Gathering Customer Data

Building and managing databases for CRM

To effectively use your gathered data for CRM you will need to be able to:

• Examine the database and make pre-campaign counts of records that fit segments and other criteria
• Specify each segment that is to be mailed, drawing from a selection of database fields. There may be a large number of such segments. There will then be a number of different messages or content versions, one of which will be applicable to each target:
• • A grid or hierarchy structure will be needed to organise this
  • It will need to be output in a form that will help sales staff to recruit the newsletter advertisers
• Extract campaign lists, with all the required database fields for each record, and send them to the email and mobile marketing system. Alternatively, the records may be sent to a direct mail house for a postal mailing. The database record should be automatically flagged whenever a record is extracted
• Specify the fulfilment rules – for example, if the recipient clicks on a particular link, they are automatically flagged with a specific interest code, or receive a specified next email
• Add other campaign information, such as costs and a return on investment calculation
• Handle customers who are newly acquired during a campaign, for example, fresh website registrants, or those enrolling for an event
• Feed research survey data (if not anonymous) from online questionnaires into the CRM database

Analysing the data and producing reports to steer strategy

At different times, three types of report will be needed: real-time reporting of campaigns, regular standard reports, and the ability to produce special reports. Standard report formats should be set up in advance by your CRM system supplier. These should enable your marketing users to carry out data analysis using an on-screen query builder that accesses the customer database. The system should allow the marketer to build up a report format from a menu of options. This should include the ability to receive cross-tabulated and matrix reports pulling on fields from the customer database.

You may want reports on:

• Database size, database growth, and proportion of records with key fields completed, shown as totals and by year-to-date, month-on-month, and year-on-year
• Views of the data at global level, by country of residence, region of residence, segment, or by other criteria
• Reports on data completeness – the number of records with valid values in high priority fields against your targets. Examples include enquiry contact method, enquiry campaign code, segment definition fields, interests, planned date of visit, and planned duration of visit
• Cross tabulation of interests versus segments
• Contact methods – the proportion of customer enquiries received via each channel
• Campaign response – the number of customer enquiries received in response to specific campaigns
• Actual bookings – the number and/or percentage of customer enquiries with valid values in key fields such as actual visit duration and actual visit date. This data may be available in your sales system
• Retail data – the volume, cost and types of products sold via your e-commerce system and merchandise shop, and dates
• Data quality:
• • Quality of address data against official national postal address files
  • Quality of customer profile data against business rules and/or lookup tables associated with each database field
• Generic requirements for standard reports may include:
• The option to present reports in a graphical or tabular view
• Automatic generation on preset dates or to preset time periods
• Easy viewing by marketing staff and senior management
• Automatic emailing to a defined list of users of links to the reports, at specified intervals

If yours is a large business, you may be asked to pass key data live to the company’s main executive dashboard. A dashboard is a real-time graphic display for managers of performance against main key Performance Indicators (KPIs) drawn from multiple databases across the organisation. The CRM database will be one of the most important contributors to the dashboard
Marketing staff will also need the ability to compile reports on an ad hoc basis to meet specific needs. These would draw on a selection of available key fields in the database, defined in advance with the database supplier.

You should discuss with the supplier the cost advantages of such a facility, and the processing and presentation facilities you might need, compared with paying for such reports as the need arises.