As much as marketers
would like to ask dozens of questions of visitors to their websites, the
reality is that they must minimize the number of fields on forms or else no one
will fill them out. If email is the only required field on your forms, even the
most interested parties are inevitably going to leave out names, phone numbers
and other critical info–leaving you with incomplete data. Fortunately, real-time
enhancement services can help you to fill in the blanks and even answer
questions you didn't directly ask. Here are a few ways data enhancement
can take your marketing efforts–and your profits–to the next level.
Location, Location, Location
You may serve customers across the country or around the
world, but local appeal is still crucial for effective marketing. However, most
of your visitors won't consider how important their geographical info is to an
online vendor. Just think: How many times have you skipped over the optional
city, state and zip code forms on a website?
Real-time enhancement can help you grab this info through
three means: email accounts, phone numbers and IP addresses. Given an email
address, reverse append can provide a postal address. Reverse phone append will
do the same or you can obtain geography based on the area code and phone
exchange. And of course, visitors who log in from their home or business
networks will almost always broadcast place-specific IPs.
Your marketing efforts will be far more effective once you
know where your customers are located. Imagine you're a sporting goods
retailer, for instance. Why blast scuba and snorkel gear offers to your entire
list when half your customers live in frigid, land-locked states? You'd see a
lot more sales and far fewer unsubscribes if you pitched products that fit your
customers' climates. The same principal applies to the varying cultures,
problems, preferences and laws you'll find in different cities and states.
Knowing Your Customers
Location isn't the only metric that matters. In fact, quite
a few visitors will leave out the most important detail for an ongoing
relationship – their names! You probably ignore messages that begin with “Dear
Sir” or “To our valued customer,” and your prospects will do the same. Real-time
enhancement services can analyze your customers' email addresses or phone
numbers to fill in their names and ensure personal connections in your
messaging.
Enhancement can also provide a wealth of demographic
data: gender, age, occupation, education, income, marital status and more. In
the online, location-independent environment, these metrics may be even more
important than geography – especially if you're selling products with universal
appeal. Everybody likes big TVs, for example, but young, high-income single
males are much more likely to buy them than older married couples.
Keeping it Simple
The longer your forms are, the fewer responses you'll get.
You certainly want to capture names and locations, but your prospects may get frustrated
if you ask for more info. With real-time data enhancement, you can generate
plenty of leads with simple forms, and use a service to fill in the details.
