How Marketing Visionaries Use Data to Uplevel CX

On April 16, a stellar group of forward-thinking retailers gathered at the New York edition of Retail Ascendant. Themes included: 1) agile management teams; 2) next-generation consumer experiences; and 3) future-proof retail technology.

ActionIQ had the honor of hosting a focus group at the event that included CMOs, VPs and other CX leaders from across the retail world, including: a world-famous museum, a home furnishing leader, a national pharmacy chain and a number of major apparel brands.

We asked them this question: “Do your marketers have access to the data to truly understand their customers’ lifecycle, behaviors, and preferences?”

The answer for all of them came down to this: it’s a work in progress. As a participant with one of the most advanced approaches put it: “We have so much data, but we spend way too much schlepping it from one team to the next.”

Despite the wide variety of the brands represented, the maturity of their approach to personalization, and the martech stacks they rely on, all the participants are still trying to solve the same set of intimately connected challenges:

• Data unification. All recognized the need for a “golden records” for their customers—cleansed, unified and complete customer data drawn from a wide range of systems, including response rates and other campaign performance measurements.
• Insights. Applying BI and data science on all that customer data to discover opportunities.
• Execution. Getting those insights into the hands of marketers so they can actually use it to create audiences they can then quickly execute on.

In the words of the event organizers,  “Retailers need to be in ‘perpetual beta’ to get and stay ahead,” according to the organizers of the invitation-only event.”

Learn more about how ActionIQ supports  “perpetual beta” marketing by checking out our copious Resources.