Jade Greenhow, Insight Data’s Operations Director, discusses why data has played an even more important role in marketing over the last 12 months.
Our industry has faced many crises in the past, but one of the things the last 12 months has shown is just how vital marketing has been for companies to stay relevant.
Despite the unprecedented challenges, marketing has been crucial for companies to keep engaging with customers and prospects.
Those who scaled back their marketing are the ones struggling while more decisive competitors have been able to hit the ground running as we head back towards normality.
Data has always been an important part of a marketing strategy, but in a time of crisis it is even more critical.
Data driven
Data is powerful under any circumstances, as it allows you to build a picture of what is happening and why, and over the last year our clients have been utilising our accurate, up-to-date data to help them through the crisis and prepare for the future.
With more people engaged with communication channels than ever during lockdown, we helped clients communicate with customers and prospects on how they were tackling the crisis and coronavirus restrictions, how they were operating, and how they could keep/get in touch with them.
They were also able to use our data to allow them to continuously improve their marketing campaigns in tune with their customer’s ever-changing needs. Customers want information that’s useful to them so marketing messages relevant to their specific needs will have meant high engagement.
This allowed our clients to build trust in their brand as a company that can be counted on during tough times and gave them the best opportunity to have a strategic advantage over their competitors.
Staying ‘open’ for business
While the crisis forced companies to rethink how they operate with remote-working, for many of our clients this was impossible with manufacturing plants, distribution hubs, transport and front-end installation all requiring people to work together.
While clients will have had to close their factories at some point during the last 12 months, they should still have had their customer facing side of the business open, to stay visible to existing customers, respond to emails, deal with enquiries, handle quotes and process them if possible.
With our help, hundreds of marketing, sales, customer service and telesales teams across the industry have been able to work remotely thanks to Salestracker, our remote-working platform that provides users with a prospect and customer database with detailed business information on over 60,000 companies including fabricators, installers, house-builders, local builders, contractors, merchants and architects.
Companies have been using Salestracker to enable telesales and customer service teams to work remotely, as the system records and date-stamps every activity so managers can keep an eye on productivity.
Communication
With traditional methods of communication affected by remote working, companies have been using email marketing to their advantage.
It has enabled them to still show their presence and connect with people; keep customers in the loop with updates so they know what they can and cannot provide; and maintain relationships they have spent so long to build.
At Insight Data we provide our Email Marketing platform, STEM, to customers for targeted email campaigns and engagement has been consistently high during the crisis.
Since launching in 2006, Insight Data is now the leading provider of marketing data and CRM software exclusively in the UK construction, fenestration, and glazing industries, helping suppliers get better results from their sales and marketing. For more information contact Insight Data on 01934 808293 or via email at hello@insightdata.co.uk.
