The past holiday season has shown that most consumer goods sectors, especially electronics, are facing mounting competition to win consumer dollars. Brick and Mortar stores had an especially difficult time. Pricing from online retailers forced traditional retailers to provide heavy discounts to shoppers in November and December, just to stay competitive.
One of the biggest electronics retailers in the world has had enough of the status quo. Best Buy has kicked off a new marketing initiative to “use data to mitigate the impact of steep holiday discounts.” The company hopes its newest project, “Athena” or “Renew Blue,” will help to attract and retain customers more effectively.
Most marketers know quite well that more data doesn’t necessarily mean more knowledge. The real key to success is to know how to use that data to reach the right audience at the right time. According to CEO Hubert Joly, Best Buy is planning to use “past purchases, browse history, location and demographics” to inform a new marketing approach. Their hope is that by utilizing this data that they’ve probably been sitting on for years, the company will be able to identify and communicate with customers with the most fitting message, at the right time.
Targeted marketing campaigns only work if the data supporting them is valuable, and readily available to decision makers. This means that they will need to go further than using their program simply to create email lists based on personas and segments. Instead, the ideal use for this type of customer analysis would be to provide Scores for Lifetime Value, Loyalty, Price Sensitivity, Brand Affinity, and other useful indicators that are available to all customer facing employees. This, combined with the personalized emails, could provide an even more personalized experience both In-Store and Online.
Using customer data in this way is incredibly rare. If Best Buy adopts this practice, or at least instruments their data collection to make it possible in the future, they’ll be able to set themselves apart from their competition using superior service instead of discounts. That’s a win for their bottom line.
Read more about Project Athena at Ad Age.
