Author: Miya Knights
If Chapter Eight of our CEO Tim Mason’s new book,
Omnichannel Retail: How to Build Winning Stores in a Digital World, were a life stage, it represents his joining Eagle Eye as the culmination of his retail experiences.
This Eagle Eye blog serialising the key themes explored in the book I co-authored with Tim represents the lessons he learned and how to use digital to overcome some of the marketing challenges he faced.
Tim’s journey towards truly measurable and effective performance marketing started and always ends with the customer. Understand what they want from who they are and what they buy to improve the total retail offer.
He established
the importance of knowing the customer through Tesco Clubcard. This customer knowledge is essential for generating the data needed to provide the customer insight that then drives more quantifiable marketing results.
“In analogue terms, performance marketing started with coupons and vouchers and direct mail: I send out an offer to my database and track the number of people redeeming that offer by making a purchase at the point of sale. If I subtract the promotion cost and the marketing cost of the entire mailing divided by those that redeem them, I know the exact cost of each one of those sales.” (Mason, T., Knights, M.
Omnichannel Retail, p142, Kogan Page.)
The digital advantage in building customer connections
But that was before the advent of digital. You don’t need a
loyalty scheme to know your customers nowadays. There are just so many more ways to digitally connect with customers – from search through to payment.
The basics of getting to know your customer by getting them to identify themselves at the point of sale and tie that ID to their purchases still hold true. Digital makes it easier to establish and maintain that connection now.
Consider that Eagle Eye-sponsored consumer research found 67% of consumers start their shopping journeys online. One third use their mobile phones to compare prices and availability while out shopping.
Digital makes it easier to improve the customer connection wherever that customer may be. It’s also why Tim believes in Eagle Eye’s core business of transforming marketing through performance-driven data and insight.
“With digital delivery, you can know which investment created what impact. You can also know how much ROI it generated, which, in general broadcast mass marketing, is very difficult to analyse and calculate." (Mason, T., Knights, M. Omnichannel Retail, p141, Kogan Page.)
This is why the book lays out the ways any sales space should ensure it can be
located in the digital world. It examines
ways to digitally augment the space’s ability to engage with customers using a
mobile makeover.
The aim of a strategic mobile makeover is to get customers comfortable about engaging with their favourite retailers and brands through offers, content and services, delivered and customized via their phones.
Moving beyond data-based retailing with marketing
Applying the Data, Insight, Analysis, Loyalty (DIAL) methodology to the information gathered about what customers do and what they buy, both online and instore, enables a more
data-based approach to retailing.
The real opportunities emerge when a data-based approach to managing product, pricing and operational processes can be applied to customers too. It boils down to knowing how to serve your best customers better.
Integrating digital touchpoints instore to complement the ones your customers use to connect online maximises impact. The bonus is digital touchpoints extend marketing’s reach both in and beyond the store.
For example, food-to-go retailer
Greggs uses the Eagle Eye AIR platform to understand customer behaviour by gathering redemptions and app usage-based data after digitising its stamp card, coupons and payments.
Greggs has used this digital customer connection to deliver performance-driven marketing that increases redemption rates through more targeted offers. But it also boosted basket size and frequency too.
Use this customer data to generate insight that can deliver more performance-driven marketing. Personalised promotions can offer more than just transactional benefits and move beyond functional to emotional loyalty.
Omnichannel Retail: How to Build Winning Stores in a Digital World by Tim Mason and Miya Knights, is published by Kogan Page, priced £19.99.
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