August 17, 2018  |  Angela Ridpath

Using Data and Analytics to Find Your Best Customers

Today, businesses face immense challenges and fierce competition.  They are trying to stay competitive in crowded marketplaces.  They are also trying to understand their customers and find more customers in an efficient and cost-effective way.  Businesses also have access to more data today than they did in the past.  Marketers can see real-time results from digital campaigns, Google Analytics provides great details on who visits your website and what pages are most effective.  Retail businesses can track product sales down to the skew number.  Data is everywhere, but unless you have a team of data scientists and analysts at your disposal, trying to make sense of the data is difficult.

The Story of an Education Publisher

Recently, an education publisher came to MCH with a problem.  They wanted to understand which institutions and education decision-makers were driving sales.  Sales had increased year over year, but they wanted deeper insight into who was buying, what products were most profitable and how their marketplace had changed over the years.  They not only needed these insights to drive their business, but they also wanted to base strategic planning on reliable information about their customers and the market situation.

How MCH Strategic Data helped

MCH’s team of data scientists analyzed buying patterns and institutional elements over a five-year period to create a custom profile.  Actionable market segments emerged that allowed our client to identify buying habits and create personas of their ideal audience segments.

Steps to greater insight

There were four steps our team took to get the answers our client needed:

1. MCH segmented the file by product type, geography, buying patterns and other classifications based on both client and MCH attributes.
2. Distinct market segments were defined base on like characteristics. In addition, we were able to determine how these characteristics changed over time.
3. MCH identified difference in buying behavior for each segment.
4. We set the stage for future analysis, such as cluster analysis and developing look alike models.

Actionable Results

Our client found the MCH analysis extremely helpful, and they used the analysis to:

• Integrate behavior and opportunity data into their CRM.
• Identify ideal target personas for outreach.
• Analyze changes in buying behavior over time.
• Develop stronger sales and marketing programs.
• Focus on the best growth opportunities.
• Improve acquisition and retention rates.

Contact us

MCH helps our customers harness the power of our quality data and analytics to solve today’s marketplace challenges.

• Do you rely on multiple data sources?
• Do you spend too much time fixing errors or cleaning data?
• Do your current data sources lend enough insight to answer strategic business questions?
• Do you need access to your data more quickly?
• Are you spending too much time crunching numbers to get to the insights?
• MCH can help you assess your current situation and fill in any gaps you have with data and analytics.  Contact us today to learn more.