Managing your contact database is essential to demand generation and relationship marketing. Your contact database is one of Marketing’s most valuable assets. A contact database is by nature, a fluid changing entity. Contact data changes.  New contacts arise and existing contacts leak out as the result of succession planning, downsizing, and other career moves. Therefore how you manage you contact database has significant implications to your contact management strategy.

Measure Your Contact Database Quality

There are several numbers you can use to measure you contact database quality.  For example, the number of decision-making contacts and the number, quality, degree of relationship for each contact for each of your your current and prospective accounts. 

In today’s environment,  turnover is constant. As a result, your contact database probably becomes outdated quickly. When a customer contact leaves his or her employer, you need to make sure that your relationship with that person doesn’t leave too.

There are few situations as frustrating as investing time, energy, and money into building a relationship with a customer, only to find out that customer is gone and your door of opportunity has closed.

Three Steps to Incorporate Into Your Contact Management Strategy

Make some time to focus on and give attention to your contact management strategy in terms of how to reduce your risk of losing an opportunity should a primary contact leave. Your strategy should include how to do the following for each key category – buyer, influencer and end user contacts within an opportunity:

1. Level Up: Add at least one level up from your primary contact into your database. Develop a strategy to connect with at least one higher-level executive within each opportunity. Work to ensure this person is at least familiar with your company name and see you as the market leader. If your primary contact leaves they are most likely to communicate who it taking over the position and make an introduction.

2. Level Across: Add at least one lateral contact within the opportunity. Widening your contact base at an account also helps solidify a long-term relationship with that customer. In larger companies, where reorganization often accompanies turnover, a wider footprint can mean both retaining and growing business if yours is the preferred product or service. Communicating across an organization – to other divisions or departments – has the added benefit of uncovering new opportunities in other areas of the account. Lastly, lateral contacts are often much more likely than upper management or lower level contacts to give you information about changes in the organization if your primary contact is displaced.

3. Level Down: Add at least one lower-level contact within the opportunity. Lower-level employees have the opportunity to expand into new roles and responsibilities when vacancies occur above them. For the marketer, making an impression on these contacts – before their roles change – is crucial. Not only does it give you a leg up on your competitors, but contacts in a new role, eager to prove themselves, are likely to reach out to you if they feel that you can increase their perceived value to management.

How to Use Your Database to Improve Relationship Marketing

To begin a Relationship Marketing Initiative your first and most essential ingredient is your customer and prospect database. Relationship marketing goes beyond database marketing; it is more than executing a set of marketing programs against a list. The first step entails defining critical fields for your database.  At a minimum your fields should include:

• what each customer has purchased and when
• their buying cycle
• their market requirements

With this data and contact management strategy, you can now segment your database based on what the customer has purchased in order to define and execute programs  using relevant messages specific to these segments.

Buy Your Best-Practices Workbook

Put your segmentation to work. Build relevant and targeted messages.

1. Start by focusing on providing useful and practical information for each customer segment. This will require that you understand their needs so you can provide services and products that help them succeed. Your goal is to become more than a supplier; your goal is to become an extension of their company, a vital and trusted resource.
2. Personalize all of your communication. Make each message count. It must be meaningful, relevant and make an emotional connection. Make instilling confidence and trust an outcome for every communication.
3. Create opportunities for customers to engage with you and give you feedback. It may appear intuitive; it will take some A/B testing though to motivate engagement. Your mission is to make as many interactions as interactive as possible. Explore all channels. Email is easy; use the channels your customers prefer and remember the value of in-person interactions.

Always act in your customer or prospect’s best interest. Focus your offers on what your customer needs. Your brand stands for a promise waiting to be fulfilled. The success of your brand lies in your ability to create a direct relationship with each customer and to follow through on your promise. Break the promise and your customer relationship is at risk. Ensure your postioning and messaging delivers on your customer-centric promise.

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