Retail surgery: How can I harness and utilise our customers’ purchase data?

While not all retailers are dependent on online communication tools, many can learn important lessons from those that are. Over-mailing is never welcome but personalised and eye-catching emails with valuable, meaningful content will be appreciated.

“Customers are demanding a more personalised and relevant experience, they want to be treated as individuals,” says Jim Davidson, manager of marketing research at Bronto Software.

For retailers that use email marketing, timing is critical, especially as you get closer to the actual transaction. “An abandoned cart email that has to be processed overnight is too late,” Davidson says.

“A customer who hasn’t heard from you in more than a month may require far more effort to recapture than one who has only lapsed a week ago.

“The name of the game is to keep communications steady.”

Email is a good opportunity to try out personalisation. Retailers can use email to assess the level of personalisation required in a pre-purchase email compared with a post-purchase communication, or to see whether personalisation of transactional emails work better than separate post-purchase emails, for instance.

Davidson says: “The one thing that you can bank on is that communication can’t be mechanical and irrelevant, which means it will need to be more fluid and personalised.”