Traditional customer behaviour is being redefined by digital channels which constantly connect and inform consumers throughout the purchasing journey. As a direct result, marketers must now delve deeper into traditional, alternate and derived data to refine customer experiences and collect insights which make a significant difference to sales conversion rates and brand affinity.
An intelligent organisation will use data to improve commercial decisions which affect its customers, product offering, competition and role within the market. Utilisation of this data will optimise operational efficiency, drive innovation and generate more effective communication with customers.
Organisations should place emphasis on generating repeat business rather than single transactions, by embedding intelligence into their systems which develops a constant loop of meaningful connections with customers before, throughout and after the purchasing process – this is known as hyperpersonalisation.
The upcoming trend in customer segmentation in order to keep pace with changing customer needs are genomes, or the thorough digital DNA of customers. Consumer genomes use traditional data (demographics, purchase history, loyalty schemes), alternate data (social media data, community-based data) and derived data (insights describing an individual obtained from analysis of the selected data sets) to create digital DNA which has information every merchant should understand about each of its customers.
This data is organically derived and includes ‘markers’ which organisations can then utilise to generate highly targeted approaches to high-value customers and prospects. By packaging up and leveraging all of this data, organisations move from personalisation to hyperpersonalisation of data, which is individually tailored to customers.
Examples of this approach have already started to pop up around the world, including here in New Zealand. In the fiercely competitive world of household shopper grocery spend and loyalty programmes, Countdown leveraged its Onecard scheme through one-to-one personal engagement in order to capture incremental spend. The active Onecard base is in the millions so email is a vital channel for engagement. Through relevant hyperpersonalisation of data, the newly developed myCountdown email marketing programme combined six algorithms to take personalisation to levels not seen previously in New Zealand. These algorithms worked seamlessly and three million emails were delivered across a three-month period, with every email completely unique.
The upcoming trend in customer segmentation in order to keep pace with changing customer needs are genomes, or the thorough digital DNA of customers. Consumer genomes use traditional data, alternate data and derived data to create digital DNA which has information every merchant should understand about each of its customers.
Globally, Walmart Media Exchange is implementing a programme using store sales data, social media profiles and partners of its Savings Catcher loyalty and rewards scheme. With this data, Walmart will eventually segment customers and build individual customer genomes to assist in providing improved offers, as well as to generate appropriate marketing tactics.
Such customer genomes can be utilised by organisations for heightened understanding of individual customer demographics, behaviours and preferences. Where the supply chain is concerned, streamlining of inventory can be achieved through regional distribution of products to specific clusters of customers, and these are identified by hyperpersonalisation of data. Similarly, seamless lifestyle experiences for customers across all purchase journey touch points are made possible by organisational use of a customer genome to the fullest extent – generating inventive engagement strategies in the process.
A possible application of a customer genome relates to contextual enhancement, where extraction of customised content is based upon where and how an individual customer accesses information. An example might be when a customer searches flight information while staying at a hotel, and a transport company displays an advert for a taxi provider.
Data collected from online browsing behaviour (time on site, click sequences, preferred methods of purchase and coupon redemption) can also be used to understand preferred channels of interaction for a customer, and identify products customers are searching for via those channels.
Using customer genomes in tandem with mobile phone geofencing allows organisations to deliver content to consumers based on location information. Mobile behaviour data can also provide a customer’s location patterns, allowing organisations to better understand how a customer’s day or week is organised and their resulting purchasing behaviours. Using customer genomes, organisations can direct personalised messages to customers in real time and at decision making points.
Hyperpersonalisation strategies, inventive pricing and strong promotional models help organisations enhance customer loyalty, increase sales and lower operational costs. Organisations which are optimised to stretch boundaries need to better understand data they have available and use innovative, multichannel analytics which span customers’ traditional, social, behavioural and contextual data in order to enhance interactions with those customers.
Michael Buckley is the Accenture Interactive Lead for Australia and New Zealand.
