Category: Customer Data

Today’s retail has nothing to do with what it was 20 years ago, nor with what it was 5 years ago. Due to the advances and changes that have taken place in this sector, companies have had to adapt to this new situation and many are still in the process of doing so. Therefore, one of the most recurrent questions is still: How can my company adapt to these changes in the most efficient way?

Putting the customer at the centre is essential. ROPO, Showrooming… each customer has specific needs and expectations of your company that you must meet. Failure to do so would certainly result in your customer going to your competitor. Therefore, it is no longer enough to have a powerful product, you also need to meet the specific demands of each of your customers if you want to retain them.

How does the rise of omnichannel affect the way I sell?

Retail companies are living in a world of constant change, to which they must adapt. The rise of Omnichannel as a new key trend in this sector is leaving behind many companies unable to practice omnichannel in a real way.

The fact that a company sells products in a physical shop and on its website is not enough to consider your company an omnichannel company, as this requires a comprehensive strategy in which you can control all of your channels as if they were only one.

If John buys in your physical shop on a recurring basis, why, when he accesses your website, you don’t consider him the same John who buys every month in the physical store?

By concentrating all your customer’s data on a single platform, you will be able to compare them and unify that customer as John, and not as three different customers. This will allow your company to be truly Customer Centric, as your customers will no longer be a number, or even several different ones, but a person who likes your brand and wants to continue buying your products.

Hyper-segmentation

The unification of your customer data in a single platform is a great advance for your company, but today’s technology allows us to do even more. Following on from the previous point, having that customer who navigates through your different channels unified and with knowledge of all their contacts with your company, will allow you to segment those customers in a way you had never imagined.

Segmenting by age, gender, and income is useful, but insufficient in 2022. The use of an Intelligent CDP, apart from unifying customer data, will also allow you to hyper-segment these customers. This accumulation and unification of data on one platform will allow you to analyse and drill down into your customers’ trends, in terms of attitude and behaviour towards your brand and their buying preferences.

If you know how each of your customers tends to shop, you will be able to make customer journeys based on real-time data, and see how campaigns, promotions, or new collections affect this customer journey. This understanding of your customers’ behaviour will allow you to hyper-segment in a much more effective and realistic way.

Personalization

The hyper-segmentation plus the 360-degree view of the customer achievable with the use of an Intelligent CDP, will allow your company to offer one of the most valuebale needs of today’s customers. The real personalization of the experience and the products that your company offers.

If you know that an specific customer wants T-shirts because that’s what they always buy, why would you send them a promotional code for a shirt? With a 360-degree view of your customer and a marketing team guided by this data, you can offer your customers personalization in real time, varying according to their latest preferences.

If John has been looking for trousers on your website, but he tends to buy them in the physical shop, you can expect him to go to the physical shop he usually goes to (due to proximity), and have those trousers in stock there, as it is highly likely that he will go there in a short period of time.

WHY FLYDE?

Do you want your company to move on to the next level? A CDP is the key tool that will allow you to maximise the potential of your data and grow your business. Working like the big multinationals in the market, which already have this type of software, and having control over all your data is now very simple.

Moreover, if you do not have IT or Data Scientist teams, this tool will allow you to outsource this function. And if you have them but want to reduce their workload and give more autonomy to your marketing and business teams when it comes to working with data, implementing an easy-to-use CDP would be the best option for your company. It will allow any single member of your company to use it, as this softwares are prepared for them.

Retail has always been accompanied by the difficulty for companies to manage stock efficiently. In order to do this, optimal sales control and forecasting is necessary, but… How can we rely on the latest advances in technology to do this?

How do I solve my stock management problem?

Stock management has become a complicated task for companies. The rise of omni-channel distribution and sales has meant that a greater involvement is required to keep all these channels up to date and coordinated in real time. For this reason, many companies are opting to apply new technological solutions that improve these processes, reduce costs and ensure an optimal management.

One of the most recurrent solutions to tackle these problems is to implement Warehouse Management Software (WMS). The problem with this type of tool is that, despite its efficiency in the warehouse, it is not a total solution to the problem as it helps to know your stock in real time but does not go beyond that. Not knowing how your stock can evolve or not coordinating this valuable information with other teams such as marketing, sales or finance, are some of the handicaps they present.

If what we are looking for is a more efficient management, which allows us to plan in time to avoid problems such as stock breakages, the solution is to coordinate different tools that give us a broader view of our environment, unify the data from all departments of our company and can provide added value. And one of them, without a doubt, should be the inclusion of an Intelligent CDP.

What solutions can I apply with an Intelligent CDP?

An Intelligent CDP, or Intelligent Customer Data Platform, is a software that will allow your company to unify all the available data of your company, so that all your departments can work in coordination. However, the fundamental value of an Intelligent CDP, as its name suggests, is the application of Artificial Intelligence, to process these data in the most efficient way possible, finding details imperceptible to the human eye, and saving huge amounts of time for employees.

• Unify data: a Smart CDP will allow you to unify data from your WMS, sales, marketing campaigns, and any data you can imagine, and to which your company has access; to later be able to access this platform and get answers about your customers or any movement done by your company.
• Control in real time: access to all the information in a single platform will allow you to see in real time how each movement that the company carries out affects your stock. Thus, for example, the marketing department will be able to observe not only an increase in sales, but in real time they will be able to see the effect of each campaign or action carried out on the warehouse, and vice versa, thus being able to anticipate problems with the lack or excess of stock.
• Predict sales: as we have seen above, the Intelligent CDP is not only a CDP, but applies Artificial Intelligence to take your business to the next level. In this way, an Intelligent CDP allows you to predict sales in real time, and therefore, you will be able to anticipate any stock management problem, with an accuracy that could reach heights of over 95%, depending on the amount of data provided. And not only that, you will also be able to: establish relationships about peak and off-peak sales periods, and of which products. Which specific customers are buying each product, in what quantity and when or at what times the company is most likely to run out of stock, etc. All this is now possible with FLYDE.

WHY FLYDE?

Do you want your company to move on to the next level? A CDP is the key tool that will allow you to maximise the potential of your data and grow your business. Working like the big multinationals in the market, which already have this type of software, and having control over all your data is now very simple.

Moreover, if you do not have IT or Data Scientist teams, this tool will allow you to outsource this function. And if you have them but want to reduce their workload and give more autonomy to your marketing and business teams when it comes to working with data, implementing an easy-to-use CDP would be the best option for your company. It will allow any single member of your company to use it, as this softwares are prepared for them.

CDP or Customer Data Platform market is growing exponentially. Once you have understood the utility of a CDP you may start to think on implementing a CDP in your company. However, how would you be able to know which CDP best suits your company? To solve this question we have developed a list with the main aspects that will help you make this important decision.

1. Do I need a CDP in my company?

Modern companies, no matter their size or sector, generate a massive quantity of data, both from its online and offline customers and channels. The problem of the majority of the companies is that they don’t use this data properly and, therefore, a complete or partial lack of knowledge of their customers and their behaviours.

A CDP helps companies unlock the full value of their customers in a very simple way: by unifying, collating and analysing all of their data from a single platform, enabling a complete understanding of their customers.

It is therefore an essential tool for any company that generates a large volume of data, is not getting the most out of it and needs to have a solid and complete customer database.

2. Is my data safe in a CDP?

The majority of the CDP offer a large list of guarantees, in terms of data-protection. However, they tend to limit their data protection to the legislation of the region where it is settled, so it is always better to choose a CDP that comes from a territory with strong legislation in this area.

The United States, and especially Europe, have the most advanced legislation in terms of data protection, so it is always preferable to opt for a CDP from a company that comes from these territories bearing in mind that, in addition, if the CDP is European, it will guarantee compliance with the most advanced and secure data protection regulation on the market.

Not only that, at FLYDE we also offer you full internal control over data governance so that you can define which users have permission to which data, among other features.

3. Which functionalities should I look at in a CDP?

Every CDP should have the minimum requirement covered. However there are many functionalities that may vary in between the different CDPs.

Firstly, it is essential that the CDP fits with the expectations of your business. That is, thanks to the platform and its functionalities, meeting the objectives of the different areas is simple and can be done in a coordinated way between departments. For this, there are two fundamental points: analyse the tools available (more info about FLYDE Apps) and the ease of use of the platform. To make sure that the platform is what you are looking for, we recommend you to make a DEMO, this way you will ensure that anyone in your team can use it and you will see the platform in operation with real data.

Other functionalities that would make a big change in between the different CDPs is the use of Artificial Intelligence in the platform. The AI is the future when crossed over with huge quantities of Data and it would suppose a radical change to your customer comprehension.

Finally, other important features to look for in a CDP are those that are aligned to your business and objectives.

For example, if you have a loyalty programme, you will probably be interested in having a Dynamic Scoring. If you have an eCommerce with online and offline customers, a Single Customer View with a 360-degree view of the customer, or if you work taking into account KPIs by geographic area, a Geomarketing tool.

4. Could I integrate the different apps my company uses in the CDP?

As we have mentioned previously, a key feature of CDP’s is the ability to unify your company’s data in a single platform. A Customer Data Platform enables your company to integrate every single app used in order to unify all of your data. From Social Media to CSV files, through Shopify or the CRM your company is using, a CDP allows you to integrate all of these data sources to look at and analyse all of that data on a single platform.

Is it fundamental when choosing a CDP to look at the number of integrations available? Definitely not as long as the CDP provider offers to integrate your existing applications even if they are not in their current portfolio of integrations.

5. How much does a CDP cost?

We know that price when choosing a CDP, as well as in any other platform, is crucial. There is a huge range of prices in the CDP market depending on different characteristics that define each company.

One of the most important is the need for the support of a technical team or Data Scientist. This will make the CDP more expensive, as the more complex the CDP is to use, the higher the costs of its implementation and subsequent use will be.

The price is also influenced by whether you have technical services, the amount of functionalities you hire or the use of data, among other factors. Due to all these variable factors there is no fixed price range. Our recommendation is that you contact us and discover all the possibilities through a demo or a free trial.

Why FLYDE?

Do you want your company to move on to the next level? A CDP is the key tool that will allow you to maximise the potential of your data and grow your business. Working like the big multinationals in the market, which already have this type of software, and having control over all your data is now very simple.

Moreover, if you do not have IT or Data Scientist teams, this tool will allow you to outsource this function. And if you have them but want to reduce their workload and give more autonomy to your marketing and business teams when it comes to working with data, implementing an easy-to-use CDP would be the best option for your company. It will allow any single member of your company to use it, as this softwares are prepared for them.

Have you ever stopped to think about how much data your company has access to? Transactional, demographic, behavioral data… Anonymous data such as impressions, data on customer purchases or cancellations, etc. In short, huge amounts of very valuable information. 

The main problem is to use them properly, as confirmed by the study conducted by Rethink Data, which shows that 68% of the data generated by companies is not used. This is due to their storage in silos, the fact that they are treated in isolation and with tools that are independent of each other, which makes it difficult to create correlations between them, favors the loss of information and involves a much more costly and complex process for your company. 

In an ideal situation, therefore, all this data would be collected, stored and processed on a single platform. This is where CDPs come into play. Here’s what they are and what benefits they can offer your company.

WHAT IS A CDP?

According to the CDP Institute, a CDP or Customer Data Platform is “packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that can be accessed by other systems“.

In other words, an ecosystem in which customer data is collected from different sources and unified into a single database. The data is cleansed, enriched and transformed into a complete customer profile that can then be used to generate audiences and/or made available to other systems in order to create more personalized campaigns and strategies with data updated in real time. 

To understand it in a simpler way, here is an example: Imagine that your company is going to launch a campaign and needs to know its customers well. With your CDP you would collect the information available at all points of contact (own data, social networks or email, among others), clean and unify that data and create an easily understandable 360 profile. And not only that. Once the profiles have been created, you could segment them by audiences to work with those that are most suitable to your objectives and export them to other platforms, such as Facebook Ads or Mailchimp. All in a fast, automated and easy way.

WHAT BENEFITS CAN A CDP PROVIDE YOUR COMPANY?

1. They offer a unique view of the customer

This type of platforms are designed to collect data from different sources, unify them and offer a concrete and very complete profile of the customer. Much more than any other tool.

2. Better customer experience

Users are using more and more channels and devices. We have also become more demanding, demanding unified experiences across all channels. Having all the information available on the same platform allows us to know the customer and their behavior in depth. This makes it much easier to design personalized strategies that build customer loyalty, and to change and improve them according to the actions they take.

3. Democratize data

Customer data plays a role in all areas of a company: from marketing to customer service, to IT, and so on. Therefore, its use and exchange becomes indispensable when it comes to driving a business forward. With a CDP, all information is updated and available to all departments of the company, avoiding dependencies, data loss and streamlining processes between areas.

4. Allows to be more competitive and to be more responsive

Knowing the customer in depth is key to create strategies and campaigns without blind spots, which are a success. With a CDP you get this and you can also react to changes in the market since the data is collected in real time. Your information will always be up to date. 

5. Greater agility and efficiency

As we mentioned before, one of the biggest problems in data processing is the use of different independent tools, which in turn causes a great fragmentation of data that makes it very difficult to work with them. A CDP solves this problem since it centralizes all these data in the same place, the changes in them are available and can be used later in those tools that are necessary, whatever the area, minimizing duplications and saving time. 

READY TO GET STARTED?

FLYDE allows you to know in detail the customer, predict behaviors and analyze data in real time in an agile way, without bottlenecks and thanks to a system based on AI. In addition, any user can use it without any technical knowledge.

The third Monday in January is the most depressing day of the year. Is your business ready to turn that sadness into happiness for your customers? There are two things in your favor: the beginning of the week is the time when there is a greater tendency to buy and no one knows your shoppers better than you… or so it should be. 

A good exploitation of your customer data is the key to turn your Blue Monday into a sales success. If you have doubts about how to do it, here are some tips to help you get the most out of it.

Recommend products that are useful to THAT customer.

Personalize your offer as much as possible. Your customer doesn’t always have to know that there is a product in your catalog that perfectly meets their needs until they see it on screen or in your store. Therefore, make sure that this information reaches them. 

To help you, analyze behavioral data. Knowing who he is and what he needs will allow you to personalize what you are offering him.

Specific campaigns and promotions, not general ones

Targeting a teenager is not the same as targeting a person over 60. Interests, concerns and needs change completely. Keep in mind the following: general promotions do not generate the same ROI as targeted ones and 71% of consumers prefer personalized ads.

That’s why it’s so important to properly define your audiences, something that is still an unfinished business for more than 85% of marketers today.

Use your first-party data to draw complete profiles that tell you very specifically about your customers. Analyze their pain and gain points, and design promotions that increase their purchase intent with messages that convince them.

Remember the customers who have already trusted you

A loyal customer is a customer who costs less money and one who is more likely to recommend your company. That’s why generating a repeat purchase is so important. 

Filter your database by focusing on those customers who have purchased a product/service in the last few months and make them feel that they are important to you. Why not offer them, for example, a discount as a way of thanking them for having trusted your company?

And, of course, focus on positive and motivating content

In the end, it’s all about Blue Monday. Empathizing with your customers and making them smile is one of the key points that day to make the whole strategy a success. Remember: a customer who connects with your brand is much more valuable than one who is simply satisfied with their purchase. 

FLYDE helps you to get to know your customers

With FLYDE you can cross-reference your customer data from different sources to get a 360-degree view of your customers. We have the perfect tool for this: Customer 360. If you don’t know it yet, you can get more information here.