How to Start Monetizing Data in Your Business

As a business, data is one of your most valuable (and powerful) assets. It might just be THE most, but I’m not quite ready to put data’s value over a human team’s value.

Nevertheless, it’s important.

Yet few companies maximize the benefits. Those who arm themselves with it can disrupt industries and change the way they do business. Now, it’s not as easy for every organization to generate dollars from data, but those who find a way make themselves more competitive.

Most realize they have a wealth of data, but few realize the wealth buried in the data. One of the easiest ways to start monetizing your data is by using it to have a positive impact on your company’s bottom line.

That’s what we’ll learn more about in today’s article. You’ll learn a few basic ways to monetize the data you’re already collecting from your website, customers and the world at large.

1. Integrate Analytics

Many organizations still don’t think of analytics as an asset they can use for monetizing data. They’re neglecting an opportunity in plain sight. Not only can they save the time spent in organizing, souring, and stitching data together, but new tools now allow them to deliver more meaningful campaigns, optimize production, and better assess and address customer demands.

See it this way: analytics are a data-enabler. They help you process data in a way that makes it far more valuable than just the aggregated or raw data involved.

An example would be the creation of Klout scores, which give business marketers a very concise picture of an individual's’ online social influence.

By analyzing a person’s ability to drive actions across multiple social networks and sites and then assigning their influence a score, a Klout score, which can range from 1-100, becomes a far more valuable metric than just individual social datasets.

In case a company is not already collaborating with influencers, they can use Klout scores to determine who’d be the ideal subject matter expert/celebrity to partner with. They can then work with the influencer to create or present better offers to high-probability prospects based on their buying pattern, demographics, browsing behavior, interests, and so on.  

2. Collaboration

Converting data into a standalone revenue channel is one of the most challenging feats to achieve for organizations, but vital for monetizing data.

In most cases, selling data demands a brand new business model with integrated skills and processes, as the new channel might be quite far from the organization’s existing service portfolio or strategy.

Also, data sharing for enhanced customer experiences requires the information to be spread via some sort of a partner-side portal that serves both the partner company and end user via specific data views and takes all necessary feedback into consideration.

Here the key is collaboration – new products should be designed closely together with partners to be able to effectively address customers’ concerns.

Data partnerships are key to an even more integrated strategy where your company’s data is enriched with the partners’ data and leveraged to rethink marketing and sales processes, services and customer experiences.

American Express, one of the globe’s leading credit card providers, is a successful example of this strategy. With its Business Insights venture, the company reached new heights by utilizing its proprietary data and augmenting it with robust analytical tools and consulting services; building a brand new business, separate from its core venture of selling credit card services.

3. Reduce Churn

It costs less to retain customers than to find new ones. Studies have shown, winning new customers can cost up to 5x more than retaining and pleasing existing ones. Therefore, even a slight reduction in churn can lead to millions worth of benefit for companies.

While data is being used to understand customer churn since long, the overall approach to retention has revolutionized.

Digital-first companies are using more intelligent tools, richer datasets, and analytics to determine when clients will likely churn, what causes them to churn, and what the company can do to prevent it.

In the advent of innovative tools, brands now, for instance, can stop showing ads to a specific group of customers when they have a service issue as there’s nothing more frustrating than witnessing an endorsement from a company when clients are experiencing a problem with them.

The roadmap to minimize churn can take on different forms of collateral and touchpoints: a long-haul lead nurturing series, a live demo of products and services the customer can learn from, staff support, even one-on-one calls from your product team to the client. These type of tactics aren’t nearly used enough in the clutter-heavy digital landscape.

4. Improve Customer Satisfaction

Give your customers a reason to stick around by demonstrating the day-to-day value of consuming your service or product.

Companies usually use polls and website sentiment analysis to gauge satisfaction levels. By gathering data from a variety of resources, they’re able to infer how satisfied an individual likely is by analyzing factors such as the number of complaints in a month, the amount of service upgrades, etc.

Case in point: Airlines use data from a number of sources for customer satisfaction. If a passenger takes the middle seat every time he/she is flying to a certain destination, they’re probably not very satisfied. Airline companies have to aggregate data from multiple sources, including ticket price and seating comfort, to determine a signal that informs them what a customer thinks.

With the information that can be used to determine that a customer may not still do business with you, you can offer perks such a free service upgrade to infer customer satisfaction.

The data monetization industry is a growing opportunity; not just for the enterprise sector, but for nearly everyone who generates data. By leveraging automated, secure, and scalable insights, you can begin monetizing data through improved business outcomes such as increased partner efficiency, service diversity, customer retention, and additional revenue channels.