If you are a retailer, then you are well aware that consumers interact with your company through any number of channels, such as email, customer service departments, call centers, social media, in-store visits, and on-line shopping. As your customers place orders on your website, call your customer service department, or use their loyalty card in your brick-and-mortar location, are you able to track each of these interactions and tie them to your individual customers?
Omni-channel is all about delivering personalized experiences and targeted offers throughout the customer journey – across any one of these touch points. Which means you need to know your customers better than ever. As you company moves forward on the road to omni-channel retailing, be sure to consider these three important steps for better success. (Hint – it all begins with the data!)
1) Begin with a Data Assessment
A good first step to better understanding your customers is to evaluate the quality of your data. A data assessment will help identify areas where data quality can be improved, what types of customer information may be missing, and other data problems that must be corrected.
For example, an assessment can show you:
- Duplicate records at both the individual and household level. (How many John Smiths are there really?)
- Households with multiple records. (The Smiths had two appliances repaired – are they ready for a service contract?)
- Incorrect household matching. (John Smith has a savings account. His wife, Mary Jones Smith has a checking account. Would you know to offer them a joint retirement plan?
Before implementing an omni-channel retail strategy, an assessment will ensure you are not falling victim to the old adage, “Garbage in, Garbage out.” Data can go bad quickly. Consider this: The number one reason for CRM failure is bad data. On average, every 30 minutes, 120 business addresses change, 75 phone numbers change, 20 CEOs leave their jobs, and 30 new businesses are formed. (Dun & Bradstreet)
2) Clean and Integrate Your Data
Once you understand the quality of your data, be sure you have the proper processes in place to maintain your data on an ongoing basis. Data quality software integrates multiple data sources and automates data quality processes.
Because data often resides in separate siloes and in various formats, a data quality solution ensures that data is standardized, duplicate records are removed, and all customer records are matched correctly. Without a comprehensive, 360° customer view, omni-channel strategies are doomed to fail before they even begin.
3) Segment Your Data to Create Targeted Offers
Segmenting your customers is vital in order to offer the most relevant offers. With the right data in place, you are more apt to find the insights you are looking for. For example, by creating segments based on transactional history, such as average spend, products purchased and frequency of purchase, companies, an on-line retailer may decide to offer free shipping to profitable customer segments.
Or by collecting and analyzing data on individual customers, marketers assign scores to individuals representing their likelihood to perform a desired action, such as a product purchase. Highly targeted offers can then be sent to those with the highest scores.
Each of these insights can only be achieved with a clean and comprehensive.
Your data is the foundation that will drive your omni-channel marketing success. With a clean, highly granular customer view, you can identify new opportunities to better target prospects, maximize customer value, and find success in the new world of retail marketing.
And the payoff is huge.
For more great tips on multi-channel and omni-channel marketing, download DataMentors’ Solutions Guide on Customer Intelligence.
