Closed-Loop Marketing For Beginners: How You Can See More Revenue With Sales Data

If you’ve read or watched any content about  digital marketing before, you might have  
heard the phrase “data-driven marketing.” But  have you heard of “closed-loop marketing”? 
Anyway, data-driven marketing is just what  it sounds like. It’s a type of marketing  
where you run your campaigns based on existing  data. That data might relate to how well other  
campaigns have performed, who your customers  are, and more. But the point is, you use the  
information you have to improve your marketing. Closed-loop marketing closely relates to  
data-driven marketing, and trust me, it’s  something your company wants to be doing.  
But what is closed-loop marketing, exactly, and  why do you need it? Keep watching to find out! 
What is closed-loop marketing? Closed-loop marketing is a type of  
marketing where you use sales data to improve  your marketing. As you generate new customers,  
you use the data from those customers to  help you drive even more customers in the  
future. This data loops from your sales to your  marketing team for better performance overall. 
To understand closed-loop marketing, it helps to  visualize it. A lot of times, businesses can think  
of marketing and sales as a straight line. You  start at the top with some introductory marketing,  
and you progress down to the bottom of  the line, which ends with a purchase. 
But closed-loop marketing changes the image.  Instead of a straight line, this type of  
marketing is a circle. You market to people, some  of those people become customers, you analyze the  
data from those customers, and you use that data  to improve your marketing — and then it repeats. 
What are the benefits of  closed-loop communication? 
There are quite a few advantages to using  closed-loop marketing at your business.  
Here are three of the biggest ones! 1. You can improve the quality of your marketing 
The first benefit of closed-loop communication  is that it just makes your marketing materials  
better. For example, let’s say you’ve been  running a few different email marketing campaigns.  
One of them is super professional,  while another is more casual. 
Then your sales team gets back to you about some  of the people who saw those emails and then became  
customers. Turns out, almost all of the people  who became customers got the more casual email.  
That tells you a casual tone in your  emails will drive way more sales. So,  
you revamp your email campaigns to take a  more casual tone, making them more effective. 
It’s not just email that can benefit from  closed-loop marketing — that sort of improvement  
can be made across lots of different strategies. 2. You can focus on the right strategies 
Speaking of different marketing strategies, your  closed-loop efforts can help you find the best  
strategies to use. After all, there are lots  of different marketing strategies out there.  
In all likelihood, some of those strategies  will work better for you than others. 
For example, maybe you find out that most  of your sales are being generated by search  
engine optimization, or SEO, and your  paid ads aren’t driving many sales at all.  
Based on that data, you know you should be  putting more focus on your SEO — either that,  
or you really need to improve your paid ads. 3. You can target the right audience 
Another way closed-loop marketing is  useful is that it helps you focus on  
the right audience. Your marketing only works if  it reaches the right people, and if it doesn’t,  
it won’t lead to many sales. Even if you’re on  the right track, there may still be more you  
can do to improve your audience targeting. Closed-loop marketing can help you figure  
out how to do that. Your sales team may notice  that your customers follow particular trends,  
or fit into particular categories,  that you hadn’t noticed before. 
Then you can rework your marketing to target  those groups of people. That’ll help you reach  
a more relevant audience and drive more sales. Now that you know what closed-loop marketing is  
and why it’s useful, let’s talk about  what you can do to start using it. 
1. Track your customers’ journeys The first step to closed-loop  
communication is data tracking. You have to track  users’ journeys through the marketing and sales  
funnels so that when people become customers,  you can go back and look at how they got there. 
You basically want to look at any kind of  interaction users have with your business.  
That might mean signing up for your email  list, visiting your website from a paid ad,  
or downloading content from your website. You can use different tools to help you gather  
that data. One of the best tools to use is a  customer relationship management platform, or CRM.  
CRMs, like our partner company Nutshell,  are useful for gathering, storing,  
and analyzing customer data. 2. Return feedback from your  
sales team to your marketing team When people convert into customers,  
it’s time to see how they got there.  If you’ve done the first step,  
it means you’ve got plenty of data showing how  all your customers progressed through the funnel.  
Your sales team should work with your marketing  team to look for helpful trends and patterns. 
Maybe you’ll see that companies of a certain  size tend to buy from you more than others,  
or maybe you’ll find that your email marketing is  driving more customers than any other strategy.  
Whatever it is, make sure that’s something  your sales and marketing teams learn. 
3. Revise your marketing to drive more sales As you learn new info about your customers,  
you should turn around and apply that info to  your marketing campaigns. Maybe you’re shifting  
your ad targeting to a more niche audience,  or maybe you’re adjusting your messaging.  
Whatever it is, take the time to improve  your marketing based on what you’ve learned. 
From there, the whole process starts over. But  each time it loops, your marketing will improve.  
The more times you complete the circle,  the better your marketing will be,  
and the more sales you’ll drive. That means  your revenue will just keep evolving over time. 
Now you know all the basics of closed-loop  marketing. If you want to learn more about  
digital marketing, you can subscribe  to our YouTube channel — we’re always  
talking about cool marketing  stuff over here, don’t miss out.  
Also, you can subscribe to our  email newsletter, Revenue Weekly. 
That’s all for now. Thanks for  watching — see ya in the next one!