand value and minimizes the risk of shipping orders to the wrong addresses.

In Conclusion

The pandemic has disrupted big and small businesses like never before and it is unlikely for the retail environment to return to exactly what it was earlier. To succeed in spite of these disruptions, companies must pay more attention to their customer data.

Data verification, validation and enrichment need to be a regular practice to ensure that your database is always complete and up to date. The right data appending service can help you get relevant contact details for your customers and complete their demographic profiles so that you can provide targeted personalized service. This is what will eventually set you apart from the competition.