The holiday season is officially here, and this year it promises to be unlike anything we have experienced before. The 2019 holiday season sales benchmark was overshot by half a billion dollars in May 2020, or after the first three months the global pandemic had struck. If this trend persists, the close of this year could be a potential treasure trove for retailers and marketers.
However, to succeed this holiday season, they will need to proactively gauge the pulse of customers and quickly respond to changing spending behaviors. Bolstering last-mile deliveries, offering easy returns, and adopting a strategic approach toward order fulfillment would be critical. As more and more customers adopt online buying – contactless shopping curbside pickups, and seamless digital payment options will also become significant.
With an expected 25% surge in online holiday sales this year, it is a greenfield opportunity for retailers to pitch products and services that speak to customers beyond the virtual-real divide. Retailers who can aggregate customer data, track online customer behavior, and convert it into actionable insights will have a clear advantage in the coming months. But how can retailers unlock this advantage?
Here is full Learning guide for Pimcore with practical examples for beginners.
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) unify a company’s customer data from multiple channels to enable customer profiling and better targeting of messages and offers. Since they help retailers put together a customer persona from first, second and third-party data, CDPs play a crucial role in humanizing customers beyond data points. This enables marketing teams to really get to know their customers with insights into customer mood, preferences, and spending behavior. In turn, these insights help make sales pitches successful by taking the right product to the right customer at the right time.
By breaking down data silos, CDPs help create accurate target audiences and segmentation groups. This goes a long way in orchestrating narrative-driven marketing campaigns. It also helps brands and marketing teams cut through the noise and tap into the potential customer base with a higher chance of conversions. For instance, Nike made its workout app subscription-free for a limited period to target new health-savvy customers during the lockdown. It also extended its message for at-home fitness to podcasts and other brand communications – creating a seamless narrative across channels. This helped the brand zero-in on a new customer base that can be nurtured and engaged with curated offers and products.
With embedded analytics, CDPs help marketing teams build enduring customer relationships and drive cross-channel, hyper-personalized campaigns across web, mobile, and social media.
With CDPs, retailers and marketing teams exercise higher control on how their products are viewed, ensuring faster and effective conversion.
For the 2020 holiday season, retailers leveraging CDPs can expect to drive higher sales with:
The shift from brick-and-mortar to online shopping is evident, more so due to the pandemic, but the business model of retail hasn’t really changed. Retailers still need to know their customers, albeit through the virtual-real divide, and transact in a way that incrementally builds relations and trust. CDPs bridge the gap between customer data and customer personas, helping retailers and marketing teams leverage the two to make meaningful sales pitches. For the holiday season this year, CDPs could be the catalyst that enables marketing teams to filter the noise and target messages that strike a chord.
Shashin Shah is CEO of Pimcore Global Services, an open-source platform for product information management (PIM/MDM), digital asset management (DAM), content management system (CMS), and eCommerce. In his over 20 years of experience, both globally and in the US, he has managed large enterprise clients through strategizing, operating, consulting, and carrying out implementations worth USD 100M+ via global delivery models across several industries.
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