Monthly Archives: September 2022

Your Shoppers’ Data can Create Memorable Experiences Every Time

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While traditional shopping becomes more obsolete and premium, in the wake of rapid digital transformation, the future of omnichannel retail is data-driven and personalized. Customers expect nothing short of the most striking and meaningful moments of truth that enable them to engage better with brands across multi-channel touchpoints. Advanced customer analytics enabled by superior marketing intelligence platforms in combination with tech stacks that are backed by a singular source of truth are in high demand. Let’s not forget that loyalty programs can further customize communication as per unique customer needs and preferences.

 

For maximum long-term retention through timely gratification, they need to be designed and factored into the overall digital marketing ecosystem carefully. Revolutionizing customer experience in the here-and-now, the following key data-driven trends are being adopted and redefined by leading brands powering efficient customer profiling, targeting, and segmenting practices.

 

1. Personalization at Scale

Global superstores and e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart are frontrunners when it comes to shaping better personalization practices. Amazon, in particular, has been investing heavily in its customer analytics to ensure higher levels of both sophistication and transparency. The company expanded its personalization program to ensure that customers’ products viewed can be bundled with products added to the cart so that they can make the best choices right before the purchase is made. Display items that are viewed are further recommended through additional products in the follow-up emails that confirm the transaction.

 

In addition to raising the bar with better personalization at scale, Amazon is also innovating heavily to offer relevant recommendations to their customers. With more nuanced and granular level offerings like the personal shopping service, for instance, the Prime service was extended to include this value-added benefit. Customers now take multiple surveys to complete their styles and fit preferences and then get customized recommendations from a specially hired team of stylists. These are curated from across half a million brand offerings available through efficient inventory mapping in combination with customer data analytics. Smaller businesses that came online during the pandemic are also moving in this direction drawing inspiration from larger players. Personalization at scale has many benefits from a data analytics standpoint. From a business growth and ROI perspective, they enhance sales insights to optimize marketing efforts around driving the conversion rate and, overall, inform better decision-making in the future as well.

Overall, some of the larger factors responsible for personalization success include:

 

Data Foundation: This includes developing a solid audience analytics framework to have a multidimensional view of the customer. It would also include segmenting customers and targeting them effectively based on customized recommendations.

 

Decisioning: As a crucial step in this regard, decisioning includes creating a library of campaigns and content that can better inform future strategies. Developing a multichannel decision engine can, moreover, avoid conflicting messages and drive maximum value per touchpoint.

 

Design & Distribution: Banking on cross-functional teams that can test and learn together, design and collateral distribution is the final and most crucial step in terms of optimizing each personalization campaign.

 

2. Removing Data Silos for Integration & Omnichannel Communication

Whether Banking, Retail, or Finance, all sectors are now looking at avoiding a compartmentalized approach to data management in the pursuit of integration. Many organizations have been struggling with this process issue for a while now. Streamlining all marketing activities surrounding the data collection, ingestion and personalization imply consolidation towards a single source of truth. Moreover, revenue insights, customer experience strategy, and predictive analysis also need to be integrated into the final process that defines better managerial decision-making. Considering new advancements in digital transformation, leading brands have already taken the necessary steps to avoid any kind of data silos too, then, deliver omnichannel value to customers. This step can offer a large strategic advantage to companies ready to innovate with the right talent on board. Let’s look at Sephora for instance.

The beauty-products retail giant has multiple digital and physical channels that came together to avoid silos in favor of ‘phygital’ experiences. The company innovated to gather and analyze customer preferences from across their varied services to figure out unique new makeovers and fashion consultation-based experiences. Delivering genuine omnichannel value also meant using ‘in-store’ methods to attract customers through an integrated digital app interface that was installed live. Thus, both on ecommerce product windows as well as in the store itself, customers can virtually try out every product before they buy. With the covid protocols in demand, not actually trying makeup in favor of digital tryouts is a huge uptick for brand trust and reliability as well.

 

Moreover, all customer communications are streamlined effectively to earn and burn loyalty points. The company ensures that marketing collaterals across devices can provide both the customers and the sales team with adequate resources to make the best optimization decisions. In this way, customers become part of Sephora’s data management ecosystem with profiling done based on both online browsing and purchasing patterns as well as in-store purchases. Sales associates then take the call on incentivizing products through a multi-tiered loyalty program that is much loved across key geographies. The results of synchronizing all of Sephora’s data management efforts towards the end goal of personalization have been nothing short of phenomenal. The loyalty program now has around 25 million members. In 2018, members accounted for 80 percent of Sephora’s total transactions. And for the third year in a row, with a score of 79 out of a possible 100, Sephora has claimed the top slot in Sailthru’s Retail Personalization Index.

 

3. Investing in Tools for Superior Data Management

The most important step in using customer data to drive unique experiences is deploying the right tech stack flexibly with the right platform. Tools and technology enablement can be driven effectively by bringing the right digital transformation partner on board. There are a whole set of criteria that can help companies determine their choice of partner – from effective personalization and campaign management to loyalty program scalability and deployment. There are several players competing for these services today with prominent names including Oracle, Adobe, Salesforce, and Acquia. Each offers a unique set of tools to optimize customer analytics to deliver higher sales and ROI.

 

In a world dominated by customer data and personalization trends, loyalty is a crucial pivot towards delivering maximum satisfaction. Whether for optimum instant rewards or long-term value drivers, get in touch with our experts at Capillary Technologies to enable the best-in-class loyalty programs suited to e-commerce transitions both new and old. Ultimately, customer data is only the foundation, but the decision-making will determine the success of organizations bold enough to transform their processes in favor of omnichannel customer experiences redefining the here and now.

Malaysia’s Data-Powered Loyalty Market is Growing Stronger: A Strategic CRM Deep Dive

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Data has become the biggest asset for marketing giants today who are innovating heavily through the new normal. The shift to data-centricity, in terms of customer retention, has meant introducing advanced analytical loyalty solutions across the world’s largest markets. It entails doubling down on targeting precision and personalization efficiency like never before. In Southeast Asia, the Malaysian loyalty market has been growing consistently and exponentially over the past 5 years at a CAGR of over 12.5%. The expected value of the market is stipulated at $534 Mn in 2022 and is expected to compound to $848 Mn by 2026. As a result, leading brands across sectors are adapting niche data-driven loyalty practices to boost growth significantly.

Sustainable relationships with Malaysian customers will very much depend on the data-backed CRM flexibility with which these brands power their loyalty programs in the coming years, too. Retail, Fintech and Food are the three largest industries that are seeing a huge uptick in sales on the back of data-driven loyalty solutions. However, what’s proving a crucial advantage and differentiator between them, at once, is the kind of data management programs that lie at the heart of customer loyalty. Business leaders across the board are unanimously agreeing to the benefits of these programs even for financial services that are late to join the bandwagon. It all goes to show that the current demand and popularity of multi-tier point-based loyalty cards and apps is at an all-time high. 

1. Car Loyalty Integrating Data-Powered Service Benefits

On the other end of the spectrum, the Malaysian automobile sector is seeing a swing in terms of customers benefiting from exclusive rewards out of efficient data-mining practices. For instance, in April 2021, Hyundai-Sime Darby Motors announced that the firm had launched two after-sales loyalty programs in Malaysia. The two service loyalty programs include the i-Care Plus and a Loyalty Card, which offers freebies and discounts to Hyundai customers whose data is readily collected across all online and offline communication and sales touchpoints.

Notably, the i-Care Plus program is only available for vehicles that are four years or older. Customers can sign up for the program at any authorized center across the country for just RM20. The loyalty program provides a 10% discount on selected parts, a 5% discount on labor charges, and two free engine oil bottles and an oil filter. This is an entirely personalized discounting solution that is based on identifying cohorts of customers who would exclusively benefit from these customized discounts. These cohorts are then targeted through high-tech marketing intelligence platforms that ensure feedback and new customer insights into planning and implementing the next set of rewards and discounts.

The exclusivity principle drives the data-backed solution to become more robust over the long term as the refining of need and behavior-based insights continue.

It is clear that the role of customer data is integral to the machinery of service loyalty for Hyundai which thrives on the back of its efficient tech stacks that refine and segment the customer data on a real-time basis. The Loyalty Card program offered by Hyundai comes with the ownership of any Hyundai model. The exclusive benefits offered under the program include a 20% discount on KLIMA Fresh and BlueChem products if bought during the particular month in which the promotions are run. Notably, customers are expected to receive more benefits in the future, including discounts on merchandise and higher trade-in value when the customer purchases another Hyundai vehicle.

2. Retaining Overlooked Customers with Data-Backed Omnichannel Campaigns

Alcohol and spirits distributor, Drinkies Malaysia, retained their customers with  “Bottoms Up! Forecasting Demand with Party Moments” campaign. The brand wanted to tap into those customers who they knew little about. To gain the highest top-of-mind, Drinkies wanted to take it to the next level by understanding deep data patterns, enriching performance, and generating higher demand so it can engage with these neglected consumers better. Drinkies brought the 3.5 million drinkers of alcohol in Malaysia a better online experience using a comprehensive CRM solution that uses data and enriched consumer profiles to market Drinkies products and services in a more effective way. Drinkies used DotDigital, an omnichannel marketing automation platform, that connects seamlessly to the Magento shop backend and allows for enriched data extraction, creating smart segments.

3. Data-Driven SaaS Partnerships On the Rise

AI-powered loyalty programs are expected to boost the growth of loyalty program providers from the short to medium-term perspective in Malaysia. One major trend is, therefore, the collaboration between companies and leading tech partners to offer a single source of truth when it comes to collecting and utilizing customer data. The collaboration is founded upon the principle of allowing for much more flexibility while personalizing offers, promotions, rewards and discounts. By grouping together multiple rewards, moreover, new tech stacks work wonders to ensure that customers are given the full convenience and choice benefits that they need while purchasing products from one buyer and availing of benefits from the other.

Let’s take a closer look at how it all works. In June 2021, BonusLink, the multiparty loyalty card program provider, replaced its traditional marketing tools with intelligent customer analytics in order to create a single solution to interpreting customer data. This enables BonusLink to offer enhanced and personalized experiences to its loyal members while encouraging repeat purchases. This involves creating customer segments and refining that data flowing in from multiple platforms and marketing/sales channels through a single point of view. Beyond this point, the varied applications of AI-powered cognitive analytics ensure that the adtech and martech platforms that implement the communications around the program are equipped to customize the messaging according to unique customer needs and behavioral trends.

The Way Forward for Data-Driven Loyalty

All other sectors are also experiencing advancements of data-driven loyalty market in Malaysia. A leading provider of 4G LTE plans, YES, for instance, surprised competitors in the telecom sectors through its advanced data-backed loyalty solutions for customers based on their specific usage of mobile data packs over time. Taylor’s University used their student data records to effectively boost visibility by tailoring a rewards program to suit the specific needs of business students who had entrepreneurship dreams. Moreover, Carrefour launched integrated loyalty programs in Malaysia through a multi-point system designed heavily on the basis of customer mapping and in-depth purchase data analysis. Going forward, Malaysian loyalty is, thus, a unique space to watch out for when it comes to the most elaborate as well as nuanced data-driven programs that are redefining CRM strategies for the brands in the here and now.