With the holidays almost upon us, one of the hallmarks of the season is the tradition of gift giving. More often than not, this is personal custom rather than a professional one, and many people don’t think of their business as being able to deliver them gifts. However, there are tremendous elements of value that can be delivered to organisations through the untapping of the existing data streams that exist across the growing technology stack.
Perhaps the best aspect of these ‘gifts’ is that they are the sort that keep on giving year round in terms of perspective, understanding and advisory to guide decisions, strategies, engagements and innovations, or put another way, “Data’s for Life, not just for Christmas”! Here is a look at the 12 ‘datas’ (that is dimensions of data) of Christmas that can begin delivering significant value to your brand.
- Customer Behaviour
Customers are becoming increasingly savvy and complex with the continual evolution of technology in their lives. Add in the unpredictable nature of their ability to engage brands with ever-changing COVID restrictions, and it’s never been more important to have a firm understanding of the behaviors and preferences of your customers.
Sources: Much of the ideal customer behaviour data is drawn from their sources of engagements with the individual. Identifying these interaction points is key and often includes online platforms, mobile apps and in-store point-of-sale systems. Integrating data from these systems relays the behavioural trends and tendencies, advising how to most effectively personalise their engagements to motivate those customers..
- Customer Preferences
Whilst understanding behaviours is important, having a view of a customer’s preferences is also essential. This allows the brand to align and mirror the customers in their preferred channels, products and even communication methods. Achieving this helps to foster an increasing comfort level with the brand.
Sources: The sources for preferences often can be similar to the datasets to understand behaviours, however there is more of a focus on the trends of the customer and their tendencies to engage and purchase over time. This often conveys their preferred channels which also indicates the products and price differentiation and preference they have within each channel.
- Customer Opinions
Whilst behaviours and preferences are essential dimensions to understand to influence an individual customer, their opinions of your products and brands are aspects that influence others, namely other customers and prospects. Keeping tabs on the satisfaction levels of customers helps to address issues and display a commitment to customer happiness. These opinions can be monitored by collecting Satisfaction, NPS, Advocacy, or Customer “Effort” data. Frequently, organisations fret about the specific metric to use but the reality is normally that all these metrics correlate and the key thing is to monitor trends – sudden, sharp declines, regardless of the specific metric are usually a cause for concern.
Sources: In today’s digital world data streams of customer sources are fragmented and can include both internal and external sources. These can be presented from internal or external product reviews, as well as brand rankings. Beyond this, social media channels should be monitored given the ability for customers to voice their pleasure or displeasure with a product or engagement on an ongoing basis. This can be particularly damaging given the widespread audience access.
- Customer Loyalty
There are few dimensions of customer engagement that have received more attention in recent years than customer loyalty. This customer commitment often serves as the backbone of a business and can also be a determining factor of the health of a brand. Digital channels continue to make gauging and measuring customer loyalty easier and easier with the ‘digital footprints’ customers leave behind.
Sources: Given the growing importance of this dimension, there are a number of data dimensions that provide ongoing insight into the state of loyalty for your brand. Purchase trends in terms of frequency, timing and seasonality are important factors to track across ecommerce and point-of-sale systems. Beyond, this reward and referral program engagement and usage are also vital dimensions to understand the loyalty levels of your customers.
- Competitive Advantages
Whilst focusing on your own business and brand health should be the first priority, it is also important to keep tabs on your competition and the advantages you hold against them. As markets shift, understanding how your competitors are changing and engaging consumers is important for your own strategic initiatives.
Sources: Looking at the reviews, rankings and social engagements for your own products and brands is important. However, it is just as essential to do the same for your primary (and even potential) competitors to understand how they are viewed by consumers and engaging the market. Aside from these dimensions, third party ranking reports can be an important tool to benchmark how your business is performing. Competitor intelligence can often act as an early warning of potential problems to come.
- Channel Efficacy
Often businesses can become too diluted, supporting too many channels and chasing the ‘next hot’ trend. This is why keeping track of the efficacy and efficiency of customer engagement channels is key. With so many shifts in markets it can also quickly make certain channels critical to a businesses operation and others obsolete in short order. So, understanding how individual channels engage, motivate and convert customers is an essential viewpoint your data can provide.
Sources: Reviewing data streams across each channel, whether ecommerce, point-of-sale, in-app, third party, etc., should be a regular check-in point to determine efficiency and efficacy. Data elements like purchase amounts, frequency and conversion across each channel helps to identify both the primary drivers and primary laggards in order to focus resources efficiently.
- Messaging Efficacy
Measuring your marketing messaging should also be a focal point of business and is another ‘gift’ that your data streams can provide. Testing various messaging across various marketing points helps to determine what is influencing and motivating customers to purchase, and beyond this to drive their loyalty towards, or away from your products and brands.
Sources: Messaging efficacy analysis should be considered across each marketing channel and engagement point on a regular basis. These include search elements, digital ads, online engagements, web and app content, social media and in-store aspects. This evaluation allows you to modify messaging in order to enhance efficacy and increase sales.
- Promotion Efficacy
Beyond messaging, tracking the impact of promotions is also important, particularly in that they often cut into margins and can cost the business significantly. This is why understanding the results of promotions and the impact on the bottom line are both essential to the health of the business. Often, you may find you don’t need a promotion to motivate a customer and that the discount is simply unnecessarily eroding margins.
Sources: Taking a comparative review of the rewards, coupons, discounts and product promotions are very important. This is not only to which are most effective, but also which customer genuinely requires them in order to convert. The datasets that drive this insight is from customer purchasing behaviour before, during and after the promotion. Understanding their path to purchase, with and without the promotion, is just as essential as which promotion is most effective.
- Product Quality
There are few measuring sticks of a business that have a more tried and trusted stance in a business than product quality. Many businesses sink or swim based on product quality alone, and in today’s ‘Age of the Consumer’ it has never been easier for individuals to sing the praises or scream the criticisms of a product which can make or break a company. This is why continuing to track product quality has never been more important…or easier.
Sources: There is a spectrum of data sources that provides insight into the perceived quality of a product from across the market. Internal customer service operations provide a wealth of insight into this around the issues motivating customers to call in for support. Beyond this, internal and external product reviews and brand rankings are important dimensions, as are third party product assessments. The greatest wealth of information in this realm probably comes from social media, which allows the customer to broadcast their product quality assessments in real time. And whilst this can be challenging for a company, it is also an opportunity for the business to effectively respond and rectify issues.
- Product Pricing
Pricing can be one of the trickiest and most evolving aspects of a product. It also goes hand-in-hand with the product quality dimension we previously discussed. There are an array of internal and external factors that impact and influence pricing, and this is another element that can play a crucial role in the success of a product or brand.
Sources: Whilst understanding the cost drivers of a product is essential in setting the pricing, it is also important to have a view into the perceived pricing of your product in the market. This is where purchase volumes and trends across each channel become important, as well as the promotional efficiency we discussed earlier and how it can erode margin. It’s also important to watch how your competitors are pricing their competitive products to increase their market share.
- Employee Attitudes
Whilst the focus of business largely lies on the state of mind of its customers and prospects, the state of mind of your employees should not be ignored. Their attitudes around the business are not only a direct reflection on the health of the company, but are also projected onto their engagements with the customer. This is why understanding and addressing the satisfaction of employees is another important element of data that can provide valuable insight. As the often quoted “Sears Case Study” from the Harvard Business Review demonstrated, happy employees lead to happy customers and in turn sales. Whilst decades old, this analysis still holds true.(The Employee-Customer-Profit Chain at Sears Jan-Feb 1998).
Sources:The task of understanding your employees is often a little bit different to that of your customers. Whilst ethnographic research through social media posts can provide some perspective, most employees will not discuss their company online for fear of what it could result in for them professionally. Keeping track of third party employee rating sites is something to keep in mind, however the best approach is to ask through surveys and conversations. Getting this feedback, anonymously and without repercussions, and then acting on it can make a major impact on the health of an organisation’s culture.
- Market Trends
Tracking the market is last in this 12 ‘Datas’ of Christmas, but certainly not least. The markets are constantly shifting and evolving through COVID isolation and ever-changing restrictions. Having a viewpoint into these changes and how they impact the health of your business is another essential data-driven dimension to track.
Sources: There is a wide spectrum of data on market trends and related customer tendencies that can help provide perspective to your brand. Third party surveys of consumers, industry benchmark reports and brand reviews all provide holistic insights into the market perceptions of brands and how they relate to these industry shifts and evolutions. So, understanding the ongoing changes and addressing them appropriately can provide an essential competitive advantage in the eyes of the consumer.
So, as you can see, there is a wealth of ‘gifts’ that data can provide to your organisation in order to understand the various dimensions of your business and evolve to align with the needs and preferences of your customers. The key is to embrace these gifts by using them to drive your decisions, develop your strategies, design your engagements and deliver your innovations. This data-driven approach will not only migrate your business toward a genuine customer-centric approach, but also enhance the loyalty of your customers.
Please take these 12 “Datas” of Christmas as a seasonal gift from me with my warmest wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous (and less eventful) New Year. Happy Christmas.
