Andrew Stephenson
Director of Marketing EMEA, Treasure Data
Visibility of the customer journey, loyalty and data are critical components of maintaining growth and profitability within a business.
Creating customer loyalty and trust is an integral part of maintaining a healthy business. In turn, loyalty drives growth, sales and profits, but also nurtures closer and longer-lasting relationships with customers. Core to that is the value, and use, of data.
Data marketing expert Andrew Stephenson explains that the customer journey and loyalty are inextricably linked with data.
“Businesses need to make an impression that lasts,” he says. “To do this they need to understand their customers and interact with them based on their behaviours with – and what they want from – the brand, to enable the best experience.
“This in turn breeds loyalty and essentially keeps them as a customer for longer and even helps acquire new customers.”
Increased visibility
This, however, may be challenging, he adds, as businesses often do not have full visibility of the customer journey.
In addition, that journey may see customers switching between digital and physical interactions as they interact with a brand.
He says: “They will also use multiple screens in the same session, flitting between tablet, laptop and mobile – and expect the experience to be connected and relevant.
“Part of the secret is in capturing this digital footprint from the customer, deciphering the data signals and then using the insights intelligently to drive that personal-end to-end customer experience that is connected. Customers see that they are valued and, in turn, that will increase loyalty.”
Once a business has that visibility, it can make changes “to see what works to drive certain behaviours.”
A business that uses its data more effectively has better relationships with its customers.
Encouraging customer loyalty
The benefits of understanding the customer journey, and the data within that, are significant. “It enables businesses to have access to a lot more information, so they are able to understand their customers more deeply; from historical information through to real-time in-the-moment current behaviour, either in store or online.
“They can harness this to gauge what the customer needs from a brand and how they want to be interacted with and through which channel.”
He says this will drive customer loyalty, growth, revenue and profitability, “A business that uses its data more effectively has better relationships with its customers,” he says.
Transforming customer experiences
Treasure Data, founded in 2011, is an organisation which simplifies customer data management and help brands transform customer experiences by identifying, engaging and acquiring customers in a flexible, scalable and secure environment. Its CDP (customer data platform) unifies customer data across silos.
Stephenson, who is Treasure Data’s marketing director, explains that his organisation plugs into a business ecosystem of other data, technology, marketing and finance tools, websites and harnessed data from every location in the business and pulls it into a single place.
“We then augment and segment the data and help businesses to analyse customer behaviour, such as identifying who they are, whether they have been instore, online, or on Facebook channels – and if they are one of your best customers.” That helps businesses make sense of data, he adds, and “send out the right messages to the right customers.”
Utilising data platforms
One example has been its work with a virtual reality games publisher, which used the CDP (customer data platform) to acquire and utilise data to optimise the player experience.
“After implementing their customer data platform, they experienced 10 times more data, which was accessible for behavioural insights, revealing the importance of improving customer experiences which resulted in an increase in customer retention,” he says.
In another case, a large cosmetics maker added a digital component to its customer loyalty program to link instore and online behaviour to loyalty programmes and deliver personalised messaging.
By delivering a personalised customer experience, revenue and business increased, equating to a 20% increase in in-store revenue per loyalty program member, 11% increase in company revenues, and 38% growth in net income.