The difference between a wishful browser and a loyal brand advocate can mean a huge difference to a brand’s bottom line – but identifying the differences and being able to act on this information in a timely manner is not always easy.
Luxury fashion retailers are not that dissimilar to other retailers in that they are all under pressure for higher sales, increased basket size and more loyal advocates. However, the value of a loyal customer in the luxury fashion market can be multiple times that of your average retail customer.
Ultimately the luxury fashion retailer wants loyal brand advocates who will buy their brand even if there is a better deal to be had elsewhere.
These customers undoubtedly feel special when they proudly wear the brand’s label, but the key is to make them feel special when they are interacting with your brand either online or in-store.
Seamless Shopper Experience
Brands want to provide seamless shopper experiences regardless of where or how their customers shop. A high valued customer expects a continuous experience whether she is shopping for a dress in her local store in London or visiting a store in Milan for some shoes while on a business trip.
For many, a brand experience starts with a visit to the brand’s website. This is initially an anonymous visit, but it does not mean that the marketer cannot gain information from this first interaction. A/B content splits can automatically be tested to see which piece of content performs best and then automatically present the best performing as the favoured content, improving the effectiveness of the website.
Unknown to Known
Loss of third-party cookies means that marketers need to make the most of first party data. As unknown customers browse your website, experiences can be personalised based on their browsing behaviours. When an unknown website visitor shows an interest in the shoe section, this insight can be used to personalise their web journey by focussing the content on shoes. If they abandon the session, first party cookies collected from that session can be used to recognise the anonymous visitor and present them with relevant content on their return visit.
As your unknown customer engages further and hopefully makes a purchase, they begin to share PII with you. This information should then persist against the customer record and provide the marketer with a more holistic view of the new customer and their previous activities.
The Struggle to Identify Customers
Unknown customers are just one of the challenges for the fashion retailer when identifying customers. Customers will often use different email addresses such as business and or personal when completing a purchase or registering an account. High value customers may also have multiple home addresses and provide different data in different locations. These customers will also visit stores which then can add offline data to the mix.
Although this data is captured by various systems, it presents a challenge for the marketer who needs to have all this rich information in one place and be accessible in real-time.
This is where a Customer Data Platform is necessary, to build a Single Customer View or Golden Record, providing the marketer with a holistic view of the customer with clean, real-time information. The data needs to be captured, cleansed and merged to ensure all data is accurate and up-to-date. A combination of probabilistic and deterministic matching is required to join records with differing email addresses and multiple house addresses. Without this the marketer will be challenged to identify high-value customers. The Golden Record will also enable identification of household members which is extremely valuable when providing a personalised message or household offers.
Reducing Ad Spend
Identifying customers and their purchases as early as possible is where fashion retailers can quickly gain a return on their investment through reduction in ad spend. Because the Golden Record is updated in real time, marketers can identify customers who have made a purchase online or in-store, and use this information to suppress social and Google ads for the products they have just purchased. Apart from the reduction on spend through irrelevant ads, the brand also demonstrates a personal understanding of its customers. There is nothing more frustrating to a customer than seeing an ad or promotion for an item they have just purchased.
One and Done
Not all shoppers are created equal. There are those that will only purchase once despite your marketing efforts. The trick is to separate the “wheat from the chaff” and concentrate your efforts on where you best return will be.
Some customers will only purchase when there is a discount to be had – these customers will never turn into your loyal advocates.
It is therefore important for the marketer to identify those “bad eggs” as soon as possible and prevent wasting valuable marketing budget on targeting them.
These “one and done” customers could be a useful target group for ‘end of season discounts’ but are best avoided for more expensive activities such as in-store personal shopping experiences.
Marketers in Control for Speed-to-Value
Most fashion retailers are adept at capturing customer information. In fact they have lots of data, but it is just difficult to get hold of in a timely manner. Often, the marketer has to rely on their IT team for insight and selection of customers for campaigns. This causes a bottleneck within the process and usually results in delayed (irrelevant) campaigns being run based on “cold” data.
The CDP needs to provide the marketer with a “no code” interface that allows the marketer to action customer insight in real-time and engage with customers when they are ready to shop.
Clienteling
Providing your in-store assistant with relevant information about your customers is key to providing an exceptional shopping experience. The CDP should be able to provide your stores with a view of the Golden Record with the latest information on purchase history, browsing behaviour and product recommendations – Next Best Offer.
The Benefits
- 80% reduction in time to build segments
- 50% increase in match rates
- 28% increase in return on marketing investment
- Real-time Next Best Offers
- 40% reduction in interaction costs
These are just some of the benefits Redpoint Global customers are seeing. Redpoint Global empowers brands to deliver highly personalized, contextually relevant experiences that optimize engagement and value. Redpoint solutions unify control over all customer data, determine next-best actions in real time, and orchestrate interactions across all touchpoints.
