Savvy brands know that by combining CRM and email marketing data, they can discover potential new fans, customers, and subscribers that have never engaged with them before, thereby driving awareness among entirely new audiences.

In fact, marketers surveyed in our the fourth annual State of Marketing report called out “improved awareness” as one of the main benefits of combining email with other marketing channels.

Use data segmentation to learn about your audience

Generating this improved awareness entails using the first-party data you collect automatically through your CRM and marketing efforts. Typically well-organized and managed, this data gives brands an accurate, first-hand snapshot of the people who engage with them the most.

This rich data becomes the foundation for understanding your best customers and reaching out via social and display advertising to potential customers who look like these segments. This will help drive awareness among new groups that fit your ideal customer profile.

Segmenting your audiences with your CRM platform can reveal in-depth customer insights, helping marketers create audience profiles to better understand the types of content that resonates with customers in the awareness stage of engaging with your brand. This kind of deep segmentation takes you beyond simple personas and allows you to build target audience profiles based on what truly motivates your ideal customers.

This insight can help you develop more personalized content and customer journeys at the awareness stage — and every other stage — of the sales process. In addition, coordinating marketing channels (i.e. email) with advertising channels (i.e.  Facebook) will amplify the marketing message and increase the likelihood of acquisition and conversion.

Use lookalike targeting to reach new customers

Knowing who your best customers are and what motivates them to act, empowers you with the data you need to build more effective marketing campaigns.

Your CRM can tell you all about your customers at an individual level: what they shop for, how they engage with your brand, and more. But this data can also tell you a lot about the behaviors of similar customers you’ve yet to engage with.

By understanding how existing customers already engage with your brand, you can use that knowledge to more precisely target audiences with similar interests that are likely to find your brand, product, or service equally valuable. Building lookalike audiences on Facebook is a simple way of doing this.

For example, let’s say you notice that repeat customers who’ve made multiple purchases from you often begin exploring new products after downloading an ebook or attending a webinar. Based on this observation, you can create content and develop multi-channel ad campaigns targeted to lookalike audiences that exhibit similar behaviors.

Use performance analysis to optimize email and content marketing campaigns

Your data can also help you determine the kinds of content your target customers will respond to most favorably or take an interest in. When evaluating past email performance, pay attention to what content your existing customers engage with most. It’s likely potential new customers will be interested in the same topics or kinds of content.

For example, iconic furniture company Herman Miller used Marketing Cloud to elevate their holiday marketing campaigns. As a result, they saw a 100% increase in email conversions and a 200% increase in email revenue. Imagine data from the campaign showed a particular offer was especially successful in converting customers — for example, “10% off modern sofas.” That insight can be used to drive awareness-level content targeted at attracting new customers. One way to activate this insight could be an accessible, introductory-level blog post on a subject such as, “Seven Ways to Work a Modern Sofa Into Any Design Scheme.”

Using data and insights from successful email campaigns in this way, brands can develop new content for ads, blogs, and social channels that drive engagement and conversion.

To glean these kinds of insights from your email campaigns, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

• What email content are users engaging with the most?

• What email content specifically drove customers to make a purchase?

• What email content are customers engaging with post-purchase to keep your brand top-of-mind?

“Listening” to your customers and observing their behaviors, actions, and interests through social media is another great way to predict the kinds of content new customers might find interesting as well. This knowledge can help you plan and create more effective, awareness-generating advertising campaigns, attracting new customers.  

Your CRM is essential to building relationships with your customers. It can also be a data goldmine for helping you attract and retain new customers.

Want to learn more?

Get The Marketer’s Field Guide today for more insights on the platform for creating one seamless customer experience across sales, service, and marketing.