Marketing experts today face far more difficult challenges than in the past. It used to be as simple as deciding whether to offer a buy-one-get-one-free, or some other type of incentive. Today’s customers can be reached by any number of retailers, offering hundreds, if not thousands, of different experiences, messages, and opportunities to buy.
In order to cut through the clutter and create engaging, positive customer experiences, marketers need to use every tool in their arsenal. One of those tools is the use of behavioral data. In the past, marketers had to rely on focus groups or surveys that, while they may still have their place, create opportunities for the data to tell an incomplete story. What rarely deceives is actual customer behavior.
Big Data, including the data collected from consumer behavior, provides detailed information with greater accuracy than marketers have ever had before. Analyzing the behavior of target customers can help retailers create dynamic customer experiences across every channel, platform, and device, delivering the high-level personalized experience shoppers demand.
While creating seamless, customer-centric experiences may seem daunting, building an approach centered on customer behavior, while integrating and executing on cross-channel data, can help marketers do just that.
Unified Customer Profiles
By creating unified customer profiles, a brand can identify and link valuable consumer data across any channel or device, merging all of the customer’s activities into a single repository. Marketers can begin to build meaningful, personalized relationships with their customers using information that seems very simple. For example, it can be extremely valuable to know that a target customer did not click on an offer in an email or, in some cases, that they didn’t even open the email. That same customer, however, may engage with an SMS message as an alternative method of contact.
Web Behavior Profiles
The data from consumer web behavior is a critical component in creating the best possible customer experience. Gathering data to build a complete overview of a customer’s online behavior can lead to highly personalized web engagement. Brands can present customers with products that gel with their particular preferences, personalizing the website experience. At the same time, marketers can work on gathering additional behavioral data while the customer is browsing the website. This can help brands to create highly tailored and seamless site experiences for each visitor.
Cross-Channel Behavioral Tracking
Each channel a customer uses brings with it a huge amount of data. By combining each of those individual channels, marketing experts can create rich, multi-channel overviews. Tracking the behavior of customers, regardless of channel, can help marketers know who received, opened, or clicked on any channel or device. That data can assist in implementing cross-channel marketing strategies and increase the chances of relevant content being seen.
Cross-Channel Experience
Brands want to reach customers where they are most likely to engage, whether it be via email, social, mobile, or a different channel entirely. By analyzing behavioral data and combining many of the above tactics, marketers can link channels and devices to specific customers. With all of the different platforms and devices available, customers may have multiple profiles. Identifying and matching behavior across these devices can be used to build the unified profile, which will allow brands to give customers the best possible shopping experience.
Final Thoughts
Combining available behavioral data has almost limitless potential to help brands better understand each customer as an individual. Taking advantage of that can help improve customer service, messaging consistency, and the overall consumer experience.
Learning what makes customers tick is ultimately the key to strengthening relationships, building momentum, and measuring marketing campaign success. And, most importantly, the seamless experience will be the thing that keeps those customers returning. Today’s consumers are more tech-savvy than ever, it is time for brands to use that same technology to improve the experience.
