Retailers can undertake simple analyses on their online and social media data to propel their businesses forward in the following 5 ways:
1. Personalizing Communication & Improving Targeting
Retailers can gain quick insights into the desires, wants, and preferences of their customers by examining their purchase history and online browsing and search data. Analysts can explore the data visually to quickly identify customers that share similar preferences and attributes then use this information to personalize promotions and created targeted micro segments.
An online home dcor marketplace firm known as One Kings Lane uses data discovery and Tableaus visualization capabilities to better present products to clients on the basis of their purchase preferences and browsing history.
2. Creating Best Suited Product Recommendations
Retailers can quickly determine the various products their customers looked at and the ones they ended up buying by blending and visually exploring the shopping cart and browsing history. Retailers can then use the information to offer potential add-ons or substitutions. The information can subsequently be used for optimizing product assortments, populating product recommendation queues, and ultimately shaping demand.
For example, the VF Corporation whose subsidiaries includes brands such as Wrangler, Lee, Nautica, and The North Face uses Alteryx for blending and analyzing POS data from its branded stores, dealer network, and e-commerce applications with client life variables for assortment planning and optimization.
3. Optimization Of The Media Mix
Retailers can blend campaign response data on different promotions and segment this information by promotional avenues YouTube, TV, online media properties, and social media platforms to determine the promotions performing better through particular platforms.
It also helps in the identification of media preferences by target segments that can be subsequently used for optimizing the media mix for promotions/marketing. The marketing mix app from Alteryx demonstrates how optimization of spend by advertising media for maximizing returns on marketing spend can be done.
4. Development Of New Services & Products
Social media can provide insight into emerging market trends, customer desires and preferences. The blending of purchase history with customer commentary from online social media platforms and product review platforms provides retailers with insight into the specific services or product that are either valued or disliked, the features that are most desired, and the emerging product quality issues. Ensure you discount anything that may skew data such as added likes etc.
Retailers can either use the information directly or choose to share it with trade partners franchisees and brand manufacturers for service and product upgrades/redesigns, removals, or introductions of new products. For example, Chocalatier Kilwins uses promotions response and purchase history data for test-marketing new products and providing assortment guidance to franchisees.
5. Prioritizing Customer Support Decisions
Visually exploring social media platforms helps to quickly reveal the potential influence and subsequent impact of particular tweets/comments based on the size of the commenters following. Retailers can make use the information for estimating market needs, prioritizing customer support decisions, or even planning network expansion.
Most of the data-driven companies such as Walmart did not begin their analytic journey with armies of expensive programmers or Ph.D. statisticians, undertaking massive complex data analysis projects. Rather, they started out with simpler, smaller explorations undertaken by their business analysts who were closest to the problem and wanted answers. Therein lies the key to success in analytics: The empowering of business analysts to help them derive insights from their own data without delays associated with IT dependence.
It is possible to start small and then use your success to ensure that analytic thinking becomes more prevalent within the retail organization.
