Supercharge Loyalty with the Customer Data You Already Have

With customers never more than a tap away from competitor offerings, customer loyalty is never a given. It is an asset you have to earn over and over again. That is why the customer connections you cultivate are as important as the product you are selling. And to build a quality connection with a customer, you can’t just bombard her with messages and offers until the right one sticks. You must ensure that every message is radically relevant.

What does radical relevance mean? It’s more than knowing what products are likely to appeal to a certain segment of customers. It means knowing what products an individual customer is likely to want, understanding when she will be most receptive to an offer, identifying what channel(s) she prefers, and what kind of promotional offer would most appeal to her.

Just as important, radical relevance also means knowing what not to do. You don’t want to sell lawnmowers to customers who live in Manhattan. You don’t want to barrage a customer with online ads for a product she has already bought in a store. And you don’t want to send direct mail to a customer who only ever responds to online offers.

Watch our on-demand webinar that reveals how to supercharge customer loyalty, from acquisition to retention.

You Have (Almost) Everything It Takes

To achieve radical relevance, most enterprise brands already have two key ingredients:  1) customer data – millions, even billions, of transactions and events, from purchase data to browsing histories; and 2) marketing teams eager to tap into all that data.

So what are brands missing? A way for marketers to access, understand and take action on all that data, without requiring layers of scarce, expensive technical and IT expertise. Customer data platforms (CDPs) can be the solution that provides marketers access to 100% of their customer data and enables them to have coherent conversations with their customers, across the entire customer lifecycle.

Radical Relevance, from Acquisition to Retention

Let’s consider the ways brands can supercharge customer loyalty across the entire customer lifecycle, once they have all these ingredients in place.

1. Acquisition. Instead of spraying-and-praying, target only high-quality prospects.

When you have granular data about your current customers, their habits and personal attributes, you can figure out what traits your highest value customers have in common—and then build highly targeted campaigns that target consumers who share those traits. Those same insights can inform creative concepting and help you craft messages that are most likely to resonate with these high-value prospects.  

2. Activation. Put that fresh acquisition data to work right away to drive a first purchase.

For many brands, acquisition may only be a “sign-up” process, for example providing an email or signing up for a credit card. However, even that first contact provides valuable information that you can use to shape how you reach out to individual customers, including: demographic information, the channel through which they were acquired, browsing history, abandoned carts, etc.

3. Repeat Purchase. Quickly capitalize on that first-purchase data to drive the all-valuable second purchase.

In the customer loyalty journey, securing a second purchase is vital. The good news is, you have a whole new set of data from that first purchase to enrich your understanding of individual customers to inform your next round of radically relevant messaging, including: additional demographic information, price sensitivity, product preference, propensity to gift giving, etc.  

4. Grow Lifetime Value. Expand the relationship by unleashing predictive analytics on all the rich data you now have.

To grow the lifetime value of a customer, you have to broaden the relationship to include new products or product lines. That’s much easier when you can draw on insights from the full, granular history of your relationship with that customer. But it becomes even more powerful when you can understand which of these customers are most like the high-value customers that you already have—and reach out to them with radically relevant messages.

5. Retention. Spot customers at risk of churning and reach out proactively.

Customers at risk of churn may look very different from one brand to the next—even for brands with similar offerings. In fact, risk can even vary from customer to customer. One may be at risk if they haven’t shopped with you in the last four weeks, while another may only be at risk after 12 or 18 weeks. Instead of relying on out-of-the-box models to identify churn risk, unleash the power of AI on all that customer data you have been gathering. This sharpens your focus on who is truly at risk. Now you draw on all that rich historical information from across your entire relationship to craft exactly the kind of offer keeps them coming back.

To learn how to your customer data can fuel radically relevant messaging, check out our on-demand webinar about supercharging customer loyalty.