How to know it's time to add customer intelligence to your loyalty strategy
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Eliza McKendry
- October 21, 2021
Ever find yourself wondering why campaigns have not been as successful as you thought? Customers aren’t engaging with your content? Why do even high rewards not keep your customers coming back? Adding customer intelligence to your strategy provides an answer to your questions.
Table of Contents
You’ve been thinking about updating your loyalty strategy. Let’s break it down.
Breakdown of customer intelligence:
Customer Intelligence is an umbrella term used to describe all data analysis focusing on your market and performance. One of the most critical aspects impacting any organisation’s ability to remain competitive is to stay one step ahead of the market. Therefore, it is vital to have an extensive understanding not only of your competitors but the state of the industry and the changing consumer landscape.
Collected data can be analysed to aid strong decision making and makes it easier for management to spot opportunities for new growth! Acting as “a guiding light”, The essential part is knowing what to look for and when.
Importance of high-quality data:
Poor quality data can do more harm than good for your business; it can quickly lead you down the wrong path in terms of strategy. High-quality data provides a clear and accurate picture of your consumers. More on the importance of high-quality data here.
High-quality data can be collected from the word go. Something as simple as app usage can collect high-quality data directly from your customers, so take a moment; what data do you think you might need in the future?
Start as you mean to go on:
Is it essential to your brand that you offer birthday vouchers or perks? If yes, ensure there is a birthday data field. Want to send direct mails? It is vital that you have separate fields for the house numbers and street names. Plan to be sliding into your customers’ inbox with personalised emails? Again, separate first and last names fields will work wonders for you.
3-6 months: Time to deep-dive your data
Great, you have a hold of a lot of data. Now what to do with it? Roll up your sleeves; it is time to deep dive into your data ( also known as inflow). You can now see how your programme is performing and how your new contact/consumer base is developing. How exciting!
The data you’re looking at is high-quality data, thanks to those registration forms, and has provided the perfect base for you to begin to investigate your standard demographics, i.e., age, gender, location etc.
Now, this step is crucial – it is important as any areas of concern can be picked up early. This is the perfect time to put together strategies to widen your base and target the right customers (or start getting them back).
Growth Opportunities:
At this moment in time, you have a lovely opportunity to harbour some growth for your company. First, check out the behaviours of your loyal customers – are they lower in one area than another? Then, you can create location-based targeted campaigns or in-store promotions to reach these potential members.
Happy One Year! Time to get to know your customers
Like many relationships, there has been a shift in focus; we now will focus on the inactive customers (outflow) and improving retention. All this boils down to profiling and segmentation.
The easiest way to do this is to create segments of customers based on their shared demographics and characteristics; this could be purchasing habits, push message open rates or click behaviour. You are pretty much looking for anything that lets you create segments of similar customers; by doing this, you can stay highly relevant messages to these groups—right messages to the right people ( we explored the benefits of this here.
Let's explore some ideas for your brand:
There are numerous ways you can segment your members. Here are some fun ways:
Style Sensitive Vs Discount sensitive (and the combination of both!):
explore the engagement of these customers. Your data can provide substantial insight into behaviours. For example, are they engaging more with new items or upgrades? Do they sign up for push notifications for popular products? By using this information, you can create relevant content for your customers.
Another example would be All-Round Client or Seasonal:
Notice that your customer is pretty quiet until the winter season? Reach out at the beginning and end of the season, offering them vouchers or early access. This is going to make them feel appreciated and develop loyalty.
Two Years down the line: Forecasting
By this point, you have gathered a significant amount of data and insight into your customers; it is time to introduce a predictive technology to help forecast future performance. This will allow you to see the expected retention, inflow and outflow each month. How fantastic. You will create accurate strategies that can prepare for possible drops in engagement and will show you which subgroup you need to target.
Tips for long-term success:
Long-term success is mainly dependent on the retention rate of your customers. A straightforward way to prolong this is by introducing an inactivity time frame; this can be any period you desire; 30/60/120days. When this period approaches, it is important to think of ways to get these customers to engage again.
It is time to get creative – the opportunities are never-ending! Show your customers just how much you want them. For example, if a customer predominantly purchases socks, they could get emails with recommendations for the relevant items.
Very quickly, the loyalty programme will seem tailor-made for each customer. Even something as simple as a special discount voucher offers a great incentive to re-engage with your brand. It very quickly shows that you have value for your customers, and it reminds them of the perks, benefits and rewards that your programme offers.
Analyse. Analyse. Analyse.
Without a shadow of a doubt, this is the best aspect of integrating customer intelligence into your loyalty strategy. Monitoring the overall performance of your campaigns, app usage as often as possible is the secret ingredient. The minute you know where your efforts are making an impact, your loyalty strategy enters a whole new dimension.
What's Next?
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