Today's consumers highly value a personalized shopping experience. So much so that 90% of them say a brand's ability to provide them with a personalized experience directly impacts the amount of money they are willing to spend. These customers seek personalization across all channels: through their physical mailboxes, email inboxes, and in-store; as well as through web, social, and digital channels. Therefore, data-driven personalization is a crucial tool for your business.
How does data-driven personalization improve the customer experience?
Ninety-five percent of business owners have cited data-driven personalization as crucial to remaining competitive in the marketplace. To deliver the kind of shopping experience consumers value, the most innovative brands are leveraging data from a variety of sources to transform the shopping experience in physical stores and online. Let's explore how data can be used to optimize the customer experience.
Today's consumers enjoy a wide variety of options. As a result, they have high expectations. Optimizing the customer experience by providing high levels of individualization offers companies a way to differentiate themselves from the competition and develop a loyal customer base. Some ways data can help you improve your customer experience with data include:
They allow a better understanding of the needs and desires of customers
Organizations can use customer data to better understand customers and what they're looking for in a shopping experience. Personal, engagement, behavioral, and brand sentiment data can help provide a clear 360-degree view of the customer.
They help personalize communication with customers
With customer data at hand, companies can create personalized journeys to strengthen relationships with buyers. Insights from this data allow for personalized emails and direct mail tailored to specific interests based on customer profiles. Data-driven personalization also enables detailed customization, delivering relevant content to a website visitor in real time based on user engagement data.
Improves product recommendations
Browsing patterns and past purchase history can be leveraged to increase the relevance of automated product recommendations. This type of data can also help create suggestions for additional purchases that combine with products already in the shopping cart.
Optimize customer experiences
Businesses can transform customer perceptions with the help of data-driven personalization. Customer data can reveal what target audiences value and what would engage them. Additionally, beacon technology can personalize the in-store shopping experience by enabling relevant notifications to be sent to customers' mobile devices, providing helpful information and informing them about new offers and discounts. Furthermore, as digital channels continue to become more integral to customer journeys, retailers must focus on creating seamless experiences, from search to purchase to fulfillment.
Predicts trend
Being able to predict what customers will want to buy in the future enables more effective inventory planning and more strategic marketing. Predictive analytics can be used to analyze consumer behavior, social media trends, and a variety of other data inputs, such as weather, time of year, and more, to predict what's coming up for demand.
Common challenges in optimizing customer experience
Optimizing the customer experience is a process that can take time and effort, and it's important to remember that moving from theory to practice can present various challenges. The following obstacles will need to be addressed before a company can implement a data-driven approach to personalizing the shopping experience.
Variety of data
The ability to combine customer purchasing behavior data, email contact and response data, and external data, as well as lifestyle insights, into a single, consolidated and scalable customer data hub, is crucial. The ability to channel data from many different sources, including multiple clouds, as well as the ability to integrate directly with many major marketing platforms, is crucial.
Relevant data
A solid personalization strategy requires sufficient, relevant data. Companies employing data-driven personalization are leveraging third-party data sources, including demographics, purchase intent, point-of-sale, weather, and consumer mobility data, which further personalize the customer experience.
Real-time capabilities
Website personalization relies on the ability to execute in real time. As visitors click through a site, businesses require analytics capabilities to keep pace with visitors' changing searches, clicks, and interests every step of the way. The closer they get to real-time personalization, the better the experience for website visitors and potential customers. For this reason, a retailer's data platform must be able to process streaming data quickly and integrate with leading marketing and e-commerce software platforms.
Scale
To offer effective data-driven personalization, data and technology must be scalable. For this reason, companies must have a cloud-based infrastructure with flexible storage resources and computing power that can adapt to the vast amount of data required for personalization. Optimize the way you sell and personalize every interaction with your customers by leveraging your company's data. If you'd like to learn more about the tools and methodologies you should use, contact us for advice .