Behavioral marketing and a CRM system may feel like two entirely different concepts, but in reality they’re more like two sides of the same coin. Behavioral marketing is a technique describing targeted advertising, while a customer relationship management (CRM) platform acts as a tool for complex, personalized strategies.

Does this mean you can perform behavioral marketing with CRM? Ultimately, CRMs already follow the principles of behavioral marketing with features like lead scoring, email automation, data collection and storage, among other things.

In this article, we explain what behavioral data is and how CRM systems can act as a standalone behavioral marketing tool.

What Is Behavioral Data?

Behavioral data refers to information concerning a customer’s engagement with your business. Visiting a page, signing up for your newsletter, creating an account, viewing an item, adding an item to the shopping cart – these are all examples of behaviors or “events” that can be translated into data.

But behavioral data isn’t just concerned with “positive” interactions. This data also encompasses abandoned carts, canceled orders, page bounces and other “negative” behavior exhibited by a customer.

When analyzed, behavioral data can reveal why customers do certain things. On the most basic level, websites can study page visits and track bounce rates. This reveals the most popular pages VS the least popular ones, which can help businesses shape their website into something that actually works for its visitors.

More advanced behavior analytics can completely eliminate the guesswork in advertising. With the right tools and techniques, you can transform information into reliable cues that will drive successful marketing campaigns.

How Does Behavioral Targeting Work?

Behavior targeting is a method of advertising and research that helps businesses display targeted ads, content, and other marketing messages, based on the following information:

• Websites visited
• Ads clicked
• Content shared
• Amount of time spent on websites
• History of search terms

Instead of guessing a person’s buyer profile, understanding their online behavior can give any marketer insight into their preferences, tastes, likes, and dislikes. This makes it possible for marketers to craft a holistic and accurate buyer persona, making it easier to understand exactly how to convert readers into paying customers.

Behavioral targeting is usually done through the following steps:

1) Data Collection

User information, also called “cookies”, are acquired from different sources: from social media, blogs, retail websites, and just about every single site you have visited. At a glance, these cookies hold nothing but data revealing your behavior: your searches, what you click on, the ads you respond to, the sites you frequently visit, the ads you actively avoid and skip, stuff you regularly order online.

But this data says a lot about you as a consumer more than you think. It reveals your interests, your buying history, and the marketing messages you respond to the most. In time, marketers can get a full view of your preferences and use these to deliver ads and offers you’re likelier to click on than reject.

2) Segmentation

When sellers already know who they buyers are, they create user profiles that make it easy to categorize buyers based on preferences. Segmentation can be based on other things like:

• Complexity of purchasing process
• How far along a customer is in the purchasing process
• Benefits/value sought
• Customer value
• Possible churn or loyalty
• User status (regular buyer VS first-time buyer VS buyer with an account)

By grouping consumers and users into segments, businesses can deliver more personalized marketing campaigns and put marketing on autopilot.

3) Personalization

Personalization is the main strategy behind behavior targeting. Not all visitors will respond to the same ad or content. With personalization, marketers can deliver the best ads at the best time to the best prospects, which increases the chances of making a sale.

However, the end-goal isn’t always a sale. Sometimes marketers work towards getting page visitors to sign up as users and become regular readers of the site, before finally converting into a dedicated patron.

What Is Behavioral Segmentation In Marketing?

With so much information available, how do you then consolidate this data into something usable? That’s where segmentation comes in. The idea behind behavioral segmentation is simply personalization.

Instead of delivering the same marketing sources to all your prospects, you can launch different marketing campaigns and apply it to relevant prospects. In the end, a more personalized customer experience can reduce friction and will help leads move through the funnel faster.

With segmentation, you can:

1. Address specific inquiries of specific groups of customers
2. Optimize the buyer’s journey through the sales funnel
3. Tailor product or service based on necessity
4. Use information from existing customers to expand to untapped users
5. Compare strategies using A/B testing

Developing a behavioral targeting strategy can feel overwhelming. Luckily there’s a tool that can help you collect data and provide analysis for your marketing efforts.

Behavioral Targeting and CRM: How They Work Together

A customer relationship management (CRM) software is key in creating personalized experiences for buyers and users. At its very core, this tool is used to keep track of your team’s performance, store vital customer information, and develop reports and analysis with just one click.

But that’s not all a CRM is good for. This platform involves a myriad of customer-centric functions that will help you perform behavioral targeting with little to no effort.

A CRM platform is the perfect solution for anyone who wants to get into behavioral targeting, without getting confused with different tools and devices to track customer information.

Listed below are foundational CRM features that help with behavioral targeting:

• Client interaction history. CRMs store information about your clients, including purchase history and purchase preferences. This also includes other interactions such as inquiries, referrals, voucher redemptions, and even customer complaints.
• Reports and analysis. A CRM can easily consolidate years of numbers and statistics into usable information. You can use the information stored directly on your database or import data sets from your other tracking tools.
• Segmentation. CRMs are built for personalization. Some CRMs even have lead scoring features that automatically move leads through the pipeline after a behavior is triggered (opened an email, opened a blog, responded to an email).

CRMs and behavioral data tools (cookies, web analytics) still track similar things. Unless your CRM is synced with your data tool, your data sets will be limited to the information stored in your CRM, namely purchase options; you won’t have access to your visitors’ search preferences if you’re using a CRM as the basis for your data.

Nevertheless, a CRM acts as an invaluable database that can help you predict, analyze, and simplify consumer relationships. Key customer and lead-centric features offered by CRMs are founded on behavioral marketing strategies, including:

1) Lead Scoring

As mentioned, CRMs can perform lead scoring automatically. You can set parameters, events, and behaviors that, when triggered, will automatically score your leads and segment them based on priority.

It’s useful for businesses with limited resources. Lead scoring helps you identify viable and valuable leads so you don’t waste your time chasing dead ends.

2) Automated Email Campaigns

Not all leads who enter the funnel will be ready to sell. Some will be ready to sell right away, some will want more information regarding your product or service, while others are simply interested in your resources and are still gauging whether or not you are the ideal provider.

These three kinds of consumers have different needs and expectations. Send the same email to them and you’re guaranteed to lose one or the other.

Personalization becomes a norm, not a burden, after segmentation. With CRMs allowing businesses to put email marketing on autopilot, you can just send out ideal drip campaigns to relevant recipients based on their behavioral data.

You don’t have to spend too much time worrying about individual leads because you know every single one is receiving the right blog, video, ad, offer, or eBook at the right time.

3) Improved Customer Service

A CRM delves deeper than page views and site visits to inform you exactly what customers prefer with their service. CRMs keep a record of client interactions so you’ll always have a history of calls, messages, texts from their very first purchase up to their most recent interaction.

This helps customer reps provide the best level of service, no matter what. It creates a seamless experience, which will increase customer satisfaction.

4) Lead Targeting

Finding the right audience is the bane for modern marketers. But with a CRM software, you don’t have to second-guess your strategies.

CRMs tell you what lead magnets work, and which don’t. It gives you insight into how customers respond and behave to your lead generation efforts – Are they signing up for your resources? Do they like the landing page? Do ads work better than content?

By understanding how leads behave with your current generation efforts, you can optimize future magnets and only implement the best marketing campaigns that actually work with your audience.

Behavioral Marketing Made Easy

Creating personalized experiences doesn’t have to be complicated. Knowing what ads to deliver on social media shouldn’t have to feel like science. With Commence CRM, you can reap the benefits of behavioral marketing, without all the hassle.

Schedule a demo with us today.