Growing, cross-channel data volumes
The rise of mobile, tablets and social media has accelerated the growth of available customer data. A typical retailer knows not only the basic demographic information about a customer, but purchase history, call center interaction, mobile/social interaction, supply chain data and more. The sheer volume of information available to retailers is unprecedented, even for brands that have years of experience analyzing customer data.
2. Increasing investment in technology
You’d be hard-pressed to walk into a Best Buy right now and find a hard drive that stores less than a terabyte. Storage is so cheap that it’s leveling the playing field for many companies when it comes to Big Data. Retail leaders have started investing in centralized databases and focusing on data hygiene and analytics, giving them insight into their customers that wasn't possible even a few years ago.
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For Macy’s, the investment has paid off: Tomak, the executive who modernized Macy’s data processes, attributes a 10 percent increase in store sales to improved analytics capabilities.
3. Solving the omnichannel puzzle with data
Retailers with a data-centric mindset are crunching an incredible amount of customer behavior data to understand how customers are researching and buying products. Insights reached through analyzing transaction data, foot traffic and in-store checkout wait times have led to shifts in marketing strategies and in-store tactics. In response, retailers have introduced in-store kiosks, free Wi-Fi, and armed their sales staff with mobile devices that allow them to better serve Web-savvy customers on the spot.
Similarly, marketers shouldn’t ignore one channel at the expense of the other. In fact, Walgreens found that customers who shop both in-store and online spend 3.5 times as much as customers who favor only one channel.
4. Improving