Finding Hidden Treasures in your Database

Hidden treasures are marketing opportunities that are waiting for you to find, develop or execute. It may shock you, but YOU have created hidden treasures in your database. Every marketing plan you have ever created and executed ultimately developed these opportunities! These opportunities will require your time for content development and execution, but usually have minimal external cost associated with them. Sounds great, right? Congratulations. You’ve earned them! Now, you just have to find them.

Here are steps you can take to discover hidden treasures in your database:

1. Conduct an audit of your database

Review your database to identify the contacts that are engaging with your brand, converting into sales and those that are neglected. Use this time to evaluate the programs and campaigns that are managing these segments.

After you have identified neglected contacts, create programs to support these contacts and improve the programs for existing segments in your database. The ultimate goal for segmentation is to deliver relevant content to your contacts.

Aim to complete an audit once a quarter. There are a number of factors that can affect your database over time such as seasonal and industry changes.

2. Review your sales cycle
Reach out to your sales team and let them voice their frustrations and explain what support they need to do their jobs successfully. Sales and marketing teams can mutually benefit by combining their efforts. It increases productivity and provides a better customer experience.

It is easy to identify what is working for your company, but it is vitally important to figure out what is not! Most marketing automation platforms have solutions to alleviate the frustrations your sales team may be facing.

3. Monetize your database
After you have identified the segments in your database and weak areas in your sales cycle, you are ready to review historical purchase and engagement data to determine the conversion rate and value for each segment.

Use this information to create predictions and benchmarks for success. Document how those segments are currently converting and track progress monthly.

Please note, I use the word “monetize” not to dehumanize your database. Regardless of the segment value, every contact is valuable and important. Incremental revenue adds up quickly.

To summarize, here are examples of hidden treasures in your database:

• Neglected segments – These are groups of contacts that may be neglected by marketing, sales or both. Engaging these contacts may increase revenue for your company or increase customer engagement with your brand.
• Integrating marketing campaigns into the sales cycle – This can be achieved by creating campaigns to improve or strengthen weak areas in the sales cycle. Identifying the weaknesses in the sales cycle will improve the customer experience and decrease duplicated efforts between sales and marketing, which often occurs.
• Identifying the value of your segments – Sales and marketing will have the ability to benchmark success for each segment and effectively target them with relevant communications. Identifying high and low value segments are vital to developing future programs and processes. You may have a variety of low value segments that are neglected, but they may create a new revenue stream for your company due to the amount of contacts in those segments.

I hope this information inspires you to review your database and reflect on how you can improve your programs and campaigns. If you have any suggestions and/or comments, please let us know.