How to Collect Customer Data: 7 Ways
Today we will delve into the issue of how to collect customer data to get the most out of it without violating the law. After all, one of the conditions for successful scaling of a company is the automation of business processes. In its turn,automation requires collecting and storing large amounts of information that will be used to make decisions and run certain scenarios.
Why is Data so Important
Analytics allows a company to navigate the business space by identifying the shortcuts to its goals. It can be compared with a flashlight that lights the way in total darkness — without it, you have to feel your way through a dark forest, risking falls and injuries.
When you collect customer data you have a serious competitive advantage. This information allows you to make more precise decisions that improve financial performance indicators, increase customer loyalty, increase your company's resilience to unforeseen problems and optimize costs. Let's seek what the big brands say about it:
- Forrester claims that companies that use customer information grow 30% faster than their competitors.
- According to BARC, the use of modern data collection and processing technologies increases net profit by 8% on average.
- McKinsey&Company research shows that accurate analysis of user information increases the probability of a repeat transaction by 6 times.
- According to an IBM survey, 62% of marketers consider customer data processing a must-have for a company's growth in a highly competitive market.
- In a Pointer Pro survey, one third of business leaders and owners call the right choice of analytics tools a key success factor.
You have to collect customer data in the right way. Methods should be simple, effective and as user-friendly as possible. They should be adapted to current legislation that protects people from problems related to information leakage and illegal use of personal information.
The Future of Business Data Use
The emergence of artificial intelligence technology opens up new opportunities for automating business processes. If you collect customer data effectively, it is possible to predict their behavior quite accurately today. This makes it possible to recommend certain products, emphasize certain product features, and even completely rebuild web pages for a specific user.
Intellect Insights Journal experts say that this trend will continue in 2024 and in the distant future. They expect that by 2030, predictive artificial intelligence that forecasts customer behavior will generate $1.8 trillion for businesses annually.
The next step can be to personalize products as much as possible. The emergence of new materials, production technologies and information processing tools will make it possible to produce goods that are customized according to individual customer preferences. Have you long dreamed of a car that changes the color of the interior and selects a playlist to match your mood? That future is not far off t r, and collecting personal data will play a key role in it.
Benefits of Collecting Customer Data
Collecting, storing and processing information provides serious competitive advantages, which we'll explore in more detail.
1. Better understanding of your target audience
Data collection can help you learn what your potential customers want, how much money they are willing to spend on certain products, and what factors drive their choices. This allows you to optimize your marketing strategy and increase conversion rates.
2. Finding problem areas
One of the benefits of collecting customer data is the ability to smooth out irregularities in the sales cycle. You'll learn what moment causes the most trouble, at what stage a significant number of users drop out, and which product flaws cause customers to consider alternatives.
3. Identify available market niches
During research, you may discover that your potential customers need a brand new product that your competitors do not have. Analyzing information allows you to identify its key characteristics and values, so that you can be the first to occupy a free niche and get a significant increase in revenue.
4. Optimizing your business model
With a serious amount of information at hand, you can accurately forecast sales volume, adjust your purchasing, infrastructure and service to match it. Data-driven decisions can increase profits, optimize costs, and even improve profit margins.
5. Increasing the level of loyalty
Being aware of your typical consumer’s needs, you can offer exactly the product needed. As a result, they will see your company as a friend, not a soulless business designed to generate profits. This will help establish a trusting relationship, increasing the probability of making a repeat purchase.
Types Of Customer Data to Collect
It's worth thinking about the scenario of how to use the information collected — this approach will maximize the benefits. To do that, you need to understand how to collect data from customers that matters most.
1. Personal information
Gender, age, marital status, place of residence, education, etc. Personal information also includes identifiers (e.g. tax number), IP address, gadget serial number and cookies. Such data must be handled with the utmost care as it is protected by law.
2. Behavioral information
Information about how a user interacts with your media — website, mobile app, or SaaS service. This includes browsing time, depth of study, number of clicks, and other similar indicators. The benefits of collecting customer data are obvious — they allow you to forecast a person's future actions.
Claspo will help you in obtaining behavioral information. This tool for creating widgets offers a built-in analytics service. It allows you to track the performance indicators of pop-ups — the number of subscribers attracted, conversion rate, and much more.
3. Engagement information
Any form of user interaction with a company, brand or product. Frequency of website visits and purchases, views and clicks on contextual ads, comments on social media, reviews on specialized platforms, etc. You can incentivize customers to share their experiences and opinions with simple tools like Claspo. This service offers an extensive library of ready-made widgets that are displayed in pop-up windows.
4. Psychographic information
Metrics that reflect a person's preferences, values, ideals, aspirations and hobbies. It is difficult to work with them, but they allow you to predict user behavior most accurately. Many companies use them to build marketing strategies, develop new products and optimize business processes.
7 Ways to Collect Data From Customers
Don't forget that all your actions must comply with current legislation. To avoid violations, be sure to notify your website visitors about the collection of customer data, use secure storage systems, and provide the option to delete this information at any time. Keep up with regulatory changes and adapt your marketing strategy to the new requirements.
Now let's take a closer look at a few ways to collect customer data.
1. Analytics Services
From the free Google Analytics service to feature-rich web-based platforms. They collect detailed information about user interaction with a website and store it in an anonymized form that is fully compliant with regulatory requirements. Analytics services help to assess the effectiveness of marketing strategy, identify problem areas and find reserves to improve financial results.
Tools:
2. Web trackers
A simple way how to collect customer data online that is integrated into a website. They study visitor behavior — time spent on a media, number of sections viewed, average percentage of page swipes, etc. Such services help to optimize the sales funnel — remove obstacles, improve the content quality and reduce the time spent per transaction.
Tools:
3. Registration and subscription
Some sites and services require obligatory user identification. This creates an additional obstacle and deters some visitors, but provides business owners with valuable information. To minimize the negative effects of obligatory registration, reduce the number of fields to fill out and provide the social networks sign-on option to log in. The best way to authorize is through a widget in a pop-up window. You can add it to your site using Claspo. The built-in editor will allow you to adapt such a module to your corporate design.
Tools:
4. Surveys
If you're looking for a better way to collect customer data, simply ask a website visitor a question directly. This method is perfect for identifying serious problems as well as optimizing product and pricing policies. Of course, to get honest answers, you'll have to motivate users with discounts, coupons, exclusive mailings, and other bonuses. Claspo will help you with this. The tool integrates with your CRM, allowing you to personalize the message and give a visitor an exclusive offer.
Other tools:
5. Loyalty program
Offer your customers real rewards in exchange for information. These can be cashbacks, gifts, invitations to private events and presale tests. Use pop-up windows for sign-ups. Create them with Claspo by moving the right elements to the screen in the visual editor. If you want to know how to collect customer data online to create a loyalty program, you'll need a CRM. A reliable and user-friendly cloud-based platform is the best choice.
6. Social media
This is another effective method to take advantage of the information that people are willing to share. There are many applications for segmenting social media followers. With their help, you can create a portrait of a typical consumer to get to know your target audience, understand their interests and desires.
7. Reaction Widgets
Many online stores and other websites offer visitors to mark their favorite products, leave comments, add products to favorites and subscribe to notifications about assortment updates. Such tools will be a valuable source of information to predict buyer behavior.
Make Your Customer Data Collection System Efficient with Claspo
To motivate users to willingly leave contact information, answer questions and share personal information, you need the right tools. Claspo is a handy service for creating pop-ups. It has a variety of templates that invite a user to sign up or subscribe to a newsletter in exchange for a discount, coupon, gift or access to exclusive content.
One of the key advantages of Claspo is the ability to personalize widgets. Statistics show that more than 80% of users are more willing to share their data and make purchases when a seller addresses them by name. By connecting Claspo to your CRM, you can add various programmable elements to your pop-ups, increasing conversion rates.
Still not sure how to properly collect customer information? Try Claspo to populate your database in a short time! You can test the free version of the tool or choose one of the favorable pricing plans to fit your business needs.
