This piece of advice came back to me recently as we worked with a company trying to improve its results. They couldn’t understand why none of their brilliant and creative ideas were getting them where they hoped. It wasn’t for a lack of hard work or creative genius, they had all that. The one thing they didn’t have was a cohesive picture of who their current customers were and how they could use what they already knew about those customers to help convert new prospects and grow sales.
Make the data do the work!
Most organizations we meet today are structured around what works for them. Their databases are usually grouped in silos by products or departments and not by the customer.
Take a college or university as an example. Admissions have their database for prospecting, Alumni Relations have their database for post-graduation contact and college advancement might have a third database for fundraising. Although these databases are powerful in their own right the true value can never be realized until there is a complete 360 degree view of all the databases in one. That begins with centering your database on the customer and not your organization.
Take the example of a university. If admissions needs to recruit more students who do you think is the best advocate for the college, usually alumni. If admissions don’t have access to that data it’s not able to access its best recruiters. Accessing and analyzing alumni data can be a great way to build key strategies for growth and truly involve the past student body. This is just the beginning. We know that being a customer focused organization drives long-term growth. It becomes a lot easier when you have a full picture of your customers and can send relevant personalized information.
Although it can be overwhelming to integrate large database systems and change working habits within a culture there are some less daunting starting points that can help to make a great case for the larger picture. Every organization is different and every product or service group has different objectives and goals. Let’s go back to the college example for a moment. What if you determined that 30% of your current college students were the children or grandchildren of past alumni? What would happen if you could analyze the alumni database to show past students in the 40 – 50+ age bracket with children who are age 16-17? Would you want to build a personal relationship with those alumni as their children make a decision about college? The key is to decide on one piece of valuable information that could drive returns. It might be completely different from this example, but once you have identified a key influencer then get the data and merge it manually to conduct a test. If the test works you build the case for having the data be accessible and integrated in a real-time basis.
Getting a return on your data is the key to driving profitability and customer growth. Don’t let your data sit on the shelf start using it today. Make the data do the work!
