What’s the next big thing for businesses? More companies are investing in data and analytics. A recent study found that 83 percent of enterprise executives are pursuing big data projects to obtain a competitive advantage and that data analytics has fundamentally changed business practices in 50 percent of sales and marketing departments.

Consumer data can be gathered from a variety of sources and applied to deepen a company’s understanding of its customers. However, the data gathered by a company and stored in the customer relationship management (CRM) system often has a strong demographic focus. While this type of customer data may have compelling information, it doesn’t provide a complete picture of consumers’ interests. It’s time for companies to enrich demographics data with other datasets.

Consumer data enrichment, also known as customer data enrichment, can provide a comprehensive view of customer behavior, making in-market analytics possible. From there, businesses can directly reach consumers who are in the market for specific products and services, which can significantly increase the ROI of advertisements, email marketing, and other customer communications.

Consumer data enrichment applies additional third-party data to an enterprise CRM or database. Brands that actively enrich their data can enhance the information they have already gathered, helping them make more informed decisions and improving business outcomes.

When it comes to enhancing the customer experience, customer data enrichment is used to learn more about customers and what they’re interested in. That information is then applied to communication, marketing, sales, and other business areas, all with the purpose of making every customer interaction more valuable to the customer. For example, let’s say that a retail brand that is looking for a way to engage Millennials and Gen Zers. It’s been hard to create the right messaging when all the brand only has demographic information. The brand decides that the best way forward is to enrich consumer data with location intelligence. Now, the retail chain has near real-time information about how its new target market moves around in the world and what exactly they are the most interested in. With this golden data fueling campaigns, the retailer’s marketing department is able to craft messaging that resonates with its target audience.  By understanding what consumers are interested in, the marketing team can write messaging that speaks directly to customer interests, increasing campaign engagement.

There are many types of data that can enrich your CRM, and it can be difficult to know which will be most valuable for improving the customer experience. Standard information on age and marital status likely won’t cut it in today’s hyper-personalized world. Instead, companies need to use innovative new data types to gain better customer insights.

Unlike other customer data enrichment sources, enterprise location intelligence is based on consumer behavior in the real world, providing insight into what’s really important to consumers. This insight can help businesses understand what customers are interested in in this post-COVID world, helping them make better business decisions.

Enterprise location intelligence can be applied to multiple business areas. To improve the customer experience, there are four key types of data derived from location analytics that you should consider adding to your CRM.

Just like we saw in the example above, consumer interests can take your marketing efforts to the next level. Everyone has a unique collection of activities, interests, and pursuits that drive their behaviors. Location intelligence provides a wealth of information about their interests, hobbies, and activities. If enterprise location intelligence shows that your customers attend farmer’s markets every month, then it’s obvious healthy food is important to them and you can craft your campaigns around that interest, or even reach your customers directly from their favorite food-related events. 

Studies have found that personalization improves customer acquisition, conversion, and overall sales. Research from Hubspot found that a personalized call to action was 202% more effective than a generic CTA; while Segment found that personalization drives repeat purchases in 44% of customers and impulse buys in 49% of shoppers.

Demographic data can tell an organization basic information such as a customer’s age, gender, and shopping history – but knowing that a 64-year-old male purchaser of household items is also a biking enthusiast and wine connoisseur opens up a variety of opportunities for a marketer to reach that consumer, improving your CX and increasing the odds of conversion and gaining a potential loyal customer.

Creating an emotional connection that makes your customer relate to your brand is something that every company dreams of. Brand affinity can only happen when the brand and customers share common values. This crucial component of the customer experience helps organizations ensure that their brand represents the values of their target audiences. 

For example, if a company’s customers are focused on charity and volunteering, advertising corporate social responsibility (CSR) or ‘sincerity’ branding will be more effective than, for example, advertising luxury items or ‘sophistication’ branding which will likely turn this target audience away from your company.

Location intelligence provides insight into consumer affinities based on information such as events attended or retail locations frequented, all of which speak to an individual’s preferences and interests. 

Understanding consumer affinities creates, builds, and strengthens the emotional bond between customer and brand, creating the foundation for a long-term, resilient relationship. It can also open up opportunities for sponsorship or co-marketing between brands with similar audiences.

While all of the points on this list are important, this one is perhaps the one most relevant to the times that we are living in. Companies need quick turnarounds to stay afloat, and there is no faster way to do this than to go after in-market buying behaviors. Consumers who are ‘in-market’ are actively looking to purchase a specific item, product, or service. Knowing what your consumers are in the market for allows you to reach them at the time when they are most likely to make a purchase, with the right message to convert them. In-market buying behavior may take into account past actions, including purchase history or store visits; current actions, including product searches; and predictions of future actions. 

For example, let’s say a car dealership that is struggling to connect with the right audience. They sent out fliers, done the digital marketing run around, but nothing seems to be working. The dealership decides to use an enterprise location intelligence solution to reach only those consumers who have been visiting other dealerships, auto supply shops, mechanics, and socially-distanced car shows in the area. The business launches its new campaign with this new information and it’s an immediate success.

Consumer data enrichment can provide a comprehensive view of customer behavior, making in-market analytics possible. From there, businesses can directly reach consumers who are in the market for specific products and services, which can significantly increase the ROI of advertisements, email marketing, and customer communication.

This brings us to our next point: visit data not only tells a business how frequently consumers visit a specific store or location. This type of data can also tell you how many visits are typical before a purchase is made, how far consumers travel between locations, and what additional stops are made along the way.

When companies analyze visit data over time, they can see patterns that wouldn’t be apparent with ‘snapshot’ data. This can lead to more informed decision-making, including ad targeting, segmentation, measuring marketing effectiveness, expansion, and cross-promotional opportunities.

Consumer data enrichment is one way that a company can improve customer acquisition, retention, and conversion. Location intelligence is fundamental to consumer data enrichment, providing information on customer interests, values, behaviors, and habits. Companies shouldn’t have to worry about data delivery. That is why we are offering flexible data delivery via Gravy DaaS. You can quickly get the data you need to augment existing consumer insights, giving a richer, more detailed picture of each customer to direct organizational strategies and decision making.