First party data is becoming more important as privacy regulation heats up, the depreciation of third-party cookies looms large, and Apple makes considerable changes to their policies. There are many ways to ensure you are utilizing your first party data (customer file) efficiently and effectively across channels while building a strong digital relationship with your client.
Traditional Retention Channels: Email & SMS
Email is the channel most clients rely on for notifying customers of promotions, product launches, abandoned carts and welcoming a new customer to the brand. However, email can work harder for you as a retention channel:
- Implement post-purchase email flows or email flows targeted at converting 1x buyers into 2x buyers.
- Acquire declared data. For example, if you have stores, ask for zip code on email sign up to ensure you can notify subscribers about store events or asking email subscribers if they are interested in men’s, women’s or children’s clothing.
- Ensure your email list is directly integrated with platforms such as Facebook.
SMS is a new channel for many of our clients that’s showing promise as a channel that can drive loyalty, allow a brand to have a 1:1 conversation with customers, and provide value to best customers.
- Test SMS for transactional emails, review requests or post-purchase follow-ups to build trust with the customer.
- Test early access to promotions to provide value to best customers.
- Ask questions or suggest customers text you with feedback, requests, or product review.
Digiday recently published some insights from how Usual Wines uses SMS to build first-party data.
Quizzes and Surveys
Quizzes and surveys can be a simple, but valuable way to better understand your customer or make more personalized product or size recommendations.
- For brands with broad assortments or multiple products lines (e.g., beauty) quizzes can be used to curate or suggest products to consumers to drive online conversion rate.
- For apparel brands, quizzes of life stage tracking (e.g., did a customer recently have children) can allow you to suggest styles and sizes that are the most relevant to a consumer.
- For brands who do not have a complete view of the customer (e.g., they sell wholesale and retail) surveys can be used to better understand the broad customer group, even if they are not converting directly on site.
- If you are working to expand your assortment or looking to create a version 2.0 of a best-selling product, gathering customer feedback can not only give you valuable insights, but also make your customers feel like they are part of the product creation strategy, driving customer loyalty.
We would recommend that quizzes and surveys are only used to achieve specific goals or help consumers select products that are challenging to shop for – quizzes for quizzes sake can distract customers or lead to a worse customer experience.
