Which Customers Are Your Most Valuable?

Customer growth strategies can help determine who to pursue and who to retain

For a certain category of marketer—one whose products or services have a long and complex buying cycle, or a high price tag, or the decision to buy needs multiple people to approve the purchase, or the product/service call for regular renewals of a contract—not all customers are equal. These marketers need a strategy in place to evaluate which customers are most valuable to pursue and retain.

Companies should have a rubric in place to evaluate and essentially score or rank their current customer set. Such a framework allows marketers and all customer-facing teams to align on how to best serve and grow each individual account in a profitable manner. While customer growth strategies are more typical for B2B companies, they can also apply to some B2C marketers, such as cable, TV or phone providers, or automotive companies that offer leasing.

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In the latest episode of behind the numbers analyst Jillian Ryan discusses the importance of the full customer experience. She talks about how B2B marketers are collecting qualitative feedback, what the most important customer value metrics are and what types of loyalty programs they are using.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to customer growth. Strategies should be tailored specifically to what your company knows about the individual account. Qualitative feedback and data are the foundational elements here. Capturing customer engagement data is pertinent. Marketers should be looking at gathering customer demographics, any online spending data, customer service and support logs, website behavior, data from advertising platforms, mobile touchpoints and data from automation/email providers.

June 2018 research from The Relevancy Group found that a majority of marketers have integrated CRM data, customer profiles/demographics and customer online spending data into their customer data platform. Fewer were tracking customer service information, email marketing response data or mobile behaviors.

eMarketer’s latest report, “Customer Growth Marketing: How B2Bs Deepen Relationships Through Retention, Loyalty and Advocacy Strategies,” explores best practices for marketers managing long-term relationships with their customers.

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