Marketing data lies at the core of continual brand optimization and scalable growth. The key to progress in a tough market lies in leveraging the right marketing data and having a conversion funnel to achieve desired results. Striking the right strategy will help you convert more leads into customers and increase your profits.

Before we tell you how to use conversion data to enhance your top-of-funnel marketing, let’s brush up on a few fundamentals.

Defining a marketing funnel –

When marketers visualize a consumer’s roadmap from initial contact with the brand to finally purchasing the product, it is called a marketing funnel. A marketing funnel represents a buyer’s journey and helps marketers to optimize each step as the buyer moves through the funnel.

Right from increasing your website traffic to better lead generation, knowing the right way to maximize every stage of a marketing funnel can get you more conversions and better revenues.

Sending the bottom-of-the-funnel data to the top-of-the-funnel

Think of the entire marketing funnel as a loop. What goes in comes out, and what comes out goes in again, but marketing can rework, reshape, and reframe the aim of the data. When marketers want to send the already extracted at the bottom of the funnel to grab the attention of the retaining customers by sending personalized messages and increasing brand engagement, they create a loop.

Data flows throughout the loop and hence, the bottom-of-the-funnel data is retrofitted into the top-of-the-funnel activities. It helps marketers to:

• Decrease the customer acquisition cost.
• Increase customer engagement.
• Understand marketing attribution.

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How does data flow from the funnel to the top of the funnel as output?

Before we explain how the data moves throughout the marketing funnel, check the infographic below:

Here’s how the customer data flows from the top to the bottom and again to the top of the marketing funnel.

1. New/returning customers

The first-hand information about the new customers is gathered from various customer acquisition channels and platforms. From websites and social media, to form submissions and app registrations, all the data collected from these touchpoints are added to a central data directory or database.

While the data of the new customers are purposely gathered, the data of a returning customer is already stored in the customer database. With the help of the UTM campaign tracking tag, the first touch data is collected for attributional purposes.

2. Customer data enrichment

For new customers, a minimum data set is collected for account activation, such as email address, phone number, marketing opt-in consent, and so on. When the customer agrees to such activation, email or other forms of brand communication are triggered.

On the other hand, for returning customers, it means collecting some additional information that will help marketers craft personalized messaging and product recommendations in the future. The data is collected through various digital channels, such as emails, websites, social media, etc.

With the help of the UTM campaign tracking tag, the middle-of-the-funnel attribution data is collected. For example, the specific action the prospect took after visiting the page. All the data is sent to the central database.

3. Customer conversion data

Depending on the business model, customer conversion data can take many forms. From online and offline sales, qualified leads generated to form sign-ups, and quality time spent on the app, all come under conversion data. Besides, the non-conversion data is also collected here, such as cart abandonments.

The data comes from various sources. They may come from outside sources and thus, at times conversion data lags in time. In such cases, marketers can use proxy data to move the data through the loop until actual data is received.

4. Inputs for top-of-the-funnel activities

At this stage, the customer conversion data is used to create a segmented audience for campaigns. It helps to acquire new customers and help push customers through the loop, such as retargeting for cart abandonment.

It even helps to create proprietary algorithms to help identify which customers are more likely to convert and in which channel.

Wrapping Up

Every marketer wants to reduce the cost of customer acquisition to improve ROI. It is easy to incline towards using the bottom-of-the-funnel insights as inputs for the top-of-the-funnel activities. Additionally, the transfer of data from the bottom to the top can happen automatically depending upon the martech stack you own. Since all the tools and systems are well-integrated, data can be periodically passed from one platform to another.

Such activities are essential when you want to serve your returning customers. Using the conversion data the top-of-the-funnel will always have updated data to guide the customers to the final purchase.

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