Data-savvy companies are constantly exploring new ways to utilize big data to solve various challenges they encounter. A growing number of companies are using data analytics technology to improve customer engagement.
Werner H Kunz of the University of Massachusetts Boston and some of his colleagues addressed this in their paper Customer Engagement in a Big Data World. They discovered that big data is helping more companies improve relationships with customers.
How Does Big Data Facilitate Customer Engagement?
Proper consumer engagement strategies are vital factors that might determine how profitable your business becomes. Learning to improve customer engagement has several benefits that may also help prolong your business’ lifespan. The good news is that data analytics technology can drastically improve your customer engagement strategy.
How much can data analytics help companies with their customer service strategy? According to an analysis from SAS.com, companies using customer service analytics had 31% better results with their customer engagement.
However, it is important to come up with the right strategies when using data analytics to improve customer engagement. When used with the right analytics tools, these strategies help create better customer experience, drive retention rates, and stimulates greater lead generation.
Several brands find it easy to beat their competition with a practical, effective, data-driven customer engagement strategy. You need to be consistent, engage with your base, and offer more than a bare-bones product.
If you don’t know how to do these, don’t despair!
The information in this article can help improve customer engagements to your ecommerce business or other ecommerce interests. Following these practices will make attracting more clients while sustaining the best customer experience with ease!
How Can You Use Data Analytics for Better Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement refers to interactions with consumers through different channels to build better relationships. The process of engaging customers focuses on creating value that transcends business relationships in consumers. Proper customer engagement will elicit an emotional attachment between consumers and your business. Businesses with strengthened customer relationships tend to receive more return patronage over time.
Data analytics is becoming a more important element of modern customer engagement. Here are some steps to integrate big data into your customer relationship building strategy.
1. Use analytics to understand your customers
Listening to customers’ desires and expectations might seem impractical for some, but it’s a vital strategy to boost engagement. Whenever customers establish contact, understand why they are communication to improve trust in your brand.
Data analytics is going to be an important part of this process. You can aggregate data on customer feedback and mine it when necessary to implement a better customer service strategy.
Consumers might take alternative channels to compliment or lay complaints about your services. Reaching out to your customers is a sure way to let them know you acknowledge their input. The approach also helps attract potential customers to your business.
However, their feedback will be of minimal benefit if it isn’t digitized and stored. The right data storage and analytics tools will make this easier.
You can better understand your customers by:
- Itemizing all their complaints and providing solutions to each one
- Practicing prompt engagement, maybe within 24 hours of customer posting a complaint
- Adopting data-driven response tools (auto-generated emails, chats, etc.) to provide immediate answers to questions
Data-driven companies that take these steps will have better success.
2. Use analytics to optimize in-product ads
Digital marketing has tons of benefits, but don’t rule out offline marketing tools to drive customer engagements just yet. Data analytics can help optimize all of them!
In-product ads will be a relevant tool to improve engagements every single time. These ads are targeted and sometimes personalized messages placed on an ordered product. Data analytics has made personalization and targeting much more seamless.
An in-product message can help customers’ walkthrough product use, understand benefits, and much more. Other vital uses of in-product ads include:
- Sending discounts and other personalized information in shipped products,
- Ads for new offers and benefits of purchasing your product, and
- Notifications of due invoices, current payment plans, and other available options
In-product ads focus on improving the overall customer experience consumers get while using your product. Data analytics makes this a lot easier to implement.
3. Use data analytics to assess performance and maintain a strong presence across online and offline channels
Customers prefer different communication channels, and you can’t miss out on any if you plan to improve customer engagement. You can use data analytics tools to better understand their response to different messages across various channels.
Apart from being active on social media, customer engagement receives useful boosts through other online or offline channels. Customers could communicate with your brand through emails, mobile apps, partner retailers and websites. Data analytics tools help you assess your ROI across all of these platforms.
With data-driven omni-channel engagement, you can bring all customer communications under one umbrella to guarantee better responses.
Proper marketing automation features from services like Sellvia could prove useful to provide multi-platform consumer feedback.
4. Leverage polling and store data on responses
Several platforms have polling features for individuals and businesses to leverage for data gathering. Polling ideas on new products and services could be the vital element to drive your customer engagement campaign.
Take advantage of polling to understand if your new product or service solves pressing problems customers face. You can take advantage of simple polls with options or go for detailed options with feedback forms.
Social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram are great locations to take full advantage of polling for customer engagement. You can also include surveys on your website landing pages to get vital feedback from your customers.
Once you have accumulated these responses, you will be able to store data on them and improve your strategies.
5. Use giveaways
Everyone loves a nice reward for patronage every now and then. Customer loyalty programs could be an ideal way to improve engagement with existing consumers and even reach out to potential consumers.
The most common rewards programs used by online brands include:
- Early access discounts
- Special invites
- Surprise discounts for loyal subscribers
- Points accumulation per purchase (points can be converted into discounts for subsequent purchases), etc.
6. Use analytics to maximize social media ROI
Improving customer engagement without social media is just not possible today. With social media users numbering in the billions, neglecting the space will dent your customer engagement campaign.
You need to engage your customers where they are and support multiple social media platforms if possible. The most common social media platforms to drive customer engagement include:
- Facebook,
- Twitter,
- Instagram,
- LinkedIn, etc.
Social media channels like Facebook and Twitter can help solve several customer engagement challenges. You could host contests, giveaways, provide customer service, and interact with your current and new consumers on these platforms.
However, you can’t just run an ad hoc social media strategy and expect results. You need to collect data on social media engagement and use it to optimize your strategy.
7. Adopt personalized services
Personalization isn’t possible in all markets, but where it’s possible, you can leverage it for customer engagement with ease. Curate products to meet your customers’ needs, respond to their complaints/suggestions in line with preferences to build engagement. Big data and AI have made this a lot easier.
You can guarantee improved customer engagements with the aid of available user data and information provided by consumers. Using big data and personalization drives web sales and boosts engagement.
8. Use chat automation made available with AI
Live chats help businesses maintain automated responses, allowing brands provide immediate solutions to customers’ questions/complaints. Using chat automation boosts communication with customers and adds a positive drive to your brand’s engagement campaign.
Big Data is the Backbone of Modern Customer Engagement Strategies
You can improve customer engagement, build better interactions, and keep your business profitable with ease. Businesses just need the right approach and platforms to guarantee a better customer experience for clients.
Sellvia provides the support your business needs to increase engagements that drive productivity. You can optimize every interaction with customers across all channels and get better lead generations with ease.