Uncovering value in your multi-channel customer data.
I recently did some strategic CRM work with one of my clients to understand customer shopping behaviour across different sales channels. The results were in keeping with other multichannel businesses I’ve previously worked with, but directly challenged my clients’ internal processes and customer communication strategy.
Multi-channel customers are often worth significantly more to a business than single channel customers.
In summary:
Multi-channel customers (that shop both in-store and online) are incredibly valuable to my client, with a customer value significantly higher than those that only shop via one channel, predominantly driven by purchase frequency.
There is only a small overlap of customers shopping both in-store and online – less than 10% of both online and in-store customers are shopping across the other channel.
The opportunity to increase customer value is clear –
Online customers should be geographically targeted and driven in-store (exclusive events, VIP experiences, in-person consultations).
In-store customers should be driven online, perhaps during big markdown periods when customers may not be able to get in-store (BFCM, etc).
Practically speaking, my client needed to address the following areas in order to take advantage of the opportunity:
Single customer view – one customer record for all purchases, both online and in-store
Segmentation – identifying each customer’s shopping channel preference, their store preference (multi-store customers), and their store proximity (online customers).
Cross-channel communication policy – for how and when to promote cross-channel shopping.
Comms plan – three streams of communication (for its online, in-store and multi-channel customers) with email templates that leverage conditional content based on the customers shopping preference.
In short, they needed to adopt a more customer-centric approach to how they view the business – rather than working in silos towards single channel KPIs.
Agent Provocateur does a great job of merging the in-store and online experience in their communications. For example, in-store bridal fittings are offered to online newsletter subscribers, while in-store customers are invited to browse collections online.
If you’re looking to better understand your customer data or develop a comprehensive CRM strategy and need support to understand the best approach, please feel free to get in touch for a free and informal chat.