In today's business environment, data is the new oil. Companies are gathering more information about their performance, business competitors, and customers than ever before. Having such comprehensive information at their disposal allows improvements in all the aspects of a business - sales, customer service, and of course marketing.

This huge volume of gathered data may be also used to build strong and loyal relationships with customers. By understanding how your customers interact with your brand, what their interests are, and what products or services they like, your company gains the opportunity to create stronger connections with them. In this article, we will dive into the strategies on how to use customer data to build lasting customer relationships.

1. Use data to personalize interactions

Personalization is one of the most effective ways to build customer relationships. According to the research, adding the customer's name to your messages boosts click rates by 27%. As a company, you're quite likely to have tons of data concerning location, age, gender, birthday, marital status, values, interests, purchase history of customers, etc. So why not use this information to make your communication and interactions with customers more personal?

Data on social and demographic characteristics, customer preferences, and buying behavior patterns can be of huge benefit to all departments in your company. Equipped with this knowledge, the marketing team can create individual promotional offers and more efficient campaigns, the sales team can personalize communication with customers, while the support team will spend less time trying to figure out what's the problem and how to solve it.

2. Choose the right communication strategies

The right communication strategy helps ensure that your customers will come back to your company instead of switching to your competitor. With only a bit of analysis, you will know what are the preferred communication channels of your customers, what products they are likely to buy now, and predict what they might need in the future. By using previously gathered information, you'll be well-informed, and customers will receive responses to their requests more quickly. Apart from reaping the benefit of avoiding trivial mistakes that could otherwise worsen the customer experience, you will also be able to get valuable insights into possible problems and pain points of your customer service.

3. Take advantage of customer feedback

Customer feedback - both positive and negative - is a valuable asset that allows a company to learn from ups and downs. By analyzing surveys, posts, and comments on social media, you gain the chance to improve customer experience and better understand customer needs. Moreover, if you monitor topics related not only to your brand but to the whole industry, you will be able to evaluate the hottest industry trends and be one of the first to adopt them for your company. This way, you will gain the chance to be one step ahead of your competitors and exceed customer expectations.

4. Offer loyalty programs

Everyone likes free stuff, promos, and other incentives. By offering exclusive gifts and discounts to your existing and repeat customers, you help ensure that they will come back for more. Moreover, extra benefits you provide for birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays also add value to your relationships with customers, encourage new purchases, and allow you to stand out and build brand awareness.

5. Bring technologies into play

Collecting and analyzing data manually is time-consuming, daunting, and ineffective. To be sure that your data is relevant and can be accessed in a timely manner, you need to implement tools that are designed specifically for these purposes. That is exactly where EspoCRM can help. EspoCRM will provide you a detailed overview of who your customers are. The platform serves as a centralized customer database that is equipped with powerful tools for marketing, sales, customer support, analytics, and business process automation. It allows companies to use data about customer preferences and buying patterns to personalize every interaction and maintain stronger relationships with both existing and new clients.

Loyal relationships with customers cannot be built overnight. It takes a lot of time and effort to collect the relevant customer data, analyze it and find ways to apply it for personalizing interactions, choosing the most suitable communication strategies, and creating loyalty programs. Of course, it's much easier to achieve by implementing an accessible and efficient CRM solution. EspoCRM will not only improve customer experience but also boost sales rates, marketing, and cross-department collaboration.