Collecting customer data, digesting and assessing customer data, and effectively leveraging those precious customer insights can lead to great success for any brand.
Retailers have had customer engagement and loyalty programs in place for decades. But, the volume of data they collect from a variety of sources is an ongoing challenge, as far as truly understanding what it all means and how it can be best leveraged. Uniting all of this data is the key to elevating your loyalty program in a personalized 1:1 fashion.
Unifying cross-channel customer data has already been established with leading brands across nearly every industry executing on their data-driven customer strategies. Given the specific technology and strategies that have been developed to address marketing’s complex customer needs, achieving a unification of data is not all that difficult once an organization commits to putting their customers at the center of their businesses.
Michelle Tempesta, marketing director, Paytronix Systems, told Loyalty360 that, in 2016, “the thirst for customer data was nearly insatiable.”
And what’s in store for 2017?
“Once the marketer had a taste, they realized they wanted more,” Tempesta said. “In 2017, marketers will continue to hone their data utilization skills to take a deeper focus on one-to-one marketing by leveraging what they know about past purchase behavior and coupling it with what their software can predict about future purchase behavior. As they adopt new technologies, they will deliver just the right offer to compel the target consumer to act without cannibalizing sales. With tools such as target and control campaigns, multichannel messaging, predictive analytics, and POS-integrated loyalty software, marketers will not only be able to attribute incremental sales to specific marketing efforts, they will be able to surgically right-size offers for productive segmented audiences. By doing so, the marketer will gain the credibility, tight cause and effect controls on discounting, and predictable revenue the CFO desires.”
What’s more, Tempesta noted that loyalty marketers will become more efficient by consolidating their tool sets.
“The cost of moving data from platform to platform to execute campaigns and promotions will be the first area for the consolidation of vendor partners,” she explained. “Switching from separate systems for surveys, messaging, and loyalty will be a top priority. Market conditions are forcing brands to be more agile and timely in their response to market pressures. Those brands that can respond quickly to changes in customer behaviors will succeed in grabbing market share.”