One does not have to pay a lot of money for data one already has or hire a specialist team; one simply has to make better use of the assets already sitting around in one's organisation.
All, but the smallest corner-store retailers, are gathering data every day. People are used to considering it only as sales and inventory data, but once one starts to match that with what one has in the marketing databases, loyalty programmes and maybe a CRM system, it becomes far more valuable. All one has to do is tie it all together.
It is not complicated; it consists of finding a few unique pieces of information such as a name, a mobile number, an email address or a masked credit card number. Once one has matched these across a few databases, one can start to build a picture of one's customers that can feed into the development of new products and services.
Many retailers are missing opportunities presented by their loyalty programmes. If loyalty information is sitting in an isolated database, one is not getting value out of that investment. One has their name, their card number and that they made at least one purchase, but is one looking at exactly how many times they have been through the tills and what they bought? Is there an understanding of what might motivate them to come back?"
Too many retailers limit their engagement with loyalty customers to an occasional "Hi, you've earned R50 credit" and many do not even do that. If one is not regularly sending relevant offers and reminders, then one is relying on customers to remember to present their card at each transaction and many will quickly lose interest. If one is counting on cashiers to remind people, one has to consider that they are also under pressure to move the queue through the till as quickly as possible, and there's no time for a long conversation about the loyalty programme.
The solution is to use the information gathered at the till to maintain customer engagement beyond the till. Customers give valuable information about themselves; one has to use it creatively to give them something valuable back. It is pointless having a loyalty programme, for example, if one is sending the same generic set of special offers to all one's loyalty customers. For example, if a customer regularly buys the same premium brand of coffee, sending him or her 20% off one's chicory-blend house brand is helping no one.
One can only give one's customers what they want when one understands who they are and all that is needed is a relatively simple strategy and a simple interface to data. Retailers can start small and still see big results.
