In a previous article in this space, we listed a few of the features in a robust, enterprise-grade customer data platform (CDP) that help retailers achieve the gold standard of a one-to-one personalized customer experience (CX), such as identity resolution and the creation of a real-time Golden Record.
But like the dog that catches the car, even retailers far along on the path to differentiate on CX are unsure of what to do when they finally nail down a customer-centric approach. Does a personalized, omnichannel experience really reduce customer journey friction?
Rest assured, there is indeed a wide gap between traditional retail marketing techniques and a data-driven, customer-centric approach that retail customers have come to expect – and that retail brands need to deliver. In the 2023 CX and Communications survey from Broadridge Financial Solutions, more than half of consumers (54 percent) have stopped doing business with a company due to a poor job personalizing the experience. (This jumps to 63 percent for the roughly 86 million people who belong to Gen Z, outnumbering every other age demographic).
Here, then, are the top three ways retailers can deliver a personalized – and frictionless – CX through the use of first-party data with a Golden Record.
Hyper-Relevant Offers
We’re all familiar with run-of-the-mill blast offers that go out to everyone. Is this brand just trying to shed overstock? But this is what product-centric retailers do, calculating that any increase in sales will outweigh the annoyance factor for customers who receive an irrelevant offer.
With a persistently updated, real-time Golden Record every offer can be tailored to an individual customer. Many brands create and market to segments as if their similarities override their differences. But not every married, college-educated woman in the 45-54 age group with a household income of $250,000+ (as one example) has the same interests, preferences or shopping behaviors. Yet by combining demographic and psychographic data (interests, hobbies, travel, pets, etc.) with data aggregates (last website visit, items viewed) and an updated identity graph (all devices, ID’s, email, etc.), brands instead can home in on what is meaningful to the customer at the moment of interaction.
A shopping cart reclamation email looks like it comes from a personal concierge, listing not just the abandoned items but complementary products that the customer has expressed an interest in. An email with offers “just for you” shows a hero image of the customer’s favorite hobby, with thumbnail images and links to hyper-relevant products.
In a recent Dynata survey, 80 percent of consumers said they are more likely to purchase from a brand that sends relevant, personalized offers.
- One Redpoint retail customer use the Redpoint CDP to integrate 20 data sources (comprising 2,400 data elements) into a single customer view. With a Golden Record for every customer that includes an additional 300 attributes, the company uses omnichannel orchestration capabilities to power a real-time recommendation engine, achieving a 79 percent increase in conversions through customized product recommendations across multiple channels.
Path-to-Purchase Optimization
Path-to-purchase optimization gets at the heart of an omnichannel personalized CX. It’s partly hyper-relevant offers, but in a super-charged environment that encompasses a next-best action (offers included) across a customer journey.
Optimizing a path to purchase through a real-time decisioning engine factors in a customer’s propensity score, loyalty status, lifetime value, average purchase size, order frequency and recency, preferred channel, contact preference and active social media footprint, among other data points that collectively provide a retailer with an in-depth view of a customer’s unique traits. An analysis of how these data points relate to one another will then provide insight into the customer journey; where will the customer engage next, what is the customer’s intent, and what action can I take to help guide the customer toward the desired result, be it a purchase, a subscription, a download, an opt-in, etc.?
Guide a perfect customer journey by knowing everything there is to know about a customer.
One customer might receive a loyalty offer through the website, while another a sees a Facebook ad while a third customer receives an app notification about a flash sale. Inbound interactions are similarly tailored to a customer’s individual journey. Each is a next-best action optimized for channel, timeliness and business objective.
A frictionless CX depends on knowing everything there is to know about a customer, courtesy of the Golden Record and the ability to drive real-time engagement with cross-channel awareness.
- One Redpoint customer, an apparel company, used the Golden Record to create personalized customer experiences across all channels and interactions for more than 10 million customers.
Enhance an In-Person Experience
Operational retail marketers are not the only ones who benefit from a Golden Record. In-store associates, call center agents and returns departments are among the customer-facing employees who, presented access to a real-time, unified customer profile during an in-person or on the phone interaction are able to enhance the customer experience as it unfolds.
With a surge in buy online, pick-up in-store and curbside pickup transactions, associates using a Golden Record can present cross-sell and upsell offers when the customer reaches the store. Similarly, if a customer logs a compliant while shopping (they can’t find an item, their size isn’t available, etc.) an associate is empowered to remediate the issue through a hyper-relevant retention offer that factors in every interaction up to the moment the customer walked into the store.
For any in-person encounter, a Golden Record used in a last mile engagement with the customer provides associates with a real-time, contextual understanding of an individual customer journey at the point of contact.
- One Redpoint customer, a DIY retailer, hyper-personalized next-best actions for online loyalty members, resulting in a 20 percent lift in market basket size from loyalty members making an additional in-store purchase when buying online and picking up the order in-store.
For more on how the Redpoint CDP helps retailers meet every customer with highly personalized experiences in every interaction and in every channel, click here
