LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Each year UK companies lose 20 per cent of their customers due to out-of-date contact information, according to new research from the specialist data business of Royal Mail Group, Royal Mail Data Services.
In the new research report, Life Events: The Hidden Marketing Key to Solving Customer Churn, 45 per cent of UK marketers say that recruiting new customers to fill this leaky bucket is their biggest challenge, while the other 55 per cent struggle to retain and upsell to current customers.
Yet, as they attempt to meet these dual challenges, 70 per cent of marketers say their efforts are thwarted by out-of-date and incomplete customer contact information.
This is perhaps not surprising, given that less than half (46 per cent) of brands automatically verify customer contact information collected online, and 22 per cent of companies never verify their customer contact data at all.
Marketers say that poor-quality data most impacts their effectiveness in maintaining accurate customer contact information (ranked 3.74 out of 5), as without accurate contact information businesses cannot gain additional insight about their customers. Data also affects marketers’ ability to target and analyse their customers (ranked 3.63 out of 5).
Despite these issues, and marketers recongising that accurate customer information is the lifeblood of an effective marketing effort, less than half (49 per cent) of brands supplement their customer data with third-party data to gain more complete understanding of customers and prospects, such as their purchasing behaviours and life events.
More interestingly, 70 per cent recognise that life-events, such as moving home, a new addition to the family or an intention to move abroad, gives brands a reason to engage with customers and prospects. However, just half of marketers recognise these moments of major change as new sales opportunities, and only 44 per cent gather life-events data from their consumers to enhance their customer contact information.
Given this disconnect between opinion and action, it is not surprising that marketers still feel that a change of email address is the most critical type of life-event customer data they can collect (ranked 3.98 out of 5). This is also reflective of the popularity of email, with 87 per cent of companies relying on it its low-cost accessibility to attempt to reach customers and prospects.
Jim Conning, Managing Director, Royal Mail Data Services, said, “Reaching a consumer with a relevant message at a key moment in their life enables marketers to build customer loyalty and re-engage. With average annual churn rates standing at 20 per cent, businesses are having to spend twice to regain lost customers and stop others from leaving them. Brands must find new ways to harness better the power of their customer data if they are to understand not only who and where their customers are, but also when and why they need a specific product or service.”
Royal Mail Data Services maps customer data and purchasing behaviours against comprehensive UK consumer life-events information, including its Home Movers database, to help brands reach customers with relevant messages at critical moments.
The full report, available here, conducted in partnership with DataIQ, outlines trends in data-driven marketing and customer retention based on a survey of 185 senior UK marketing, data, and analytics practitioners from large-scale companies.
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About Royal Mail Data Services
Royal Mail Data Services is the specialist data business of Royal Mail Group. It provides organisations with customer contact and address data, data quality, addressing, and marketing services. It is committed to developing new ways for customers to look up, capture, validate, and use contact and address data more effectively. Royal Mail Data Services helps organisations improve customer data quality and marketing performance.
For more information, go to: www.royalmail.com/corporate/marketing/data-services
