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Data-driven Marketing helps brick & mortar retail sales as well!

When digital meets marketing, it unleashes the power of data-driven marketing: marketing that graduates from surveys to provide data-based insights. More information is collected, processed faster, more effectively and with greater precision: data-driven marketing heralds a new era where smart targeting replaces mass advertising.

Data not only enables customized messaging but also restores the efficiency of marketing strategies by offering advertisers and retailers the ROI-based approach they have been advocating for so long.

 

Benefits of data-driven marketing strategies

Brick & mortar stores have a handicap compared to e-commerce: they are blind. Whereas online retail sites can use data analytics solutions to understand shoppers’ habits, enhance customer journeys and raise conversion rates, physical stores are deprived of such a precious asset.

The world of communications has reached a turning point as it says good-bye to mass marketing and hello to the era of ultra-personalization that puts consumers back at the center of the customer journey. Taking that direction requires having the means to know your customers — or at least have the tools to get to know them and develop close relationships. And this requires getting to know their shopping journey. This is where a phygital strategy comes in, based on proximity marketing. It entails combining the information collected both online and in physical retail outlets thanks to the Wi-Fi portal, in order to attain an omnichannel view of customer behavior.

Proximity data does much more for retailers than a database bought on the Internet, which will provide names, email addresses and phone numbers of potential customers, but no information on consumption behaviors. Yet, combining both sociological and demographic data stands as the way to optimize value generation from data.

 

From data to insights: building a strategy

Concretely, data can be used to analyze a shopping center’s traffic and to adjust rental charges according to the location of the leases or of advertising space. For sales outlets, data can help improve traffic in real time and direct shoppers to strategic points of interest. But in order to achieve this result, data must be processed. Therefore, the first step to a data-driven strategy is about ensuring the accessibility of the data collected.

Proximity marketing correlates online and offline metrics. Bounce rate, time spent shopping, number of visits, conversion rate: all this data can be used by stores to chart a 360-degree customer journey through a simple Wi-Fi connection. In this strategy, customers remain in control of their data and give their consent to its analysis, in compliance with the 2018 General Data Protection Regulation.

By turning data into insights, proximity marketing gives rise to two types of strategies.

  • Firstly, an acquisition strategy, to enhance CRM activities and monitor sales performance. This overcomes the problem of the Internet grey area, that of retailers, in particular for marketplaces, since it is not possible to include other players in sales monitoring.
  • Secondly, it gives rise to a loyalty-building strategy. Once based on loyalty cards, building loyalty now relies on a digital strategy that is not overtly visible. Retailers can enhance their image by deploying communication techniques to engage customers and secure brand loyalty.

 

Data time is real time

Every minute counts in a highly competitive context. The purpose of data analytics, beyond knowing your customer better and refining your marketing strategy, is that it is perfectly suited to real time operations.

According to a survey by RetailMeNot, 70% of shoppers in stores use their phones, and half of French consumers would find it helpful to receive flash sales offers by text message.

Well-accepted by consumers, data analytics allows you to adjust your strategy to actual needs promptly. For example, when checkout lines grows too long, knowledge of customer flow can immediately be used to redirect customers for faster checkout. And flash sales can also be triggered with a view to encourage revenue.

 

Based on analytics, data-driven marketing enables you to refocus your strategy for maximum optimization. And then what? The more data is collected, the more precisely can predictive marketing be implemented.

Eventually, consumption patterns can be predicted based on customer history, and messages can be better targeted for more effective customer engagement: is this the beginning of truly customized marketing?

 

// This article was first published in an article in FR in JDN. Read the rest here.