An interesting article by Annum Munir details the steps to follow to create an individual profile through data, a fundamental pillar of any online strategy nowadays.
Buyer Persona vs Customer Profile
It is important to begin by clarifying that, despite their similarities, a customer profile is not the same as a Buyer Persona or a target market.
The Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional representation of an ideal customer, to project the needs and desires of your customers.
Customer profiling is about building real relationships with current customers using real data, facts and information.
What are customer profiles and why are they necessary?
Think about your customers on an individual level. Let's say you have a client named Ana. She is a twenty-something millennial living in Madrid and working in marketing.
She is an avid app user who engages with your brands primarily through her iPhone. Occasionally, she browses websites, clicks on your messages or shares your social media content, but avoids going to a store as much as possible.
Now, wouldn't it be ideal to have all this information in a single, easily accessible place? This is where customer profiles become important.
A disaggregated version of Ana's customer profile would look something like this:
As you can see, customer profiles are the consolidation of all the data you collect about your customers, in one place. Naturally, each person should have their own customer profile, based on their unique characteristics and interactions with the business.
Customer profiles contribute to a deep understanding of your users, to engage with them in a meaningful way and to have them constantly reviewing your content for more information.
They can help you sketch a complete picture of your individual users that can better serve your needs. And that's what transforms mediocre businesses into great ones.
How to create a complete customer profile in 7 steps
Step 1: Export individual customer data from online channels
Digital channels (website, email, social media) help provide information to your audience, but they also collect a good deal of data about them. Each online channel can shed new light on who your users are, what they are reading, what they are interested in and what they share on the web.
Below, we will detail what each channel can teach you about your customers.
EmailEmail data will help you understand how often your customers like to hear from your company and what type of communications they open and read.
Examples of profile fields to export:
- E-mail address
- Subscription preferences
- Shipment subscriber status
- Most recently opened messages
- Monthly average of messages opened
- Last date clicked on a message
- Last link opened in a message
- Average monthly clicks per shipment
- Company, job, etc.
Website: Reviewing website analytics is a very common practice. How many have recently browsed your website? What pages do they spend the most time on? What was the first action they took (buy a product, request a quote, create an account)? When was the last time they took a meaningful action?
Examples of profile fields to export:
- Last visit to the website and pages visited
- First page of website visit and pages viewed
- Most recent conversion event date and offer
- First conversion event. Date and offer
- Average time on site
- Monthly visits to the website
Social networks: Do they follow your brand, do they share your content, what have they liked, retweeted or commented on? Keep track of your customers' social interactions and use them to measure their level of satisfaction with your business, products and applications.
Examples of profile fields to export:
- Feedback collected from social networks (positive or negative)
- Number of brand tastes
- Number of brand shares
Step 2: Export individual customer data from your offline channels
Postal mail, physical stores and hosting events are some of the offline channels. These channels also collect valuable data about your customers and shed light on their actual behavior and activities.
Examples of profile fields to export:
Mailing campaigns
- Magazine subscriber status
- Date of last shipment
- Address
- Sales territory
Physical stores
- Last visit to the store
- Last product purchased in the store
- Store credit
- Use of frequent customer card
Events
- Last event attended
- All events
Step 3: Collect individual customer data on application usage
Apps can be the most intimate way a consumer connects with a brand. Apps embody a brand's promise and help users perform specific tasks with ease, anywhere.
This makes them a gold mine as a source of behavioral data.
Have your key customers downloaded your application?
How often do you engage with the app?
Have you enabled mobile notifications?
What actions do they perform in the application?
What application events have they become?
Which screens do you visit the most? Which ones do you visit the least?
Examples of profile fields to export:
- Notifications enabled
- Last application session
- Average session duration
- Conversions / application events
- Application uptime
- Message click-through rate
- User preferences / attributes
Step 4: Import this data to a centralized location
Once all the information described in steps 1 through 3 has been captured, it is time to integrate it. The goal is to bring disparate sources of information together in one place. You can assign the right data to the right people by customer name, ID or other easily identifiable unique parameters.
Step 5: Correct interpretation of the data
Once the data has been successfully imported, you will have numerous comprehensive customer profiles at your fingertips.
You'll be able to take a deep dive into the buying patterns, demographics and behavioral history of users to better understand what makes them similar and what sets them apart.
Step 6: Convert data into actions
Once the profiles are created and enriched with data, what do you do with them? You must put that data into action. Group individual customer profiles to create "audiences", i.e. user segments, and then send them personalized messages. Remember that the more you know about your contacts, the better you will be able to satisfy their desires through what is called relevance.
Step 7: Update customer profiles on a regular basis
Change is the only constant in life. People change, their goals change and their situation changes. Therefore, updating customer profiles on a regular basis is a fundamental requirement.
Don't let them become obsolete! Develop communication strategies that regularly feed and enrich your profiles with the latest and freshest information from your contacts.
Conclusion
No matter what type of business you're in, it's always more expensive to win a new customer than to keep an existing one. Customer profiles help you understand them better, which allows you to maximize the relevance of your communications and increase their engagement with your brand.
