Eagle Eye recently welcomed invited clients and guests to share insight on the latest customer engagement developments and innovations during its Digital Connect event, held in central London.
The annual event celebrates best-practice knowledge of Eagle Eye client successes using its AIR platform and products to establish and grow valuable digital connections with their customers, both offline and online.
Eagle Eye CEO, Tim Mason, set the scene for the event, opening with a presentation that summarised the main themes of his new book,
Omnichannel Retail: How to Build Winning Stores in a Digital World.
Tim told attendees: “The physical sales space has become a digital black hole. That is resolved simply by connecting with it through the device you have in your pocket, and that is the way you change the world.”
Connecting via mobile instore, as well as online, can help identify who are you best customers. “They’re the ones keeping the lights on and paying the wages, so surely we should know who they are,” Tim added.
Eagle Eye Head of Industry Insight, Miya Knights, highlighted evolving customer demand, précising the findings of its latest industry report,
The Connected Customer: Maximising the benefits of performance marketing.
“The opportunity to derive data-driven insight from digitally enabled customer connections is huge,” she said. “For example, 25–34-year-olds are most inclined to make a spontaneous purchase if incentivised by a promotion.”
But Miya added that they were most likely to use a promotion to make a spontaneous purchase if it was either available for a limited time only, personalised to them, or targeted via their mobile based on location.
M&Co CIO, Peter Mila, outlined the journey the fashion retailer is on, digitising its well-established loyalty scheme with three million members, as well as its popular gift voucher programme, with Eagle Eye.
Its loyalty project coincided with one to replace its EPOS [electronic point-of-sale]. “This gives us the ability to accept single-use vouchers for the first time across channels, and to know who redeemed them,” he said.
Working together to understand customers and boost sales
Another Eagle Eye client and Carlsberg Customer Marketing Manager, Emily Grafton, revealed how the leading UK beer brand recently delivered an innovative social media ad campaign with in-venue promotional tracking.
She said: “One benefit of running the campaign with Eagle Eye was its ability to integrate with independent free trade, which is quite difficult given that they don’t all have a centralised EPOS or management system.
“So, we were able to extend the campaign into independent outlets as well by offering a ‘Magic Stamp’ based form of redemption. This meant we didn’t have to target just the big, managed operator chains with EPOS.”
Generating an issuance-to-redemption rate of over 20%, Emily added: “The daily Eagle Eye reports showed how well it was doing, so we were able to double redemption rates by tweaking the media and delivery.”
As well as providing the inside track on successful client projects, the event also enabled respective technology and audience partners, Wireless Social and Global Savings Group, to showcase upcoming innovations.
CEO of Wi-Fi network and analytics provider Wireless Social, Julian Ross, revealed Hedgehog, a new joint offering with Eagle Eye designed to help brands engage customers and drive sales into hospitality venues.
Global Savings Group Business Development Director, Gabriel Akin, drew on his affiliate marketing expertise to emphasise contextual relevancy as key to maximising cross-channel campaign adaptability.
Gabriel shared examples of brands tailoring engagement to match LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter audiences. “Help consumers see themselves in your brand,” advised Gabriel, which Tim and Miya pointed to in closing.
Tim said Eagle Eye was looking to extend the work it already does with the likes of brands like Carlsberg and partners including Wireless Social to multiple merchants and channels through new Connected Campaigns.
He said that developing an open loop issuance-to-redemption capability would enable Eagle Eye clients and partners to add further scale and reach and grow the returns from their performance marketing investment.
“The brands get exposure, redemption data, information about how it targets customers, and so gets a better understand of its marketing,” he said. “The merchant gets traffic that drives sales; so, it’s not a bad trade-off.”
Attendees said the level of knowledge and insight shared was valuable, and Eagle Eye is already looking forward to planning its 2020 event!
Please
click here to download the presentations in the meantime.