Marketing Datafication No. 2 looks at behavioural data and how it can be used to improve targeting, message personalisation and customer experience and engagement.
Let us start at the beginning and ask, ‘what is behavioural data’? In a nutshell, behavioural data is anything from a click on a PPC ad to the browsing habits of your web visitors. It includes things like how customers use your products and services, comments they leave on your site or social media platforms and how they interact with marketing communications. It is important to note that this data only becomes accurate, and therefore truly valuable if you gather it over time.
“Gathering behavioural data allows marketers to create more relevant and effective communication messages and improve how those messages are targeted and delivered,” said Paresh Patel, Business Insight Director at Euler. The key is to observe recurring behaviour over time.
By going beyond demographic data and using behavioural data, marketers can target potential customers with communications about products, services or offers that are most relevant to them, at a point in time that suggests a higher propensity to buy. This means that conversion rates can be increased and communications costs lowered. Finding those customers who have a higher propensity to buy takes time. It is not always about having the lowest price, it is about how you look after your customers. It is about the customer experience and how you engage with them, to appeal to their interests and desires, on a one-to-one level.
Personalisation of marketing communications, based on behavioural data, is the most effective way to engage a mass audience on a one-to-one level and can increase conversion rates by as much as 37%.
More thoughts on behavioural data
Rob Jones, Sales and Marketing Director at Euler explains: “John Smith visits your site a number of times to view a specific sofa in red, in the past you may have been tempted to e-mail John an offer on that sofa after his second or third visit to try and maximise conversion to sale. However, a closer look at his history would tell you his last 3 purchases were made after 5 visits to your site. Therefore if you sent the promotional offer after 2 or 3 visits you have given away profit on something John may well have purchased anyway given enough time. Therefore you can use this information to personalise an email communication to him in which he only gets an offer on that red sofa once he has broken his expected pattern of behaviour.
“Therefore you would only send that mail after his 5th visit and after he didn’t go on to purchase.”
Determining the wants and needs of your customers, and serving them relevant and timely communication messages, is the ultimate goal for marketers gathering and using behavioural data.