Technology has had a significant impact on the concept of customer loyalty. Shopping for alternatives based on price or convenience requires just a few taps on a smartphone screen. Brand awareness is no longer enough to build lasting customer relationships. Brand preference might not be sufficient, either. Organizations must focus on creating customer experiences and products that are tailored to customers’ needs at exactly the right time.
In order to avoid customer defection, brands must make the buying process convenient. Marketers must anticipate customer needs based on desktop browsing history, mobile usage, and behavioral triggers. The use of real-time big data to programmatically generate custom offers and products is gaining traction. Join us as we review the success of companies who have already embraced big data as a tool for building meaningful customer relationships, and effective strategies for the future.
How Big Data is Shaping Real-Time Product Development in Finance
In one case study by IBM, a major bank utilized customer financial data, transactions, preferences, and social media posts to develop customized offers for Peter, a recent homebuyer and cooking enthusiast. Based on absence of risk and Peter’s Facebook post about wanting to purchase a restaurant-style six burner gas stove, the bank was able to extend a mobile offer to increase his credit limit before another credit card company captured his business.
In a world where purchases can be made with one-click and price and rates comparisons are as easy as a Google search, customer happiness doesn’t always trump convenience. Your customers may be happy enough with your brand to accept offers via mobile push notification, but they are less likely to call your institution or visit a branch to request the same thing. Effective marketing and product development today is about creating products and offers that seamlessly fit into your customer’s lives. This can only be accomplished with extensive big data resources, including high-quality 3rd party insights.
If the financial institution profiled by IBM lacked access to immediate customer insights, they could have lost Peter’s business. He may have decided to proceed with purchasing a restaurant-style stove and accepted the first acceptable line of credit offered. Without real-time data, marketers are unable to extend offers at the right moment. Streaming analytics isn’t just going to benefit marketing teams of the future. It’s going to be a necessity for brands that want to remain competitive.
Streaming Analytics for Customer Retention and Loyalty
Big data allows marketers to think in more personalized terms than traditional segments. Instead of offering a line of credit increase to all recent home buyers, they’re able to make offers to customers who present an appropriate level of risk, have expressed intent, and appropriate preferences. Big data is critical to analyze the hundreds or thousands of data points attributed to each of your buyers on a daily basis, which can change their qualification to buy on a minute-to-minute basis.
The combination of mobile technology and streaming analytics allows product development and programmatic advertising in real-time. Relevant messaging is needed for marketers to maintain relationships with customers. Examples of real-time marketing that are only possible with big data include:
Location-Based Advertising: Retailers and other organizations are beginning to programmatically generate location-based offers and recommendations. Essence digital agency xAd’s first successful location-based campaign resulted in a 53% engagement rate.
Co-Branding: By developing networks of partnership with brands who offer complementary products or services, marketers can exchange customer referrals by generating advertising that’s relevant and useful to customers.
Value-Creation Tools for Customers: As mobile devices and internet of things (IoT) technologies generate an increasing amount of data points, marketers are able to develop big data-driven tools that offer value to customers. Customers of data-focused brands can now compare their home energy utilization to other customers, or learn how their spending stacks up to their peers.
Customer retention marketing strategies must be proactive in order to provide the convenient buying experiences today’s consumers expect. Forbes reports that 70% of large companies are currently relying on 3rd-party data sources, and 100% of big brands will purchase external insights by the year 2019. Integrating 3rd-party big data is no longer a competitive advantage. In many industries, it’s a necessity to keep up.
To learn more about BDEX’s first and only true real-time Big Data Exchange Platform, contact us today.
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