CUSTOMER DATABASES

The customer database is one of the most valuable marketing tools for any
company, it contains specific information about your customer that you can take
advantage of to track sales.

Thus, a customer database can include everything from contact information (email,
telephone, etc.) to specifications and details about the transactions carried out.
The type of information you are going to request from your clients always
depends on its usefulness for your business and your marketing strategies .
For example, the owner of a real estate business knows that people typically buy a
house only once in their lives, so they will not need to store as much
information regarding their buyer's preferences , unlike a hairdresser whose
clients usually make one or more visits a month.
Thus, creating a Database is the best way to keep your clients' information
organized and updated. It also allows you to contact your clients and
prospects, build loyalty, provide better service and promote your sales.

What is a Database for from a Marketing Point of View?

Having information about your customers, from contact information to their
particular preferences, allows you to:
 Increase your sales through techniques such as email marketing ,
telemarketing or telephone marketing, etc.
 Recover old or undecided customers by taking advantage of remarketing
strategies.
 Offer personalized promotions, tailored to each customer based on their
profile in your database (preferences in payment methods, previously made
purchases, etc.).
 Keep your clients and prospects informed about your news, special offers,
etc.
 Provide quality care, possible thanks to the registration of the specific
characteristics of each client in your Database.

What Kind of Information Can You Collect in Your Customer Database?

If we think about How to Create a Customer Database, there are three major
sources of information that largely determine the type of data you can collect. They
are the following:
 Your business
 Your website
 Your Social Networks

Your business
It allows you to obtain the most “hard” or specific information related to real
customers: you can record the name of your buyers, their address, telephone
number or email, their credit card, the product they bought, what date they bought
it, etc.
Your Website
In addition to being the “virtual cover” of your business , or its letter of
introduction, your website is a very complete and valuable source of
information in terms of obtaining specific data about your audience, that is, those
people who are interested for your proposals, which go through your online offers,
etc.
Using a free tool like Google Analytics you can know who visits your site, what
sections or products they have explored, where they come from, how long they
have stayed on your website and much more.

Your Social Networks

In addition to being the virtual space par excellence for attracting your audience
and positioning and promoting your brand, Social Networks are an excellent source
of information for your database.

In addition to analyzing the profile of your followers, after publishing a post on

Facebook , Twitter, etc. You can study the impact that each type of publication has
on people interested in your proposals, reviewing the number of times it is shared,
receives Likes and obtains Comments.
That way you can record what your audience likes most and improve your content
marketing strategy . You can also analyze users who fall into a certain
demographic profile, based on criteria such as age, gender and location, as a
complement to your market studies.

How Can You Use Your Customer Database? We Present You The 3 Most
Important and Profitable Uses
As you may have noticed, the information you can obtain from your clients and
prospects, as well as the ways to obtain it, are very diverse. Now let's see what the
specific meaning of accumulating said data is, that is, what a Customer Database
is for.

1- Purchase Analysis
First of all we must mention the purchase analysis, that is, studying which items
are purchased by each customer and how they arrived at them. This is especially
useful for improving your website or eCommerce , by optimizing the user interface,
the ability to recommend related products, etc.
This use is based on the assumption that it is feasible to predict the behavior of a
user or client, based on their past actions. Such information related to the purchase
can be very useful for all types of businesses and industries.
For example, you can evaluate the use of credit cards to avoid fraud (this
information is essential for online sales sites). Another possibility is to analyze
telephone usage patterns, e.g. e.g. If you have a mobile phone company, you can
survey the customers who buy all the new products you offer and provide them
with special offers.

2- Sales Forecast
A strategic way to use your Customer Database to increase your sales has to do
with predicting the moment when they will buy again, considering when they did so
previously.

Thus, depending on the type of products you sell and through this strategy you can
create planned obsolescence systems or create kits or complementary products to
sell. Along with this, it is advisable to analyze the number of clients that make up
your market and try to predict their behaviors.
Q. e.g. If you have a coffee shop, you can ask yourself how many similar
businesses there are within a mile, as well as how many competitors, record your
average sales per day and compare the information with your market research to
form an overview of how you are positioned and what may come.

3- Database Marketing
Another very beneficial and almost mandatory way in relation to the use you can
give to your Customer Database has to do with Marketing strategies. A large part of
this consists of analyzing the purchasing habits, demographic data and
psychological attitudes of your customers to build buyer profiles.
These profiles allow you to optimize your commercial strategies to the maximum,
as well as generate new sales techniques that respond to each type of buyer
constructed, and even generate products specially designed to fit into each
category created.
Along with this, after creating your categories you can dedicate yourself to email
marketing and send much more personalized promotional emails to different
groups of customers, identified from the previous analysis. In this regard, you can
easily send mass mailings with Postcron Newsletters (learn how to do it in this post
).

Let's see below a small guide on how to create a customer database and how to
take advantage of it:
1. Determine the right technology
The first step is to determine the technology we will use to create and manage our
customer database.
The choice of this technology will depend on several factors ranging from the size
of our company, the nature of our business, our available resources, to the type of
audience we are targeting.
Depending on these factors, we can use easy-to-use programs such as Excel or
Access to more complex programs for which it may be necessary to hire the
services of a professional to implement them.
2. Determine the information required
Secondly, we must determine the information or data that we are going to require
from our clients.
The customer data that we should always try to obtain are their name and contact
information, such as their physical address, email address, landline and cell phone.
Other information we may seek to obtain is your birthday, and information about
your purchasing behavior, such as the products you have purchased from us and
how often you purchase from or visit us.
And other deeper data that we could try to obtain to have a better idea of the profile
of our clients are their school, workplace, their hobbies (if they travel, if they play
sports, if they read magazines), etc.

3. Determine the data collection method

Thirdly, we move on to determine the method or methods that we will use to obtain
the client's information or data.
One way to obtain customer data is to try to do so directly, for example, asking
them to please provide us with their data so that we can later send them our
promotions.
Although due to the reluctance that the client may have when providing us with
their data, another way to obtain it is to try to do so indirectly, for example, by
requesting their data when purchasing our services, or by inviting them to
participate in raffles where To participate you have to fill out coupons with your
information.
And another way to obtain customer data is by resorting to alliances with other
businesses complementary to ours, which also address the same type of audience
that we address.
4. Use database
Once we have our database, we start taking advantage of it.
As we mentioned previously, the database allows us to maintain communication
with our clients (and all the advantages that this represents), by knowing the
means through which we can make contact with them.
Another usefulness of a database is that it allows us to know who our main clients
are, and thus, for example, be able to provide them with excellent service or
preferential treatment (this as long as these clients represent a large percentage of
our sales).
And another usefulness is that it allows us to know the particularities of each client,
and thus, for example, be able to provide them with a personalized service or
treatment; For example, if we see that a customer always buys a certain product
from us, we could choose to offer them complementary products or promotions that
might be of interest to them.
5. Update database
Finally, we must permanently update our database.
Failure to update our database could be costly to us, for example, if we do not
update a customer's address, we could send expensive advertising material (for
example, catalogs with premium prints) to an address where the customer no
longer lives. to which we were heading.
To update data we must simply use the same methods that we used when
obtaining customer data, but it may also be necessary to track and record the
customer's purchasing behaviors.

SERVICE STRATEGY

A service strategy is a competitive weapon. It is a particular way that organizations

choose to differentiate themselves from their competition, and, ultimately, to be
successful in their results.
A service strategy is a way of seeking differentiation by emphasizing the
relationship with customers.
The need to differentiate in service is born with the awareness that, whatever you
are offering to the market, you are offering a service. But a service in the integral
sense of the word.

A mobile phone by itself does not meet a person's need for communication. The
right phone model for that person, with a plan according to their budget and needs,
delivered on time, with a convenient payment method and an effective
communication channel in case of failures or problems... All this, and more, make
up the service you offer to the client. If you manage it well, the client enters into a
relationship with the organization that is allowing them to communicate.
A relationship such that he will not doubt that this organization is the best
alternative to stay connected, because he has been understood in his need, and
adequately supplied.

Defining a customer service strategy is a key step to improving consumer

satisfaction. Activities that can be carried out within this strategic framework
include the following:
1. Create a customer service vision. It is important to communicate the
customer service vision to employees, as they must understand what the
organization's vision and goals for customer service are and understand
their responsibility to help achieve that vision.
2. Evaluate customer needs. Organizations often fail and waste valuable
resources, creating products and services that they thought the customer
wanted, only to discover that it was not what the customer wanted at all. The
trick is to find out what the client wants, and to do this, there is nothing
better than asking them. In this way you can know their perception of the
services provided and determine what their needs and expectations are.
3. Train and prepare employees . It is important to evaluate employees and
ensure they possess the disposition and skill set to help support a strong
customer service environment. Within the framework of customer service
strategies, we must accept that training is as important as good personnel
selection, because skills can be taught, but attitude and personality cannot.
4. Set goals for customer service . Customer service strategies help create
and reinforce a culture of service. Once customer needs and expectations
are identified and satisfaction is measured, it is time to create goals to
achieve and maintain desired levels.
5. Reward and recognize good service, rewarding empathy, dedication and
alignment with the objectives of the company's customer service strategy.

Why a service strategy?

The advantages of having loyal customers are many:
 A loyal customer will spread excellent comments about your organization in
their circles of influence. This is free advertising. These circles, until recently,
were their family, friends and direct contacts. Today they have expanded
enormously thanks to social networks, giving an impressive power of
influence to the opinion of a single client. A couple of decades ago, a
customer's opinion was spread to 9 people. Today, 24, and this number will
continue to grow.

 A loyal customer wants to continue doing business with you, so they will
always help you improve, collaborating when you do a survey, or alerting
you to aspects of your service that you need to improve.

 A loyal customer is the ideal candidate to offer new products and services
that you bring to the market, or products/services of greater value. It will
help you evaluate them, and receive them with confidence, because they
know who they come from.

BESIDES:
 A service strategy is very difficult for your competition to copy. Because it is
a continuous work of interaction with customers, which allows you to
understand them better, and react with improvements in your service
according to their needs. This is not a formula that someone can steal from
you.

SPECIFIC STRATEGIES

Attraction strategies
Retention strategies
Recovery strategies
Maintenance strategies
Loyalty strategies

Attraction strategies • These are actions or activities that seek to attract

new customers.
• They include:
• Executives trained to conquer new clients.
• Promotions and advertising.
• Electronic media that attracts the attention of new customers.

Retention strategies These are actions or activities that seek to retain

customers.
• They include:
 • Promotions and advertising
• Discounts, royalties and offers.
• Monitoring through call center and Executives
• Frequent customer cards.
• Preferences in care.

Recovery strategies These are actions or activities that seek to recover

customers who have left.
• They include:
• Favorable conditions
• Account executives for personalized attention.
• Electronic access to the operation
• Visits from Managers
• Visits to the company

Maintenance strategies These are actions or activities that seek to

maintain current customers.
They include:
• Lightly cumbersome procedures and formalities.
• Good treatment of the staff.
• Good after-sales service
• Training of service personnel
. Loyalty strategies These are actions or activities designed for certain customers
that you want to retain.
They include:
• Preferential rates.
• Refunds (money or products) for your purchases
• Exclusive executives
• VIP cards

Final recommendation
• To apply any of these strategies, the company must analyze its customers;
segmenting them and identifying which strategies can be promoted for each of
their segments.
• The more information you have about your clients, the better the application of
strategies will be.

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