Business Process Improvement, Customer Experience and Engagement
Use Customer Analytics to Forecast Your Consumer’s Next Purchase
on March 20, 2017
How to Use Analytics to Predict Customer Behavior?
Have you ever daydreamed about how much easier it would be to just know what your significant other wanted on a special occasion? Take a look at the advertisements they receive and you just might find your answers! By studying customer analytics, it’s possible.
Marketers use data patterns from previous purchases and search history to predict future consumer behavior. Let’s start with the basics, what is Predictive Analytics? Simply stated, Predictive Analytics is the study of data patterns so that marketers can make reliable predictions about a specific consumer’s or consumer groups’ needs or areas of interest so they can carefully craft their messages to meet those needs.
Vastly different industries have studied data patterns to make behavioral predictions, but it is marketers who have used the technique most effectively. Predicting future purchases with properly organized and analyzed predictive analytics data lets marketers save money and engage more productively with their customers. The key to success is choosing the right marketing services partner to analyze and properly integrate your data so that you can use it in a meaningful way.
Using Customer Data to Predict Customer Behavior
Using data to predict customer behavior is nothing new. Data mining is a common practice as companies work to customize and individualize their marketing strategies. But it’s a win-win situation for both marketers and consumers.
- First, advertising is not wasted on uninterested consumers who previously received marketing materials that didn’t apply to their interests.
- Second, customers become loyal consumers when messages are specifically targeted to their needs.
- Third, predictive analytics helps marketers uncover the best leads and prospects for your business as well as the most effective ways to reach and engage them.
- Finally, this technique can help predict when a consumer wants to cancel service, allowing you to provide that extra attention designed to keep their business.
Predictive Analytics makes marketers better at their jobs and consumers happier with the targeted messages they receive.
The Future of Predictive Analytics: Artificial Intelligence
Past customer data has been used for years to try and predict what customers want and when they want it. The amount of customer data that is collected has been exponentially increasing over the last decade and that data now is being used to drive predictive analytics even further.
Marketers are always looking for the next great technological advantage to use in marketing campaigns. That future technology is artificial intelligence. AI is getting smarter and smarter by the day. Machine learning allows for AI systems to learn and grow as more data points are added to its system. With more data points, artificial intelligence in conjunction with machine learning is now able to eerily accurately predict customer behavior.
What you like, what you dislike, who you talk to, your values, hobbies, job, even the movies you like can all be used to predict what you are going to do before you even think about it.
How Do Marketers Integrate Analytics Data into Marketing Strategies?
It’s said, great power brings great responsibility. Sometimes marketers can predict pivotal life events that consumers aren’t ready to share. Huge retailers, such as Target – just by keeping track of the items individual customers are currently buying – can predict if that customer is pregnant or getting married. These predictions come in handy if, for instance, you want to send personalized coupons at each stage of this consumer’s life event. But there is a downside.
This great power allowed Target’s marketing team to learn that a teenage girl was pregnant before her father found out. While this situation may have had a happy ending, some news should come directly from the source. Remember to always use discretion when applying sensitive data.
The most daunting part of Predictive Analytics is getting data ready for integration. Data can’t just be shoved into a software program and expected to produce useful results. Data must be combed through, carefully organized, and processed properly. You need to put a lot of thought into your marketing objectives so that the data you collect makes a difference.
How FSSI Uses Analytics to Improve Your Customer Communications?
FSSI‘s data processing services can help! Not all data is created equal, but it is all valuable. Strategic custom data formatting gives you the ability to group data in ways that let you support different marketing objectives.
Don’t be discouraged if your company has never dealt with managing customer analytics data or has had limited success using the data you’ve collected. FSSI, is an outsource printing company specializing in data processing and secure data storage, can help you turn that data straw into data gold.
Clients flock to FSSI for their data services needs because the company develops custom programs. Let us show you how to use customer analytics to predict customer behaviors and apply targeted data to impact marketing campaigns. You can’t just have the right data; you have to put it in the right hands.
