In a world where digital customers are constantly connected, highly informed and always on the go, traditional customer segmentation is no longer enough for marketers. To gain valuable insights and refine the customer experience, marketers need to dig deeper into how they analyse data.
Intelligent enterprises utilise data to drive business decisions about customers, products, competitors and markets in order to improve operational efficiency, accelerate innovation and serve customers more effectively. Rather than competing for one-time transactions, organisations should focus on embedding intelligence into their systems to create a loop of continuous, relevant connections with customers before, during and after they make purchases, known as hyperpersonalisation.
Customer genomes – the detailed digital DNA of customers – are the next generation of market and customer segmentation that organisations need to consider in order to keep up with evolving customer needs. Customer genomes focus on using traditional data (such as demographics, purchase history and loyalty programs), alternate data (from sources such as social media profiles and community-based data) and derived data (including insights describing an individual obtained from analysis of the selected data sets) to create digital DNA that includes the information every organisation should know about each of their customers.
This organically derived data includes distinctive markers that organisations can apply to create targeted approaches to high-value customers and prospects. By effectively leveraging all of this data, organisations can evolve from personalisation to hyperpersonalisation of data, which is tailored to each individual customer.
Examples of this approach have already started to pop up around the world. Monsoon Accessorise, a UK fashion retailer, uses multichannel data sources to deliver unique personalised offers to customers via emailed receipts. These offers are based on a variety of shopper inputs, such as online behaviour and the items in the shopper’s basket. Walmart Media Exchange is also adopting this approach by using data collected from store sales, social-media platforms and third parties to supplement data from its Savings Catcher loyalty program. With this data, Walmart plans to separate customers into relevant segments and eventually create individual customer profiles to assist with creating better offers for customers, as well as to improve targeted marketing activities.
Organisations can use customer genomes to develop a deeper understanding of individual customer needs, preferences and lifestyles. They can also streamline and manage inventory by distributing products to regions where clusters of customer genomes reside. When organisations use a customer genome to its full extent to create innovative engagement strategies, they can provide a seamless lifestyle experience for a particular customer across all interactions.
One possible application of a customer genome is a contextual enhancement, which involves extracting customised content that is based on how and where a customer is accessing information. For instance, if a customer looks up flight information while at a hotel, a transportation company could display an advertisement for a taxi service.
Internet browsing behaviour data (time on site, click sequences, preferred methods of purchase and couponing) can also be used to make assumptions about a customer’s preferred channels of interaction, and identify products customers are searching for.
Using customer genomes with mobile devices allows organisations to deliver relevant content to individuals based on location information. Mobile behaviour data can also provide an individual customer’s location patterns, helping an organisation to understand how the customer’s life is organised on a daily or weekly basis. Using the customer genome, organsiations can present personalised messages to customers in real-time and at the point of decision.
Pursuing hyperpersonalisation strategies and innovative pricing and promotion models help organisations to build customer loyalty, increase sales and reduce costs. Organisations that are ready to stretch their boundaries need to understand more about the data they have available and use advanced multichannel analytics that spans customers’ traditional, social, behavioural and contextual data in order to enhance interactions with customers.
By Michael Buckley
Accenture Interactive lead for Australia and New Zealand.