We all know that marketing is in the midst of a shift from intuition to insight. We now support strategic decisions with cold, hard data – not something as malleable as a gut instinct. Overall, this drive to develop customer intelligence is positive for both marketers and customers. Marketers see a better return on their campaigns, and customers receive offers and messages that are more relevant to their wants, interests, and desires.

This innovation is lauded because data is essentially information, that when properly analyzed, empowers us to draw informed conclusions about leads and current customers. This growth in our ability to responsibly collect and use customer intelligence is a brilliant leap forward for marketing. Let’s look at the kind of customer intelligence that your data can deliver.

Offer preference

You can track the type of offers that your customers and leads prefer. Do they like offers for “50 percent off,” “buy one get one,” or new product announcements? Do they prefer transactions they can complete online or in brick and mortar stores? This kind of customer intelligence gives you an almost omniscient ability to then create and deploy offers that your customers and leads actually want to receive.

Channel Preference

Every lead and customer is going to have a preferred way of communicating and interacting with your brand. Maybe they like email, social, or your blog more than your other channels. Whatever their choice, you need to collect that information and use it to your advantage. Oftentimes, the way you deploy your offers has just as much influence over buyer actions as the type of offer you actually present.

Content Preferences

If you’re like many B2B marketers and some B2C marketers, you’ve jumped into content marketing with a certain amount of gusto. This type of marketing understands that buyer behavior has evolved. Potential customers now seek you out when they want your products or services. And your content delivers the information they need before they can make a decision. Track the content that individual leads prefer. If they like webinars more than whitepapers, invite them to webinars more often. It’s all a matter of giving your potential customers what they want and then reaping the results.

Demographic and Psychographic information

This is where customer intelligence enters the realm of digital privacy considerations. You want to collect this kind of demographic and psychographic information, because you can use it to frame campaigns, determine the best products to market, make assumptions about offer types, etc. However, you need to keep this information secure. Always follow industry best practices for digital security.

As you can see, the data you collect can inform you deeply about your current customers and your leads. You can use this customer intelligence to develop solid buyer personas for your various target customers, and then make better decisions about campaign targeting, offer types and message content.