Over the last decade, the world of marketing has undergone a paradigm shift of sorts, thanks to the emergence of the internet. The world has gone digital so quickly that every single industry has had to adapt, and that includes marketing. And thus, digital marketing was born, leading to the emergence of several different kinds of online marketing methods in the process.
One of these methods includes database marketing. In a nutshell, database marketing basically involves direct marketing strategies and marketing communications to customers or potential customers whose information is accessible through digital databases. Database marketing has been largely employed by companies trying to retain old customers or reach out to potential customers with attractive offers and loyalty schemes through means like mailers and social media.
There are several benefits that database marketing offers to brands that many other means of marketing don’t.
Focused and targeted marketing
Through database marketing, it is easy to send marketing communications in a focused manner to a company’s target audience directly. This greatly improves the productivity and success of a marketing campaign and gets brand communications across more effectively. For instance, a company can maintain and use a database of customers aged below 30 and, by extension, tailor their marketing tactics to appeal more to the youth with this specific database, which will yield better results with them.
Better Customer Relationships and Loyalty
Database marketing enables better customer relationships and customer loyalty. Companies can reach out to their own customer base more effectively with offers that encourage them to stick with the brand and try out more of its products and services. Many companies can use databases of existing customers to reach out to them with loyalty offers and get more personalized feedback on their products from them.
Personalized Customer Experience
Databases provide information on customers that would otherwise be difficult for brands to gather. This enables brands to carry out personalized marketing strategies for their customer base, which makes the customer feel more cared for and appreciated by the brand. Exclusive offers on birthdays, cultural occasions, and product assistance are some of the strategies that brands can carry out through database marketing. For example, if a company wants to reach out to a specific set of customers that share the same date of birth with a specialized birthday offer, it can do so with a personalized message that makes the customer feel appreciated and cared for by the company.
Improved Customer Service
Database marketing gives companies a chance to offer improved services to their customers. Large brands often collect data from customers whenever they make a purchase or avail of a service from the company. This data allows them to understand the customers’ backgrounds and offer improved services based on the products they have purchased from the company. Because database marketing is all about customers and their personal preferences, it encourages brands to provide better service by catering to customer needs and demands instead of taking a more generalized marketing approach. For instance, companies often maintain product-specific databases, which in turn allows them to offer better service to the buyers of the product in question.
Improved Efficiency
Database marketing improves the efficiency of a company’s marketing strategies by ensuring that it reaches out to its customer base and target audience more effectively through accurate information that is available through digital databases. For example, if you need to reach out to a subset of your target audience, which is specialized doctors, you may consider procuring a database of specialized doctors and writing out a more personalized communication for the intended audience. This will yield better results and make it a more efficient marketing strategy than advertising to a more generic audience with a more generalized message.
All in all, database marketing coincides with other means of digital marketing to provide personalized, precise, and more focused marketing strategies to brands that seek to directly communicate and interact with their customers and reach out to potential customers more effectively by telling them exactly what they want to hear from a company.
