Business owners can use customer tracking to find out who their customers are, their location, their shopping habits, and many other details. Customer relationship management (CRM) software is one way to accomplish all this. What do you do with the information you have gathered? There are many ways to put this information to use for your small business.
Why you should track your customers
You should track your customers for many reasons, but the most important reason is to better serve your customers. You can tailor your communications to your customers’ needs by knowing their spending habits, where they live, how often they visit your site, and how old.
Tyler Read, CEO of Personal Trainer Pioneer, stated that customer tracking allows customers to be targeted and served more effectively.
Read stated that the information you collect about customers’ interactions with your brand will tell you what they want and when, as well as what their preferences are regarding payment methods, communication and receiving communications, and product/service preferences.
Customer tracking is also important for understanding your customer’s experiences with your brand. This includes how they found you, what it took them to buy, and how much they value your company over time.
What you should track
Although it can seem overwhelming to determine the most important items to track, some factors may provide better insight than others. Here are six metrics that every business should monitor.
1. Downloads
Jenna Soard, founder, and CEO of YouCanLaunch.com stated that entrepreneurs should keep track of downloads and opt-ins such as freebies downloaded via landing pages or websites.
This helps to gauge the interest of the lead and determine their target demographics, or even psychographics. Soard stated that entrepreneurs can create more content and products if they know the traffic and customers who are coming in.
2. Purchase history
You can use your own sales data to gain valuable customer insight. This will help you decide what products, services, and promotions you should promote in your marketing campaigns.
Michelle Devani, LoveDevani founder, stated that knowing their buying history will allow the company to find out what their customers are spending their money on. They can then offer the same products and services that they have in order to attract them.
Also read: Customer Data Management: Definition of CDM, Benefits and Best Practices
3. Customer contact information
Keep track of the best ways to reach customers. For example, their email. Devani stated that companies should send automated messages or newsletters to customers’ contact information in order to inform them about current promotions.
Devani stated that customers will feel the need to buy anything because of the promotion.
4. Sales funnel
Romantific editor Samantha Moss said that a funnel is the most important thing to monitor. To determine which parts of your process need to be improved,
you must keep track of how many customers pass through each part of your funnel. Moss said that this will allow you to create a more efficient process that converts more leads.
5. Traffic channels
It’s possible to track where your customers are coming from allowing you to gauge the return on investment (ROI), of your marketing efforts. Jeff Walker is the founder and CEO of Best VPN Canada.
This can be tracked by asking customers to tell you how they found you, or what they heard about your company. There are many other options. Soard said that UTM (urchin tracking system) can be added to the tracking pixels. Codes to Everything is another way to identify where your customers are coming to you.
6. Email metrics
Email is an excellent source of data. This allows you to track who opens and who doesn’t open your emails, whether they click on any links, and if so, what link they clicked on. This information is crucial in helping you determine how engaged your audience is.
A successful email marketing campaign will result in an open rate between 15% and 25%. Once your customers have opened your emails they should click through to your website at 2.5% to 3%.
Customer tracking methods
Once you have identified the things to look out for, it is time to find a way of tracking your customers. There are many options, it’s just about choosing the one that works best for you. Take a look at these:
Mailchimp allows you to track click-throughs, opens, deletes, and other information in your email marketing campaigns. This information is useful because it will allow you to customize your email marketing campaigns. Create more powerful email lists. Heather Davis Lam, the founder of Revenue Ops LLC, stated that A/B testing messages can be done until your email metrics are optimized. This allows you to easily remove or modify messaging that isn’t resonating.
Social media
People looking to buy something have turned to social media as their first choice, Devani said. You can get a good idea of your customers’ interests by looking at their social media profiles.
The insights tool in each of your social media accounts provides valuable information about your customers. You can often see which region of the country you are in. (or world) they live in, their age, and gender. You can also track click-throughs and engagement.
Website metrics
Moss stated that website metrics can be used to determine which part of your website receives the most traffic, and what consumers do while they are on your site. Devani stated that “[Website metrics] work because people trust the internet if there are questions and want to know more about a product/service.”
For tracking website metrics, Parker Russell, founder, and veteran of the U.S. Air Force stated that he keeps track of a few things.
Russell stated, “We track which web pages customers are using most, their journey from customer to viewer, and what their pain points are.” “Paint issues are important to recognize and address.”
Russell suggested that people track how much and how often they spend their money.
Customer tracking software
Soard says customer relationship management software (CRM) helps you keep track of data like when leads open emails, click on links within emails, or if they have never opened any emails.
Lam stated that a CRM system would allow you to centralize all the data and create one source of truth. This will give you a 360-degree view of your customer. It will allow you to share customer data with your entire company, which can be used to address customer problems, build customer loyalty and create dashboards and reports for the company’s leadership to make data-driven business decisions.
Also read: Top 9 Link Tracking Software for Marketers
Process for tracking customers
There are many steps involved in tracking customers, depending on who you speak to. The industry in which you are located, the size of the business, and the available resources will all impact the number of steps that you take to track customers for your company. Experts offer four methods for tracking customers.
1. Segment your email list. Organize your email subscriber list into categories that allow you to identify different more easily interests of your customers or their place in the sales funnel. The segmentation of customers can be further done based on their demographics, shopping habits, and purchase history.
Email marketing software allows you to segment your lists by certain factors. However, some companies will charge extra depending on how many segments you have. So make sure you choose carefully.
2. Create customer tags. Customer tags are embedded codes that allow you to track your customers and collect information about them. How long do your visitors spend on your site What products they have viewed, added to their cart, and removed from their cart?
These tags are difficult to code for someone who doesn’t have experience. Google Tag Manager, however, can help you make it simpler, especially if you want to add more than one tag per customer.
3. Track pixels. Similarly, Pixels are lines of code that are inserted into the code of your website. These codes can be placed on images or links, as well as other areas. Once you have these codes, it is possible to track website visits, impressions, conversions, and how consumers got to your website.
To optimize your paid advertising, you should include tracking pixels on all landing pages, web pages, and purchase confirmation pages.
4. Check customer tags and lists. Customers can add tags to their products, much like you would add a hashtag or a caption to a photo on social media. Customers can be tagged based on their interests but also on their habits. If your CRM is already in use, you can easily access the data through tags and segmented email lists.
You can use customer tags to track the effectiveness of your promotions and see if they are working. The same principles can be applied to less active customers to determine if you can adjust an email retargeting campaign.
You might consider other approaches for your small business. Moss also provided this example:
- Based on buyer personas, create your customer journey for your business.
- Find out where consumers are most likely to interact with your brand.
- Make a visual map showing the journey of your customers.
- Find out if your customers are achieving their goals.
- Make any necessary changes to your customer journey map.
Read offers a more technical approach if you are looking for something more.
- Choose the system that you will use to track customer information (e.g. CRM software, email marketing program).
- Your customer tracking system should be clearly defined with clear procedures and goals.
- All team members should be trained on your system, methods, and procedures.
- Start tracking customer interactions and information.
- To better serve your customers, analyze the data.
- The analyzed data to improve marketing, retargeting, and products for all customers, current, and future.
These examples are not necessarily superior to any other. But it is good to have options in order to implement a process that works best for your business is the No. 1 goal.
