A company’s customer base is very diverse. Customers are not valued equally within the company, depending on the revenue generated, the purchase frequency, and how well they respond to different messages. Companies use this observation to categorize their customers, and rate them according to the specific characteristics of each sector.
This is known as customer scoring.
The company assigns a score to each customer or prospect as soon as they are registered in the database.
Customer scoring has a direct impact on the performance of marketing campaigns by identifying the most interesting and high potential profiles.
To achieve an efficient scoring, you need to define the objectives beforehand. The scoring criteria can vary from one company to another if the goal is to increase sales, improve the conversion rate of email campaigns, increase the number of visits to the company’s website, etc.
Complete and reliable the data in the database allows for better segmentation, and a better customer scoring.
All kinds of data is collected and used to determine the customer scoring:
- Socio-demographic data: age, gender, marital status, occupation.
- Behavioral data: purchasing habits (what, when, how much, how), website browsing, time spent viewing offer pages, shopping cart abandonment, email opening rate, customer service interactions, reviews...
- Psychological data: interests, opinions.
The main purpose of customer scoring is to allow marketing teams to prioritize marketing campaigns and optimize their ROI by precisely targeting the “best” customers (those most likely to respond to suggested offers and to buy in the short term).
Some sectors use customer scoring for other purposes. The banking or insurance sector will use this type of tool to evaluate the risks of a prospect or customer. This is known as credit scoring. This allows to determine the rate of a loan or the necessary guarantees to include in the insurance contract to protect a company’s activity, for example.
A customer’s score evolves throughout his life. It is calculated at a precise moment and is regularly updated with data collected on a permanent basis. The scoring evolution can change the segment in which the customer is located. The company can evaluate how mature the customer is when it comes to making a purchase.
The customer database should be checked, validated and updated regularly. Companies that use customer scoring usually work with Data Quality Management solutions.
Data Enso’s DQM solutions optimize the collection and quality control of your prospects’ and customers’ data. They allow you to validate the information collected in your forms in real time or to update your existing database in a batch process.