Utilizing Data to Enhance Marketing Campaigns

by Richard Rutigliano, PriMedia, Inc.

Your customer and sales data can help your business run smarter, not harder

Every day, 3.5 quintillion bytes of data are created. A quintillion is a million trillions, and has 18 digits after the comma. 3.5 quintillion looks like this: 3,500,000,000,000,000,000. That translates to 182 zettabytes, but don’t even try to figure out how many zeros that is! That is a lot of TikToks, streaming videos, business reports, podcasts, and everything else produced and stored in server farms or in the cloud.

These are, of course, global numbers. Small & Medium Sized Businesses (SMB), like those that make up the home heating and liquid fuels industry, generate several terabytes of data a day. What are you doing with yours?

Your Business Data

Let’s start by taking a look at the types of data that you generate:

1. Customer data: names, addresses, equipment, annual usage, annual spend, services
2. Sales data: what products or services get the most traction and provide the best profit margins
3. Social media/reviews data: what are people saying about your company, and are there issues that need to be addressed
4. Website analytics: your web traffic, pageviews, engagement rates, user paths, and other metrics from your server or analytics
5. Unstructured data: emails, documents, images, videos, etc.

One of the most significant benefits of leveraging data is that it empowers your company’s decision makers to make informed, evidence-based choices that can enhance business outcomes. Whether you are deciding when to expand into new markets, invest in new technology, diversify services, or how to allocate marketing budgets, data ensures that these decisions are not left to guesswork.

Your data help your company identify potential challenges as well as growth areas; enhance your acquisition and retention programs; improve customer service; and meet other important key business objectives. Data can also help your business run “smarter not harder,” but only
if someone is looking at it, analyzing it, and using it to power sales and business decisions.

Customer Data: The Alpha and Omega

From start to finish, your company’s success is reliant on the collection and maintenance of quality customer data. Of course, billing and delivery addresses need to be correct, but your account information also includes the household make-up, home size, equipment type, equipment age, fuels used, gallons per year, K-factors, degree day settings, and more.

Analyzing this data can help you determine trends per customer and for the company. Information such as which customers are requiring more service calls than in the past, whose equipment is aging out, or where fuel usage has increased can help you develop personalized sales promotions.

Similarly, by mapping out the locations of new accounts as well as online information requests and web traffic, you can identify towns that are showing an upswing in interest, and create location-specific new business promotions that you announce through direct and digital marketing campaigns. This information can also offer regional insights when your company considers expanding its service area.

Sales Data: What’s Moving and Who’s Buying

In the home comfort industry, some sales trends and cycles are self-evident. You do not need fancy analytics to know that fuel sales increase in the winter. On the other hand, consider the following analytic options:

• Equipment by homeowner age/cohort. Are your younger customers leaning toward one type of equipment, and your older accounts another? Consider using this data to fine tune your marketing campaigns. Digital campaigns can easily be customized by user age group, so equipment promotions can go to customers and potential customers who are interested in the appropriate technology.
• Service contracts and tune-ups by region. Spring and fall are prime time for heating companies to promote their service agreements and annual system maintenance. But which season is better for your company? Perhaps your service area includes an area with a majority of second homes or vacation rentals. Have you analyzed whether these seasonal property owners prefer to have the work done in late spring, before the homes are occupied, or when they close up the properties in the fall? Are there other regions where tune-ups are clustered at one end of the heating season or the other? You can adjust your marketing accordingly to get the best results possible.
• Sales and customer data combined. Your customer data reveal which properties have older equipment or units that break down frequently. You sales data help you determine when customers are most likely to upgrade, excluding emergency installations. Together, they can be used to create timed campaigns that reach the right people at the right time.
• Equipment sales trends. On an overall basis, which items in your warehouse are moving well, and which are collecting cobwebs? This data should be reviewed with your warehouse managers regularly to ensure your purchasing is matching up to your sales.

Social Media/Reviews Data: What Your Customers Really Think!

Consumers give as much credence to online reviews as they once did to personal recommendations, and they are searching companies on social media as frequently as on Google. The reviews on your social media accounts and Google profile can make or break your new business efforts.

Reviews provide another service. They are your company’s barometer of customer service – data points of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, if you will. This data can help your company identify trends in customer complaints, and enable management to take proactive measures to address issues before they escalate.

Many customers will go online before reaching out to complain directly, and they will most certainly post their thoughts online if they have contacted the company but did not receive an appropriate response.

If your company is suddenly receiving a lot of one-star reviews, take note! Each complaint will need to be researched internally and responded to publicly. While one-star reviews are often unfounded, they can also provide insight to situations that you need to address – immediately!

• If the complaints are about your service technicians’ professionalism and knowledge, review your logs to see if these all tie back to a specific tech, or are indicative of department-wide issues.
• If there are complaints about your office staff, review those carefully. Even long-term employees and family members could use customer service refresher training now and then!
• If the complaint is about product reliability, you will need to review the equipment and have serious conversations with your suppliers and your warehouse managers.

As you rectify these issues, do not be afraid to announce your new policies to your customers. When you respond to complaints, include specific actions you have taken to ensure the issue – if valid – does not happen again. This goes a long way toward maintaining good relationships with your account holders and neighbors.

Website Analytics: Capturing Customer Attention

The data available from your server, web development platform, and Google analytics can identify the content that is best capturing your customers’ attention. Traffic patterns can show you how visitors move through your site, where they linger, how long they stay, and where they leave.

Is traffic increasing on a new product or service? Is there a rise in interest on your price protection programs or generator installations? Are customers clicking on embedded videos or going directly to your online portal.

Analytics data will also let you see what customers are searching for to find your company. While most will be branded searches with a variation of your company name, you will find that your business is shown on some expected as well as surprising searches. Analytics can also show where your site visitors are geographically, and how they are coming to your site. Is your ad campaign resulting in traffic? Are customers coming from social media, your email marketing campaigns, organic search pages, or keying in to your site directly? Furthermore, how active are these visitors once they get to your site?

This information can be used to modify your website to attract more users, identify points of interest for additional marketing, and suggest changes to your digital marketing campaigns.

Unstructured Data: Everything, Everywhere.

Unstructured data is all the other information you gather from your customers. Email marketing campaigns. Online form submissions. Responses to videos and social media posts.

These can be difficult to analyze, as they cannot be dropped into spreadsheets and manipulated. On the other hand, the feedback on these items can show your company and your marketing partner what is working, what is grabbing the customers’ attention, and what is not.

When you realize that this year alone, approximately 347.3 billion emails will be sent every day – or 4 million emails per second – knowing which headlines and messages are going to stand out in your customers’ mailboxes could be the difference between superior and subpar responses.

The use of data to enhance your marketing campaign is no longer a luxury—it is a necessity for any business looking to thrive in a rapidly evolving and volatile market. Your communications partner should be able to help you analyze your data to make the best use of your traditional and digital marketing strategies.

Richard Rutigliano is President of PriMedia, Inc., an integrated marketing and communications firm specializing in the home energy sector. He can be reached at 516-222-2041 or rrutigliano@primediany.com.

Related Posts