Customers use a variety of touchpoints to interact with companies, including web, email, text, social, mobile, and voice. As consumers increase their cross-channel activities, companies are being forced to pay closer attention to their behaviors in order to provide them with relevant messaging and offers. And for good reason. Research by IDC reveals that consumers who purchase both in-store and online have a 30% higher customer lifetime value than those customers who shop using just one channel.
However, many companies struggle to fully understand the various channels used by each customer and how they’re used, partly as a result of channel silos that prevent marketers from gaining a 360-degree view of customers. In some cases, organizational fiefdoms arise where customer data that’s gathered via email or chat is gathered and maintained separately from customer data that’s generated via web, mobile, social, etc.
In many companies, customer data that’s collected through each of these channels isn’t well integrated with other types of channel and customer data, such as CRM.
A major problem faced by marketers as a result of disconnected channels is the inability to send relevant messaging to the right customers through the right touchpoints at the right time.
An event-driven integration platform can be used to take all of the information that’s flowing across critical channels while analytics that’s layered in can help marketers to identify the types of customer patterns they’re most interested. Event processing can be used to spot those patterns in real time and business process management can be used to turn customer insight into action.
The combination of these capabilities is Fast Data. With Fast Data, real-time and transactional data that’s generated from across the full spectrum of customer interactions, including the Internet of Things, can be used by marketers to provide highly targeted and contextual customer messaging when it matters most.
For instance, Fast Data can be used by a marketer for a men’s fashion retailer, in which a particular customer is researching men’s suits on their website. CRM data further informs the marketer that the customer is a frequent shopper and a loyal, high-value customer. These and other insights from the customer’s profile, along with the use of analytics, have recommended that the marketer extend a 20% discount for each suit bought after the initial purchase.
By combining real-time and transactional data from across each of the touchpoints that contribute to the customer’s profile, the marketing leader is able to provide an offer that makes the customer feel valued for his patronage while generating additional upsell revenues for the retailer.
