Single Customer View (SCV) closes the gap on omni-channel personalisation

Neil Capel discusses the importance of the Single Customer View.

The SCV is the only method to overcome data silos perpetuated by the many channels through which consumers can engage with a brand and make purchases. This holistic view of the consumer should include both their behaviour across all channels, as well as their interests and unique personality indicators.

A Single Customer View (SCV) is the representation of all the customer data an organisation may have on its customers. There are many advantages from attaining a unified view across all channels, specifically for marketing this includes the ability to analyse past behaviour to better personalise future interactions with customers.

By understanding and storing this type of information, companies can create a precise, wide-angled picture of each consumer’s shopping behaviour, as well as explicit and implicit interests. Well-designed SCVs can be an extremely lucrative and eye-opening undertaking. For example, if you know that a particular customer tends to be on her desktop from 7pm to 9pm on weekdays, you could send her an email or a push notification at 7.30pm encouraging her to complete a purchase she began on her smartphone earlier in the day and then abandoned. In the same communication, you could leverage the SCV to offer a series of other products that are relevant to this specific user based on her previously demonstrated behaviours and interests, not just on this single abandoned product.

Scaling the Single Customer View

SCVs at scale can also offer insight into larger aggregate trends involving all of the consumers that visit a company’s site to enrich their customers’ experience by curating and personalising the content they showcase. It is only understanding of a wide amount of data based on personal behaviour and interests that enables e-commerce companies to communicate with their customers and prospects at the most influential times.

One such example of aggregate trends is the growth of tablet use. They are becoming an increasingly popular platform for e-commerce purchases compared to smartphones. They are more tactile and have larger, easier to read screens. As more evidence points to the so-called ‘couch commerce’ – that is, watching TV while browsing and making purchases on tablets, then, what better time could there be to target them with personalised offers when they are multi-tasking in this way?

Armed with a detailed and accurate SCV, e-commerce brands can personalise communications with potential consumers and greatly increase purchase conversion. The SCV becomes the backbone for a wide range of tailored communications, whether via email, social, mobile app, SMS, onsite and more. These include automated and targeted campaigns based on when the individual likes to shop, on what device, and specifically what they are interested in.

Sailthru retail client, Alex and Ani, prides itself on enriching the firm’s online customer experience by curating and personalising highly relevant content showcasing the variety of meanings behind its products and company. Using its unique stories helps to fuel the company’s tremendous online sales growth.

There is tremendous noise among marketing technologies today, all claiming the ability to deliver a true SCV. Here’s some top tips on what to look for in a provider.

Omni-channel data
This offers multiple points of entry for acquiring new consumers and once a relationship has been established, allows companies to interact with brands on multiple channels. Building a 360-degree view requires data from all of these channel sources.

Long-term data
Real-time access to data going back to the point of customer acquisition is needed to build true relevancy based on an SCV. If your provider is using legacy systems and relational databases then this long-term view is impossible.

Consumer interest graph
A true 360-degree view includes a combination of both explicit behavioural data and implicit interest data that allows companies to personalise based on the whole. Ask what information your potential partner is collecting, if it’s a name, location and behavioural data points, then you need more.

Downstream data analysis
With all of this data, companies need the ability to determine the long-term, downstream impact of all of their marketing decisions and tests. Without a turn-key advanced analytics platform, your omni-channel behavioural and interest data will not allow you to develop proprietary insights that drive innovation.