Your RMS software will typically have a basic CRM component already built into it. Use it today, tomorrow, and every day going forward. It’s no longer an optional extra or something to ignore because you’re too busy. And if you’re really serious about your business’s success, also consider investing in a subscription to a dedicated CRM software package, (often also referred to as a SaaS or ‘Software as a Service’) such as SalesForce, Oracle, Zoho, etc.

Customer Profiling

Customer profiling is essentially the task of creating a collated, defined image and makeup of your customer base (as well as the customer types you don’t have), and then further defining your base into a handful of typical ‘avatars’ (graphically depicted personas) or categories.

At a simple level, you would look at demographic data such as age, gender, postal code, and occupation. For a more sophisticated profile, you would identify and include psychographic information such as personality types, personal preferences, etc.

For the purposes of bicycle retail, there are numerous other markers you might wish to record—the type of bikes, brands, values of bikes owned, club/team affiliations, indicated future purchases, etc.

Why bother? In a nutshell, customer profiling allows you to best target your communications, content, new product info and sales promotions, so that you enhance the likelihood your message will be better received and more likely acted upon. On the flip side, it equally means you’re much less likely to annoy your customers with inbox filler, disengaging social media posts, or wasted re-targeting ads.

You might have just received a new range of premium, Italian road bikes into the store. Thanks to the profiling data in your CRM, you’re able to target the 30- to 60-something, road riding, professionals, and high-spend individuals, with tailored messaging, imagery, language, and offers more likely to gain attention and sales response. The 55-year-old woman who bought the $4,000 e-bike from you last spring won’t be excited by the news of the new road bike arrivals. She will, however, be thrilled to receive the invite to the test day of new e-bikes from your bike suppliers. As a result, she didn’t reclassify your emails as ‘spam,’ she didn’t dent your Facebook engagement rating by not clicking, liking, reading, sharing, or responding, and she didn’t waste your re-targeted Google advertising money by ignoring the ad.

Personalized Messaging

Most commonly, this simply involves using a customer’s name in the message or image, but could also be something more subtle, such as a known product preference or interest, the mentioning of the suburb they live in, the club they ride for, or a free coffee voucher from their favorite local café.

What’s the point? The point is, at the end of the day, we are selling and communicating to human beings—sentient beasts that seek out and respond to identification, acknowledgement, trust, personal relationship, and connection. Personalized messaging plays on and to the fact we are human. Personalized messages will always garner more interest, engagement, and response.

I won’t quote a number here in terms of percentages, mostly because the uplift percentages quoted by major digital marketing players vary quite wildly. What I can say with some confidence, though, is that the uplift numbers are significant. To the extent that your business is seriously missing out if it doesn’t utilize personalized messaging. While none of the reputable marketers with vast amounts of hard, longitudinal data can agree on numbers, suffice it to say that we’re not talking about 5-10% improvement in response; we’re talking about a minimum of 30%, and as high as 80% uplift. Those are numbers even the most stubborn Luddite can appreciate.

The uptake?

So, on the back of a well maintained, fully populated and regularly ‘cleaned’ CRM database, creating Customer Profiles and using Personalized Messages will improve the following aspects of your bike business:

• Customer Retention
• Customer Acquisition
• Customer Lifetime Value
• EDM Response Rates (most key data points)
• Social Media Engagement
• Sales Promotion Response
• Site Visits
• Footfall Counts
• Reputational Uplift

You may be saying to yourself, “This sounds expensive and/or complicated to achieve. The truth is, you can (and companies do) spend an awful lot of money on software and expertise related to customer profiling, customer targeting, and personalized messaging. There are some scary-clever CMS, Predictive Analytics, Segmentation, and Personalization software currently available, which can aggregate data from social media activity, search engine data, spending behavior, demographic info, geo-mapping, and predictive/intuitive technologies; allowing suitably resourced companies and brands to almost know you better than you do. Software that can pretty much predict what you’re going to buy, or be willing to buy next (with a little nudge). Like I said, scary clever.

But, for the typical bike shop, that sort of investment is a tad over the top, if not tenable or affordable, either. Thankfully, there are much simpler, more user-friendly and affordable tools at your disposal. A quick Google search will provide you pages of email management software programs you can subscribe to, with varying levels of reliability, ease of use, and price. Common examples are MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, ActiveCampaign, Marketing 360, Hubspot, Pardot, and too many others to mention. And even better still, there is now BikeRoar’s bicycle retail-specific, drag-and-drop EDM marketing tool, complete with product database integration, pre-filled product and pricing info, and much more.

Now it’s almost starting to sound too easy, isn’t it? Yes, I’m talking to you, Carol. Nice Record spec’d Enigma you’ve got there, by the way. And stop searching for ‘bottom bracket motors.’ You don’t need one. Well, at least that’s what your Strava data suggests, anyway.

This article was first published by BikeRoar, an online resource that helps cyclists #BuyLocal and equips bicycle retailers with online marketing solutions to gain and retain customers.