Black Friday: 4 customer data issues that retailers must anticipate
The Black Friday has become a major event with customers for retail. This date offers a strategic opportunity to to collect and customer and prospect data to improve customer relations, better target the consumers and engage throughout the year.
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When we say customer data we have to consider Data Quality, as it is not possible to fully leverage data without it. Here are the 4 questions you need to focus on concerning Data Quality to prepare for the strategic retail occasion, Black Friday.
Question#1 : Are your customer databases ready for this key date in retail?
How can you get sales off to a good start if your communication plan is not backed up by an up-to-date database? To build effective and profitable marketing campaigns before and during sale, you must not neglect the basics: a healthy and structured database!
Recommendations:
- Opt for an audit of your data: before even thinking about collecting new data, it is important to start by analyzing the quality of your database.
- Eliminate erroneous data from your databases: automatic batch processing on your databases allows you to clean up erroneous or inactive emails and telephone numbers and to proceed with the standardization and validation of postal addresses... This way you have reliable data for delivering your promotions.
- Deduplicate your customer and prospect files: avoid sending the same message several times to the same recipient and unnecessarily wasting your marketing budget.
Question #2: Are your customer data forms compatible with ROI in retail?
Today, forms often condition the rest of the relationship with your contact, which implies that you should pay the greatest attention to them, asking yourself the right questions as soon as they are developed. Forms must be valued within your strategy because Data is now considered a performance generator!
Recommendations:
- Check the validity of incoming phone numbers in your databases: to orchestrate your phone or push notification campaigns efficiently, your forms must be able to collect only active land line or mobile numbers.
- Limit the number of incoming bounces: these erroneous emails affect your conversion rates, damage your brand’s reputation with ISPs and weigh on your budgets. When entering the email in the form, several points can be verified in real time: verification that the domain name exists and that it is indeed an email server; that the user name exists in this domain name; and that it is not a disposable email (often used in fraud attempts).
- Don't lose sight of your customer - Geolocation : it is possible to geolocate your customer in real time, so you can suggest a store or an offer nearby. During sales, these services are not to be neglected, in order to stand out from the competition!
- Make sure that the emails you store in your database are really active: why bother with structurally valid emails that have not been used for months or even years? Indeed, it is possible to detect in real time if the emails entered have recently been active.
- Avoid personalization errors a wrong title in a form can have more significant consequences than it seems... Sending a man a promotion on your collection of dresses addressed to “Mrs.” is not necessarily well perceived, and the purchase has little chance of succeeding!
Question #3 : How do you accelerate the collection of customer data in the middle of a retail rush?
Whether it is filled out directly by the customer online or at the point-of-sale by the advisor, the form is an essential step that must be particularly effective during these busy periods. It is important to know how to simplify and streamline the entry of customer data into forms in order to systematize the collection of data, without lengthening the purchasing process for your customers!
Recommendations:
- Integrate an autocomplete or input help solution into your forms: for faster and more reliable customer data entry.
- Opt for "Data Minimization": the quantity of data collected should not be your priority, it is better to focus on quality. The fewer fields your form has, the faster it will be collected.
- Help the advisor identify their client in real time: in a few clicks, the advisor finds the client's file and only fills in the missing information. Moreover, integrating a solution of this type also helps avoid the creation of duplicates in your databases.
- Aim for quick and reliable consent in-store: when collecting customer data, customer consent is mandatory. At the physical poin-of-sale, obtaining formal consent from the customer is not necessarily as obvious as online. Before recording the data entered in the form, the advisor must obtain consent face-to-face: there is now an innovative DQM solution that facilitates receiving consent on your offline channels... in compliance with GDPR obligations.
Question #4: Have you made your retail teams aware of customer data issues?
Collecting customer data during sales often seems like a tedious task for your teams: slowing down the checkout process, errors in entering information on online forms, etc. For better collection during sales, you need to prepare your sales force before this rush period: rely on your salespeople, advisors and telephone operators!
Recommendations:
- Raise awareness among your employees: your teams must be convinced of the need to collect reliable customer data, even during sales. They should not think that it is a waste of time.
- Stop manual updates: about 32% of companies waste time manually correcting their customer data... while Data Quality Management solutions exist, both in real-time and in curative modes, for faster results that are more reliable.
- Entrust the optimization of your data to a recognized in-house expert: to each their own specialty!
About DQE
Because data quality is essential to customer knowledge and the construction of a lasting relationship, since 2008, DQE has provided its clients with innovative and comprehensive solutions that facilitate the collection of reliable data.
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