Can data improve your retail marketing strategies?
One of the advantages of retail technology is the opportunity to gather large amounts of data about customers and their shopping habits. This information can drive business intelligence initiatives, ultimately helping retailers to improve their store operations and enhance their marketing strategies.
Opportunities to collect information continue to grow
In addition to traditional methods to gather customer information, such as asking for data at check-out, merchants are finding opportunities to take information from smartphones that customers use in stores. Business Spectator explained that retailers can derive useful stats by offering free Wi-Fi in their stores. By storing anonymous information about connections, managers can collect information about store traffic and customers' movement through the aisles. iBeacons are also useful for gathering this type of data. For more targeted information, stores can offer apps through which customers authorize the system to identify them. This allows retailers to tie in-store habits to the rest of the shopper's information, such as demographics and purchase history.
Information is power
This data is only valuable when it can be turned into actionable insights. Merchants can run retail reports to analyze the information and use it to drive better marketing decisions. For example, a panel at the National Retail Federation's annual convention explained how store managers can use data to assess the profitability of their initiatives, such as offering home delivery. Business Spectator recommended incorporating information into customer loyalty programs or identifying which store locations are most popular. Better inventory management can be driven by more detailed sales data, Billing World suggested.
The key is to start with business objectives for data projects. Billing World emphasized the distinction between "objectives," such as collecting sales data, and "business objectives," such as knowing when to restock.
But with power comes responsibility
Merchants have great opportunities to collect data and many ways to use that data to improve their marketing strategies. However, they must be careful about how they use and store customer information so shoppers don't feel violated or vulnerable.
"If one of your customers starts visiting baby shops, do you then send them a message congratulating them on the good news, saying 'I understand you're pregnant'? Obviously, no. Retailers need to be careful with information at hand. Follow the Google path: Let's not be evil about it," Ruckus' regional manager Chris Evans told Business Spectator.
When designing strategies that make use of data, retailers should keep information privacy at the front of their minds and use discretion with how they use data to interact with customers.
