Retail marketing strategies

Trending data over time

Most brick-and-mortar retail managers were schooled in “instant gratification” — conditioned to look for a blip in sales in the daily flash report following an ad or promotion. The use of CIM demands looking at data over time.

Take the process of moving customers up the loyalty chain. Loyalty programs that recognize how to move customers along the loyalty chain employ data in a much more sophisticated manner than those retailers who have set up simple frequent purchaser or best customer programs.

Without using any incentives, you can increase customer purchasing by communicating on a regular basis to finer buyer segments. By sending out a welcome letter to new customers and reminding them of the benefits of shopping with you, for instance, you can nudge them along the loyalty chain into becoming repeat buyers.

Keep in mind that you must carefully define the customer segments while communicating with them at key junctures and following their behavior over time.

Brick-and-mortar retailers who were thrust rather suddenly into CIM through the Internet portal are now recognizing that customer data, when applied systematically to their stores, can have profit-raising impact. And if you haven't yet tapped into the promise that CIM holds, you should.

Francey Smith (francey@franceysmith.com) is president of retail marketing consulting firm Francey Smith & Associates.

Customer information management for brick-and-mortar retailers: DATA REQUIREMENTS

Direct mail

• Name • Postal address • Store of purchase

Customer marketing database

(including both customers and, when possible, prospective customers)

• Unique ID for each customer/prospect
• Customer name and postal address
• Customer purchasing record that includes store of purchase and department, class and, when appropriate, SKU
• Promotion/advertising history and event tracking code
• Link to loyalty program where applicable
• Other desirable — but not necessary — data elements would include landline and cell phone number, as well as e-mail address

Marketing decision making

1. Create a market definition by geography at the zip code or zip-plus-4 level

2. Media expense management

   a. Select media resource

   b. Track response by media source

   c. Measure response by media source

   i. Easier to track and measure — postal mail, e-mail, newspaper, other print

   ii. More complicated to track/measure — TV and radio

3. Determine if customer has a preferred store location or channel for shopping

4. Telemarketing support for both inbound and outbound calls to customers and prospective customers

   a. Outbound calls effective for all channels

5. Metrics, analytics and promotion tracking

   a. Which customers should be targeted?

   b. Which customers responded?

   c. Which customers didn't respond? Do we know why they didn't respond?

   d. Which promotion message worked good, better, best?

6. Market research:

   a. Access customers and/or prospects for both qualitative and quantitative research

   b. Track primary research results

7. Link to loyalty program where applicable

Store/multichannel operations management

1. Provide fact-based customer data to support:

   a. Brick-and-mortar site selection and real estate management

   b. Planning merchandise adjacencies for all channels

   c. Proprietary credit customer acquisition and retention programs

   d. Gift registries, such as bridal, baby

   e. Support for store associates “clienteling” programs

   f. Store opening campaigns (store closings, too)

Improved customer interactions

1. Analyze advertising content and results by item and media source
2. Cross-selling and upselling strategies
3. Vendor co-op development
4. Seasonality planning for merchandise by region or geography