More and more in the modern market, consumers are demanding personalized shopping experiences from brands. Delivering what they want means tapping into big data and using the details you discover to create marketing campaigns targeted at a granular level.
Take Advantage of Details
Thanks to big data, you can now track every action your customers take, including searches, page visits, social engagement and purchases. This is the data you need for successful segmentation and personalized marketing. Gather as much information as possible to discover who you should target and what messages will resonate with them.
Monitoring these common behaviors provides a solid foundation for your audience segments:
• Search habits
• Which items customers buy
• How much each customer spends
• How often orders are made
• Overall satisfaction with the buying experience
• How much time customers spend on specific social channels
Use the Right Tools
Eddie Levine, CEO of Hub Dub and President of Wholesale Breakthrough, is one of the foremost authorities on ecommerce. After speaking with him, I learned that investing in the right tools played an important role in his success.
Detailed analytics tools are essential if you want to take this overwhelming amount of data and turn it into something you can actually use to target your customers. Invest in a big data analytics platform appropriate for the size of your business, and use the included reporting tools to gain a clear understanding of how the best ways to separate customers into segments.
Sometimes you will discover your most engaged and loyal audience members don’t fit the original profile you envisioned for your target market. You may also uncover niches you never would have thought to target. Using the insights that you will gain from analyzing trends in consumer behaviors to create specific marketing campaigns saves money by ensuring the people getting your messages are already interested in what you have to offer.
There are a lot of great tools that you can use to collect data. Hadoop has made the process much simpler. Make sure that you understand the benefits and functionality of these systems to get the most of them.
Make Informed Predictions
Researchers at Ohio State University found targeting ads based on behaviors can increase click-through rates as much as 670 percent. Part of this success may lie in the use of predictive analytics, a technique made possible only with big data. Past spending and purchasing decisions can be used to anticipate what a customer may buy next and to retarget individual consumers by suggesting similar products via email, offsite advertising or during a subsequent shopping session. Relying on such predictions requires diligent inventory management so that you can always deliver on the promises made in your campaigns.
Emphasize Added Value
The quality of the solutions that you provide with big data isn’t all that matters. The perception of that value is even more important. You need to make sure that the improved functionality is clearly communicated.
Personalized marketing messages should always provide relevant and helpful insights to your audience segments. Ask yourself how your products and services make life easier for customers, and structure your ad campaigns to answer these questions. Make use of automation to deliver the most appropriate ads in every phase of the buying journey, guiding customers from one purchase to the next through a sales funnel designed just for them. You can even personalize the delivery process by partnering with a network of warehouses to ensure products always ship from the closest possible location.
Diligent analysis of big data brings you the insights you need to target customers based on the full scope of their activities and interests, opening doors to unprecedented marketing opportunities. As you continue to refine your segments, you’ll be able to develop more powerful campaigns designed to create lasting connections between your customers and your brand.
Big Data Improves Marketing Performance Dramatically with Customer Segmentation
You will want to invest in customer segmentation to optimize your marketing strategies in the future. The good news is that new data driven solutions have significantly improved customer targeting capabilities. Make sure that you utilize them to their fullest capability.