Congratulations! If you’re reading our Think Again Series, you either already have a CRM strategy in place or are serious about getting one. Which shows you really understand the value of establishing and nourishing the relationship with your customers.
Having been in the CRM business for over 10 years now and having a team of excellent CRM Scientists (as I like to call them) with tons of experience in the field, we have seen a very common pattern in brands. At the start of any CRM program we see a spike in everything – efforts, budgets, resources, responses and RoI. But often, overtime, the program reaches a plateau. A lot of brands forget about the promise of CRM as time goes by, and most of times these are due to small misses that can be fixed, if identified early.
At Capillary, we have devised a framework to identify just this. Our CRM Scientists have identified five areas that are critical to analyze the health of your CRM strategy. Here they are:
1. Organization Readiness
You already know this, but I can’t stress on it enough. A successful, stellar CRM strategy is not something that only your team needs to be working towards. It needs to be an overall organizational objective. Many a times, the CRM program does not meet its objectives or bring the results it actually has the potential of, simply due to lack of budget allocation, resources and lack of seriousness from the top.
We have highlighted how you can get your organization CRM ready and ensure the objectives set by all departments are aligned to achieve the CRM objectives. Yes, your CRM program needs to be the center of the universe at your organization and our framework is going to show you how.
2. Know Your Consumer
One of the most important aspect of any CRM program, is knowing who your consumers are. And a crucial part of this, is to know which pieces of information you absolutely need to have on your consumer.
And that’s what our CRM framework highlights for you. We’ve broken this down into 3 sub sets that will help you analyze your data collection and collation techniques much more closely. You will then be able to analyze whether or not your database caters to your business’s immediate goals or long term objectives.
3. Analytics Maturity
Analytics is hard. You need to have the right resources, the right tools and the eye to know what the behavior of your customers is now, and what they are most likely to do in the future. This entails having certain checks in your analytics and data mining strategies.
Through our CRM framework, you can discover these areas and with sophisticated scoring mechanism, you can tell precisely how to fine tune your analytics strategies to understand your customers much more closely and put lasting predictive models in place that constantly feed you with the right insights and suggest the right course of action.
4. Real-time Customer Engagement
Sending customers a communication immediately when they register or make a purchase does cover the “real-time” aspect, but that does not mean “customer engagement” in the true sense. Customer engagement means reaching out to them with a communication that is relevant to them, at a time that is apt for them and through a channel that they prefer. Are you doing this effectively?
The CRM assessment model tells you the various areas you need to be looking at to ensure you are on the right track when it comes to real-time customer engagement. Marketer Jennifer Burnham says that “while a CRM system may not elicit as much enthusiasm these days as social networking platforms like Facebook or Twitter, any CRM system is similarly built around people and relationships.” Is yours?
5. Integrated Technology
Omnichannel CRM platform doesn’t simply mean having connected channels in the front end to interact with the customer. It also means having connected systems in the backend to ensure the data is flowing smoothly across all channels and functions. For example, how do you collect your data? Do you have to move your data from one tool to another for campaign executions? What is the lag time in the transfer of data?
Having a regular check on all these factors ensures you know for sure where your brand stands today in terms having integrated systems and where you should be getting at. Clear targets with clear measuring techniques can go a long way.
If you want to get your assessment done now, reach out to us by clicking on the banner below and we will get in touch with the CRM 5D Framework tool kit and lots of insights!
Nowadays, brand loyalty amongst customers is on the decline due to intense competition and a plethora of choices. While loyalty programs are a great way to increase brand loyalty, most brands still treat their rewards program as an excuse to get an email address instead of adding value to the customer. But when a business gets their mobile loyalty program right, they get a 13.3 million-user-strong success story like Starbucks.
I am sure you would have heard the old adage – ‘It’s is easier to get an old customer to come back than to ask a new customer to transact with you’. This is a retention strategy that every marketer worth his salt knows. This high acquisition cost is the primary factor why brands need to build relationships with existing customers and reward them. As for reason for adopting a mobile loyalty program, here are they :
Benefits of a mobile loyalty program
Loyalty programs encourage customers to align themselves with the values of your company and this could be a wonderful opportunity for you to build a long-term relationship with your customers and nurture them.
Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ CEO, once said, “If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.” Given below are a list of benefits that a mobile loyalty program offers.
Understanding customers
Understanding customers’ behaviour and buying habits will lead to an understanding of customers’ needs, which will help you to be at the right place at the right time; that is to say, you can offer them the right offers at the right time. You can keep your customers engaged by sending them messages at just the right time along with other communication such as push notifications and newsletters that will keep them informed about special promotions and discounts. This will also benefit the business through higher sales and conversion. A mobile app-based loyalty program also fosters a larger number of brand advocates who bring in a higher percentage of profitability and revenue compared to an average customer
Drive Mobile Payments
It is predicted that mobile payments will reach $503 billion by the year 2020 and this is partly due to mobile loyalty programs. Loyalty programs encourage customers to make purchases through mobile-based apps, even if they are reluctant to do so, in the beginning. Sweetgreen offers a free salad to its customers, but to earn this reward they first need to pay through Sweetgreen’s mobile wallet.
Staying ahead of the competition
Irrespective of how good or superior your products and services are, there will always be competitors lurking all around to pry your customers away. A good way to stay ahead of the competition is to create a differentiating niche for the brand. Ultimately, even when your competitors copy your product, your differentiators, like an effective mobile rewards program and an impeccable customer service is what will help you stand out and keep you beyond your competitors’ reach.Think smart, identify your advantages and leverage innovations to provide customers with an irresistible loyalty program.
Becoming the market leader
The best way to stay ahead of the competition is to become a market leader or a thought leader and by setting trends. If you raise the bar for the quality of your products and services and set standards for others to follow, you will not only survive in today’s customer-centric environment but also remain on the top.
“We shape our technologies and thereafter our tools shape us,” observation made by Marshal McLuhan, one of the most recognized experts in the field of communication studies, is accurate now more than ever, with 93% of business leaders worldwide saying technology has changed customer expectations in the past five to ten years.
A great customer loyalty program helps you create a moat around your brand and prevent your existing customers from jumping ship.
Convenience
Customers love loyalty programs and their benefits but gone are the days of carrying around plastic loyalty cards. Cards are lost easily, they aren’t practical for carrying around in a wallet and tracking redemptions can be difficult for business owners.
86% of marketers ranked mobile loyalty campaigns as very effective or effective, even if there are many who doubt them. In addition, 72% of consumers like better access to rewards and the ability to redeem their rewards more easily on a mobile loyalty platform(78%).
Boosts sales
A loyalty program can affect current and future customers. Sending the right offer to a current customer can generate recurring purchases (as in the Kohl’s example, where customers who are members of the loyalty program spend $80 more than those who are not) or it can attract potential customers and convert them into regular customers.
Reduced operational costs
Mobile loyalty programs are easier to maintain as compared to traditional loyalty programs. Offers can be changed instantaneously and sent to all users within seconds. The time spent is less and it works out to be economical than paper-based loyalty programs.
Acces to rich data
Analyzing, tracking and interpreting customer data is very important if you want to communicate the right messages and offers to your customers. Customers are more likely to use loyalty programs if the program is simple, easy to understand, and if the offers are exciting and relevant to them. Furthermore, brands that allocate 20% or more of their budgets to customer loyalty get a better understanding of their customers.
In order to find out what customers want, you need to decide which metrics to use and track the goals that you want to achieve. Every business has different methodologies and strategies to reach their targets and how to achieve them.
If you want to leave a strong initial impact on your customers, the number of app downloads is the best way to measure your success. If your goal is to get users to keep using the app, the percentage of active or returning users will give you an insight into your strategy’s success. In order to attract user attention, keep promoting specific feeds in the app and by keeping track of the most popular pages in your app, you can decide whether to change the contents of the app or to continue with the same content. It is also crucial to understand which pages are the most attractive to customers.
You might want to track the purchasing habits of your customers, the amount that they spend and how they deal with redemption. Based on the information collected, you can redesign your current campaign or create a new one for the future. You might also want your business to be a huge success on social media and go viral; in that case, analyzing and tracking the engagement metric for social media might be a good idea.
How to implement a mobile loyalty program?
The use of mobiles has changed the name of the game for loyalty programs; especially when it comes to creating more ROI.
Research shows “that customers who actively engage with brands and their loyalty programs make 90 per cent more frequent purchases, spend 60 per cent more in each transaction and are five times more likely to choose the brand in the future.”
A good example of this is Kohl’s. Members of the company’s mobile loyalty program are spending $80 more per transaction than those who are not. Mobile reward programs are also known to engage the younger generation a lot better compared to traditional card-based loyalty programs. Mobiles drive loyalty more than any other platform because they meet the needs of its members in the most convenient way.
Mobiles capture information such as location data, consumer preferences, app usage, attributes, purchase history like frequency, spend and more. Marketers drive customers back to the brand backed up by such rich and user-specific data, thereby ensuring an engaging and personalized customer experience.
The first step towards designing an effective mobile loyalty program is to understand what your customers want. Loyalty marketing expert Howard Schneider says, “Savvy and strategic companies are now looking beyond these reward programs to delight, create and retain loyal customers. They are looking to solve customers’ problems and soothe pain points.”
You can get to understand customer behaviour through conducting user interviews, focus groups, competitive research and third-party integration research. Your web analytics and sales metrics will give you more information on conversions. Look at past data to find out what worked and what did not. You want to make sure the program is a win-win situation for both your customers and your business.
If you build a mobile app on top of existing systems, you can manage sales entirely on the app (For example, purchasing food on the app, scheduling service appointments etc.), while using your existing back-end systems (For example, printing a ticket in the kitchen to managing operations).“Mobile will ultimately be the way you provision most of your services. The way I like to put it is, the answer should always be mobile first. You should always put your best team on your mobile app,” says Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman for Alphabet, Inc.
Best mobile loyalty programs
Best Buy, Walgreens and Sephora are examples of brands that use mobile loyalty programs as the centrepiece of their mobile strategies. Marketers from every sector have worked hard in building loyalty, from using social media to educate consumers about mobile payments. They are using mobile apps not only during the holiday season but also in building long-term relationships with old and new consumers.Here are examples of well-executed mobile loyalty campaigns:
Best Buy’s omnichannel approach to mobile loyalty programs
Best Buy redesigned its reward program with a more comprehensive omnichannel mobile loyalty offering, as a way to increase footfalls to their showrooms. The big box retailer’s My Best Buy loyalty program replaces the previous Reward Zone and works well with the company’s iPhone and Android applications. Consumers that use the app within a certain area around a store receive points that are credited to their member accounts. In exchange for downloading and using the app, members are offered exclusive deals. Best Buy’s customers are increasingly turning to mobiles to differentiate loyalty programs with an in-store incentive.
Cosi’s social-focused mobile loyalty program
In order to increase loyalty and drive foot traffic, the fast-casual chain Cosi ran a campaign that emphasized the use of mobiles and social media, as a part of a huge multichannel program. As a part of this program, Cosi ran social and mobile display ads to attract consumers and offer them the chance to win prizes and unlock offers. The chain created a desktop as well as a mobile web experience for the campaign with the latter being geared towards social-focused such as posting pictures on Instagram. It is quite common these days to offer rewards for purchases on mobiles, but what is unique about Cosi’s program is that the brand is encouraging social actions, which is predominately taking place via mobile devices.
Cumberland Farms’ payment integrated mobile loyalty program
In the last couple of years, convenience store chain Cumberland Farms has moved into mobile territory in a big way to smoothen out its payment process. The brand expanded its program with an app that opens up a checking account, in order to trigger payments. In addition to cutting down on the amount of time that consumers spend on getting gas, the mobile program also saves consumers 10 cents for each gallon bought, thereby encouraging repeat refuelling and driving the adoption of mobile payments. Cumberland Farms has also added mobile coupons to its mobile app as a way to integrate rewards into its mobile payment offering, thus encouraging their customers to go the digital way.
Data has always formed the basis of businesses. From the abacus to the tiny computers at the palm of your hand, we’ve always been trying to develop tools that can give us more information about everything around us. But getting more data is not the challenge today. In fact, in this age of information overload, many have started to ask, is there something as too much data, since all that this data is leading to is more confusion for businesses.
What metrics should you trust? Which areas need improvement? What actions should you take and what would the results be? When you start thinking about all this your head starts spinning faster than a fidget spinner going out of style. I mean, sure you can hire teams of data scientists, analysts and consulting firms to look at your data and make sense of it all, and you have to do it, but at times, by the time you derive insights, it’s too late to take action and an opportunity is lost.
The need of the hour isn’t just to simplify and distil these swaths of data into insights, but also to do so in real-time. You also have to be able to slice and dice data so you can compare the options you have and take the best decisions possible backed by actual data.
The intelligence behind quick decisions
It’s important to have visibility into how well your retail business is doing on a day to day basis. Having access to sales and growth KPIs at real-time and having the ability to compare it with historic data allows you to better determine the factors that are influencing your business. It enables you to better optimise working capital and also to take quick decisions to maximise growth, without having to wait for in-depth analysis.
The intelligence behind memorable campaigns
They say marketing can make or break a product or brand. But, are you able to measure your marketing campaign KPIs and RoI so you know what works and what doesn’t while you still have time to take action on it? When information spreads so quickly and attention spans are at an all time low, knowing how your consumers are responding to your campaigns and subsequently to your brand can be the difference between bringing relevance and being monotonous.
The intelligence behind store growth
Retail is all about optimising your assets to ensure you’re not stretching or saturating yourself. Knowing exactly how well each of your stores are doing everyday gives you the power to take actions to improve store performance at a granular level. In this omnichannel world, being able to compare the performance of various channels across different regions gives you the insights you need to share resources strategically to help low performing assets as well as maximise high performing ones. Design targets and incentives intelligently and watch stores grow.
The intelligence behind successful products
All said and done, it’s your products that make or break a sale and gradually create your brand perception. Hence it’s important to have visibility into what SKUs are working for you and which ones are not performing as expected. By comparing products within and between the various categories and multiple brands that you may have, you can better understand factors impeding performance and use these insights to focus strategically on lower performing products. You can also understand and optimise supply chain operations better as per seasonality and customer segments etc.
Get all the essential insights on the go
Business intelligence tools can power you with all the essential insights your business needs, directly at your fingertips. With Capillary Essential Insights, get more than 24 easy to customise reports that are built specifically for your retail business. Having access to overall business insights such as sales reports, product insights, store insights, campaign insights, customer insights etc. in real-time, Essential Insights enables you to continue making the most of your data and take actions instantly. With rich, interactive visualisations on desktop and mobile, BI tools such as Essential Insights lets you discover insights easily and unlock growth on the go.
Over the last decade or so ecommerce has boomed like never before. Technological developments on the ecommerce business’ side and internet penetration on the customer’s side has enabled this industry to grow fast – real fast. Moreover, the industry has been evolving constantly, losing no time in adopting the latest technology – be it on the customer experience front, pricing algorithms to offer the best rates, or determine cost effective promotional methods etc.
On the other hand, such transformation has been extremely low on the Brick and Mortar side, even though retail technology has provided ground breaking ways to transform traditional offline selling. For example, brands like Nordstorm used mobile POS systems and Tesco had a touchscreen kiosks for stock checking and ordering in store – and all this back in 2012.
It’s 2018 now, and we still are talking about the offline world competing poorly with the online world and how it can be more digitized. Sigh!
Well listen up retailers, the age of smart retailing is here! You have a plethora of ways to up your offline stores’ performance. And no, you do not have to do or invest much. I am going to give you 5 ways you can get so much more sales from your stores, without having to do so much as add one additional item to your shelf space.
Here’s how.
Go Mobile – Like for real
The world is full of it. Mobile devices I mean. Tablets, ‘phablets’, iPads, kiosks, touchscreen monitors, and the whole lot. Why not actually use them to enhance your in-store experience. A very good example of this is the Apple iStore. They have truly revolutionized the way billing and on floor customer support is done. By providing your store staff with a simple mobile device to help customers do simple things like check out and pay faster without queuing, you are bringing the in-store experience at par with the online one.
Open Up Your Inventory
Another very important use of these devices is to open up virtual shelf space. Given the limited space in offline stores, retailers have always struggled while choosing which products make the cut of actually staying on the shelf and for how long. With digital technology at your fingertips, you can now extend your inventory by enabling the store staff to browse through additional varieties of the products on a simple tablet. This way, they get to not only give the customers exactly what they came for, but also offer any additional products that may not be present in the store at the time, but is there in your warehouse.
Thrive in the Easyverse™
The world may change completely, the sun may rise from the west and Trump may actually learn the word “sorry”, but even then, your customer will still be the king! We at Capillary believe that we are living in an “Easyverse™ today, where customers expect everything to be easy, connected and personalized. Therefore, providing them choices at every stage like whether they want their products to be delivered at their homes or be available for pick up at another store is a no brainer these days. Simple and easy way to delight, right?
Logistics is a breeze
Yea, my last point may have raised the obvious logistics questions. But technology has also made moving of products between warehouses, stores and customers’ homes a breeze. With just an app, you can now easily arrange for the chosen products to be picked up at a fixed time and dropped at a specified location – be it a store or home. Algorithms available today also help in mapping the closest point from where pickup can be done, reducing your cost and the time of delivery. Didn’t I say smart retailing is here?
Empowering Your Store Staff
The best way to make most of your stores, is to ensure your lifeline, your store staff have all the information they need to convert that sale. Having to go back to the POS and coming back to the customer for every single thing like checking member details, item price, stock availability etc. is not a good experience – not for your staff, nor for the customer. Having mobile devices that enable them to attend the customer with all the information required present in the device will truly enhance the customer’s delight and also motivate the store staff to perform better. Another worthwhile investment would be a people counter that can provide you with accurate insights around store traffic and visitor trends.
Remember, you don’t have to go all in or do expensive gestures to show your customers you care. You can flourish in the Easyverse™ by making small tweaks to your current store and taking a customer centric approach to retailing.
Share how you have been transforming your stores and learn how we can help you do it better. Reach out to an expert today.
Indian Consumer Goods/FMCG distribution has always been a dynamic and complex affair due to multiple tiers in the structure with Carrying and Forwarding Agents, Dealer/Distributors, Wholesalers and the end Retailers spread across the entire country with different states/geographies having unique characteristics. The top FMCG brands hence have always been using Reach and Coverage as the two prime levers to increase share. The recent developments like GST along with the rapid proliferation of cost effective telephony (4G, Jio) have created opportunities for brands to streamline their distribution network and increase reach in an efficient manner to win in the market place. Companies are trying to reach the Kirana Shop Retailers directly to the extent possible to influence sales instead of relying on wholesale distributors and other tiers in the network.
The Shift Towards Direct & Digital Distribution
Multiple experiments and pilots are being conducted in the Indian and South East Asian Market place by FMCG companies and similar Consumer brands to interact with the retailers more optimally and increase uplift. The common assumption in most of these pilots is that most Indian Kirana Shop owners are time-starved and do not have more than a few minutes to talk to the sales representative of an FMCG Major, being more concerned about serving customers and sending them out of their shop happily.
The first set of pilots that have been attempted are getting the Bigger Retailers (Large Kirana Shops who do more than 8 Lacs INR turnover a month) to order directly using a mobile App from the Distributor. This enables the Consumer Brands to directly track sales, they can understand off take , convey promotions and also using a bit of analytics and Machine Learning, uncover additional insights such as ‘Retailers at Risk’ , SKUs that are not doing well in the short term, top 5 items that a sales person should try selling to the shop and so on. Already one of the world’s largest retailer is successfully enabling 25 % of its India sales by this B2B app based ordering model.
However the challenge in scaling up of this model is the point mentioned earlier – the average kirana shop owner being time starved will not want to use different mobile apps for multiple brands as he would be stocking at an average of 50-100 different brands in his shop. There are two ways this challenge could be handled and both are being attempted by Innovators in the market place. The first is by small companies that serve as a consolidator of all the brands and then deliver to the retailers. They take care of the ordering and logistics as well. This sounds fine in theory but scaling up has significant challenges and one does not see this covering more than a few hundred retailers in a handful of metros in a few years’ time.
The other model, attempted by a few software solution providers, starts off with insights driven, AI and ML based ordering platforms. These are used by an FMCG brand’s distributor sales force who assist with ordering of a few top brands for the retailers and slowly scaling up to the entire or a reasonable chunk of the ecosystem. This model seems to have more chances of succeeding.
There have also been attempts by companies to provide intelligent Point of Sale (POS) machines at the kirana shop end to get instant visibility of tertiary sales, thereby giving a superior ability to forecast, assess promotion attempt and stock levels. But these have usually been dropped either on account of costs or the practical difficulties in forming a consortium of non-competing manufacturers as well as practical difficulties in establishing an eco-system to support such an initiative.
The Impact of AI & Machine Learning on FMCG Distribution
In summary, while all these experiments are on, one inference is possibly agreed by all. The ordering mechanism or the technology aspect is sort of taken as a given, it is possible, the challenge is in making the mechanism worthwhile to the retailer and sticky. FMCG companies are realizing that this is better achieved by having a retail data analytics platform built on AI and Machine Learning that can provide instant actionable insights to the sales leadership as well as the feet on the ground to effectively push sales across channels. These can be in the form of personalization – identifying the right category / SKU/Promotion to be pushed in the right channel/retailer, Complex Trend Analytics – using Machine Learning to isolate and identify granular trends from complex sales signals and generate alerts and actions instantly when the salesperson is at the retail shop and tracking SKU, product performance and projections at a granular level. FMCG companies need the analytical power to actively orchestrate and drive the sales execution in the field instead of doing a lot of Post Facto analytics. There is no silver bullet amongst all the options described to achieve this but the one who stays agile, nimble and constantly learns and unlearns will be the one that wins the highly promising Indian Consumer Industries Marketplace.
Capillary , given its long and rich history in helping retailers in the developing world to reach closer to their consumers , is poised well with its solutions and innovations to help FMG brands reach and effectively engage with their customers ( Retailers) and end consumers through digitization, and actionable Insights powered by retail analytics, AI and ML. The ready to deploy Direct To Retailer (D2R) platform and app is a culmination of these trends. Capillary B2B Commerce & Direct to Retail (D2R) solution can enable brands reach directly to the retailers via their distributors while understanding and maximizing their business.
Transform your Indian FMCG brand with digital distribution. Request a demo of Capillary’s digital distribution solution.
