While digital channels (i.e., email, mobile, social, search and display ads) naturally enable the sharing of customer information in order to facilitate a transaction, brick and mortar stores generally capture less information during a sale. Capture rates also vary wildly by retail vertical, from boutique to big box. Even within the same retail segments, techniques and strategies can differ greatly across companies. Legislative challenges and the increased skepticism among customers regarding sharing their contact information have made it harder to understand customer identity, which is central to multi-channel marketing programs.

With these expanded challenges, it may be tempting to consider walking away from even attempting customer identification techniques in-store. At the same time, consumers are demanding more relevant and targeted communications in all channels, so making the effort is worth it.

The good news is that technological advancements in customer linkage have made it easier to combine the customer information that you may already have across channels to resolve a customer’s identity. Even if you don’t ask or capture full customer information at the in-store point of purchase, any pieces of information that the customer willingly offers may be useful in understanding and linking them to your customer database. Your customer information is what enables targeted and relevant communications, so every little bit that you capture helps.

For example, if a customer opts into your mobile program for text message incentives, that contact information can be linked to the data the customer provided to you from a website purchase. Cross-channel identity resolution techniques then help bridge the offline and online worlds to understand that customer. Once you have completed the linkage of your own data, reputable data partners can help you to fill in any information gaps. The added benefit of working with an external data expert lies with compliance. The compliance rules surrounding proper use of personally identifiable information are complex and the risk of misuse can be detrimental to a business and a brand.

When people think of customer linkage, they often think in terms of digital channels. Remember, that linkage can cross over into other retail channels as well. What this means is that any information customers willingly provide in the retail store can be used to link them to your digital customer information enabling a consistent customer view across all channels – and the ability to communicate with that customer and provide the relevant and targeted communications they expect.

As noted above, to be successful, marketers must become more and more sophisticated in terms of their marketing capabilities. Understanding how a customer interacts with your brand in only one channel just isn’t good enough for most retailers these days. Retailers must become more effective in personally interacting with their customers via cross-channel optimization and linking all disparate data is essential to enable that level of marketing sophistication.

“Why does Radio Shack ask for your phone number when you buy batteries? I don’t know.” — Cosmo Kramer, Seinfeld, Episode 142

Of course, we really do know the answer.  Customer understanding and identification from retail transactions is of critical importance to us as marketers.
However, given recent court decisions, a lot of our clients are reviewing and updating their processes to identify who their customers are.  Are they in compliance with current laws and rulings?  What will the next restriction be?  Is it customer friendly?  Should they stop asking for any customer information at all in order to avoid a lawsuit?

Most likely, only you and your compliance and legal teams can answer these questions based on your own interpretation of the rulings.  However, stopping the practice of store customer identification cold turkey can have a significant impact on not only retail performance, but your other channels in your marketing ecosystem as well.

Some of our clients are trying new things, in addition to reviewing specifically what is captured at or after point of sale.  Some companies’ business models, such as warehouse clubs, allow for a very high capture rate by definition.  Others capture their customers’ information through highly vibrant and engaging loyalty programs.

Even if you take a step back and reduce what you’re capturing, such as going from asking for full name and address to only asking for Zipcode or email, you still are getting enough information that your teams should be encouraged to capture it.

We all know that what is measured is what gets improved; so identifying and publishing capture rates at the store level can help.  Share with your store managers that the higher the percent of store information they capture, the more support they will receive from other channels to drive traffic to their stores.  For example, if you knew that email is responsible for driving 20% of your retail store traffic, it makes sense to spend appropriately given these results.  (But that’s a topic for another discussion.)  Publishing the results and rewarding top performing stores will enable your database marketing teams to further expand the relationships with these customers.

Your well thought out and executed cross-channel marketing plans are only as good as the customer information you have to drive them.  Take the time to evaluate your retail customer information capture program and policies as a strategic initiative, and work with your service provider partners to ensure the data is as fit for use as possible.  If you haven’t reviewed it in a while, run…don’t walk…to your Experian account team and talk through the possibilities.

Then, watch it drive success across all channels.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Questions / Comments contact me
Email:  michael.clark@experian.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/clarkmichael1
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