In the ever-evolving landscape of retail, delivering personalised and seamless customer experiences is essential for success.
In this article, we will take a closer look at how CDPs can help retailers with their challenges. For this, we delve into the retail customer journey and highlight the transformative impact of CDPs to boost retail success.
Why does the retail Industry need a CDP?
In this fast-paced arena, where innovation and customer satisfaction reign supreme, the key to triumph lies in crafting personalised and flawless customer experiences. Retailers must go beyond conventional approaches to stand out and leave a lasting impression on their audiences.
Leveraging customer data is not just advantageous but an absolute necessity to strategically identify growth prospects and secure a competitive edge. This is where Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) prove invaluable, playing a pivotal role in the era of data-driven marketing by assisting companies in navigating intricate and ever-evolving customer journeys.
By consolidating data from various sources, CDPs provide a comprehensive view of the customer, empowering retailers to establish meaningful interactions and optimise their marketing efforts. As a best-of-breed customer data platform, Zeotap CDP equips brands in this sector with the necessary tools to unlock the full potential of data and stimulate growth.
To illustrate the power of Zeotap CDP in the context of the retail industry, let’s explore a fictitious customer story that highlights the transformative impact of CDPs on challenges and successes specific to this sector.
What are the key stages of the customer journey in retail?
The Customer Profile – Meet Suzane & Richard
Meet Suzane and Richard, an avid travel-loving couple with a passion for fine wine, who recently purchased their first home. Suzane has been exploring the Imagiloom website, her favourite house products ecommerce, at home, browsing on her laptop through a variety of different household appliances and electronic products for their new home and information relating to them.
Suzane and Richard went on a holiday and during their holiday, Suzane continued browsing the Imagiloom site on her phone and laptop, exploring their products and thinking about setting up their home. She managed to add an air purifier to the cart and logged in to explore the payment options. She managed to add an air purifier to the cart and was exploring the payment options. That’s when Suzane is interrupted by a call from Richard and she abandons the session. Little does Suzane realise that the narrative of their user journey holds the promise of an exciting and personalised experience.
Building Suzane’s unified profile with Zeotap CDP
Two days later, while still holidaying and browsing social media, Suzane came across an Imagiloom re-targeting ad on her phone, leading her back to their e-commerce. Suzane decided to step out and venture the city and hence stopped browsing the e-commerce site that she was already browsing on her phone. While exploring the city, Suzane and Richard happened to come across an Imagiloom store. They venture over out of curiosity and also to take a closer look at the products on show.
While exploring an Imagiloom store, Suzane decides to purchase the air purifier she had added to her online cart from her laptop. The store assistant enters her records and they are eventually entered into their CRM. As Imagiloom’s CRM is integrated with Zeotap CDP, Suzane’s profile is created in it. Zeotap CDP identifies a previous profile for Suzane from when she abandoned her online cart, allowing it to understand her complete browsing history, not just the air purifier.
Zeotap CDP merges Suzane’s online presence to create a unified profile of Suzane, combining her online presence (on the website via her laptop and phone) and her offline activities (in the store).
During their store visit, Richard thoroughly examines the available vacuums, facing a plethora of choices. The next day, over breakfast, he remains undecided. To gain a clearer understanding, Richard borrows Suzane’s laptop and explores the Imagiloom website, using the same device and website. This additional data contributes to Suzane’s online profile, enriching her unified customer profile in Zeotap CDP.
How Zeotap CDP supports the intricacies of the user journey
Zeotap CDP collects and integrates customer data from diverse sources such as web interactions, mobile apps, and offline channels to form a comprehensive view of their customer breaking the data silos. It streamlines this data and, using state-of-the-art ID Stitching capabilities, resolves identities to create unique customer profile. Through consideration of this enriched customer profile alongside additional data points and calculated attributes, Imagiloom is enabled with a better understanding of their customers’ profile, traits, preferences, behaviour and more. With this enriched insight, retailers can create highly precise and personalised journeys and effortlessly activate cross-channel targeting thanks to the intuitive interface.
Suzane’s user journey and continuous profile enrichment
Zooming out for a broader perspective, let’s delve into how Zeotap CDP seamlessly integrates into the overall picture. Suzane initiates her online journey using a specific device (at first via her laptop and then via her phone)
to explore the Imagiloom website and showing the intent to purchase a specific product that lead to the creation of her Suzane’s online profile within Zeotap CDP comprising both the device IDs. Subsequently, upon registering and providing her email address at the store, Suzane’s profile in Zeotap CDP, is now complete with her online and offline intent. As Richard was exploring the Imagiloom website from the same laptop that Suzane was using and potentially the same device ID on the Imagiloom website, Richard’s interactions are combined into Suzane’s profile.
However, as soon as Richard registers using his email address, a distinct profile is established within Zeotap CDP for Richard. He then continues to browse other products of his interests like a grooming kit.
How Zeotap CDP supports this process
The footprints that Suzane was leaving on different interfaces lead to the creation of a unique profile in Zeotap CDP comprising of her online and offline intent. However, when Richard logged in, a separate user profile was created for him, using our proprietary ID Strategy’s Merge Control feature. Even though Richard shared the same device ID as Suzane, Zeotap CDP’s profile creation algorithm made sure that post this identification, Richard’s actions are captured independent of Suzane throughout his online interaction.
Optimising marketing spends in the same household
Suzane and Richard finally decided which air purifier to buy and went ahead to make the purchase. Based on this purchase data, Suzane is now added to a suppression segment for a few weeks to be excluded from the expensive continuous re-targeting efforts because she just bought the air purifier. Suzane’s unified profile created within Zeotap CDP helps understand Suzane’s purchase intent and accordingly, Imagiloom can redirect their marketing efforts toward promoting the next best-suited product for her.
And even though they are part of the same household, Richard can be targeted for products related to his past purchases and not Suzane’s purchase history. Zeotap CDP empowers Imagiloom to tailor campaigns for Suzane and Richard either as a unified household or as distinct individual customers.
How Zeotap CDP supports the retail retargeting strategy
Zeotap CDP’s Audience module enables Imagiloom to effortlessly create segments to suppress Suzane and other similar customers whom they want to exclude from continuous and potentially irrelevant retargeting efforts after they have made a purchase, preventing unnecessary ad fatigue and improving overall customer satisfaction. With separate profiles for Suzane and Richard, Zeotap CDP also empowers Imagiloom to leverage their individual profiles to craft the following journeys:
- Retarget customers based on their purchase intent
- Personalise the Imagiloom website based on their previous purchase history
- Recommend products, or push real-time offers based on their spending pattern, and more.
Conclusion
Zeotap CDP helps Brands have a more meaningful conversation with their customers, for example, by building segments to suppress users who have already made purchases in order to recommend better products based on their past purchases. From capturing customer interactions to orchestrating personalised journeys and measuring campaign effectiveness, Zeotap CDP serves as a central hub for creating seamless, data-driven marketing experiences. Step into the future of customer engagement with Zeotap CDP and unlock your brand’s true potential.
