Salesforce says with the use of data science, predictive marketing accurately predicts which marketing strategies and actions are best likely to succeed.

That is “Predictive Intelligence which drives Marketing Decisions”

Predictive analytics according to SAS is “the use of statistical algorithms, data and machine learning techniques to identify the probability of future outcomes grounded on historical data”. Here motto is to provide a best possible assessment of what would happen in future by going beyond what has happened.

In this post I have tried to take you through some of the best marketing applications of predictive analytics.

Qualify and Rank Leads

Finding best match leads and prioritizing them is the basic work which if done correctly would further help sales and marketing teams to apply correct strategies. Insights generated from predictive analysis can help them to focus and nurture most profitable customers. Sales and marketing can move in a better position and would close down more easily. Small and large companies can earn a good return on investment from predictive analytics techniques involving sales data.

Predicting Customer Behavior More Precisely

For marketers, the most important thing is understanding customer – what they need, when they need and how is most important for generating business. Predictive analytics techniques guided by artificial intelligence and machine learning helps to predict future customer behavior by identifying similarities and differences customers’ past purchasing behavior to judge the probability of their future purchases. Predictive models can better guide you to anticipate customers’ behavior for better marketing strategy.

Bringing Correct Services/Products to the Market

The ever-expanding cognitive technologies of data visualization and predictive analytics are opening new doors of opportunity to companies attempting to solve complex issues. Data visualization is not just a tool which appeals to the eye but it is also used to guide, inform and inspire actions depending on customer behavior (and other business data). This helps to bring the right products and services to the customers.

Aiming the Right Customers with Right Content at Right Time

Predictive analytics is the simplest method to achieve quick response on better ROI optimizing a marketing offer. Predictive analytics users are up to twice more likely to judge high-value customers and market the correct offer as reported by Aberdeen Group. A range of predictive analytic models like response modelling, affinity analysis, churn analysis etc. are available for the same.

Using Predictive Analytics Insights to Drive Marketing Strategies

Some of the uses of predictive analytics in marketing include:

• Gain access to social media data
• Accessing internal structured data
• Relating behavior scoring to customer data

Predictive analytics insights can quickly help to determine whether a marketing campaign over social media would have a larger impact or whether a one through mobile is more apt for the target audience. Sentiment analysis and text analysis applied to social media data is one more example which can be used to help boost marketing campaigns and capture insights for future product creation.

Thus we can say data has become the new oil. With rapidly changing technological landscape, companies which will succeed would empower their employees to use tech-first solutions to serve their customers better.

Survey base reports claim that currently firms are spending estimated $36 billion on infrastructure and storage. This figure is expected to double by 2020. With more data, better computing capabilities and easy access to vendor tools, predictive analytics for marketing have jumped from smart to a business imperative.

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“INFORMATION IS THE OIL OF THE 21^ST CENTURY, AND ANALYTICS IS THE COMBUSTION ENGINE”…PETER SONDERGAARD

We are well aware that sales and marketing can be a guessing game. Strategies are planned in a business with great risk as to whether it would succeed or not. If the sales figure increases, it is assumed that the strategies are successful and they are continued. If there is no improvement, more efforts are made till maximum deals are closed.

Today technology has given us the power to monitor the output of our strategies. Gone are the days when one had to research hard to find breathless paragraphs on the power of analytics. In the present era, sales world we can get numerous examples where data analytics is delivering significant improvements in effectiveness, growth, and efficiency. Data analytics can be helpful to monitor customer activities and connect them to specific sales efforts. Now let’s have a glance through some of the ways businesses are using analytics to improve sales.

“IN A SURVEY CONDUCTED BY MCKINSEY OF MORE THAN 1,000 SALES ORGANIZATIONS AROUND THE WORLD, IT WAS FOUND THAT 53 PERCENT OF THOSE THAT ARE “HIGH PERFORMING” RATE THEMSELVES AS EFFECTIVE USERS OF ANALYTICS”.

Track Your Sales Leads

In sales, leads are the foundation of the actions to be taken by the sales team. Data analytics helps in improving the accuracy of the leads generated. Apart from the traditional approaches, companies now prefer greater predictive insights combined with intelligent automation to identify the most promising prospects and identify the most appropriate time to target them. You can thus unlock powerful perceptions into which sources of sales leads are truly motivating your business growth.

Predict Behaviors

Data analytics can help in predicting the most suitable leads which can save a lot of time wasted calling the leads that are less likely to be interested. If suppose your business has always sold a certain type of product A, with predictive analytics you can look at past customer interactions and predict where future sales will go with that product A. Analytics can also help to predict and compare the outcomes of different marketing and promotional campaigns.

Email Campaigns

Email is a great way to reach out to a larger chunk of prospects at once. Although most of them won’t purchase based on that email, at-least a few may call asking for further information. Data analytics can help you to determine which subject lines of the emails got the most response and which types of messages are more likely to generate phone calls that lead to success. Analytics can also help in deciding the best time and day to send emails to your list of probable customers.

Business competition is keeping companies on their toes. Data Analytics hence can help a business with its marketing and sales efforts saving a lot of time, effort and money which is wasted on ineffective tasks. It is a powerful tool for sales teams so that they can make the most of their efforts and close more prospects.

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