Data Collection Strategies That May Transform Your Whole Marketing Strategy
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Data Collection Strategies That May Transform Your Whole Marketing Strategy
I've yet to meet a marketer who isn't curious about understanding their customers and website visitors more deeply. Questions such as...
I've yet to meet a marketer who isn't curious about understanding their customers and website visitors more deeply. Questions such as, "Who are our customers?", "What are they seeking?", and "Are they purchasing for themselves or as a gift?" can be pivotal. The key is to know how to gather these insights on a large scale and adjust the marketing strategy based on them.
To illustrate the significance of these types of questions, consider this example:
Suppose you operate an eCommerce platform dedicated to baby care products. Knowing the birth date of your customer's baby, or their expected due date, can revolutionize your business approach. With this information, you know the age of the customer's child across their whole lifecycle.
This knowledge empowers you to curate products on your homepage tailored to the child's developmental stage. It provides insight into the kind of newsletter content you should deliver in the forthcoming months and even guides product selection for retargeting campaigns throughout the customer's journey.
In fact, we observed this approach being adeptly implemented by a German baby care retailer (to note, they aren't our client). Their email collection banner not only captured the usual details but also included a field inquiring about the baby's birthdate or the expected delivery date.
I received this email during the 23rd week of my pregnancy when my baby was roughly the size of a banana.
I received this email during the 40th week of my pregnancy when my baby was approximately the size of a pumpkin.
I've been a proud parent for a month now.
While not every eCommerce sector may have a powerful data point like a child's birth date in the baby care industry, we think that every business possesses specific information which, when gathered, can revolutionize its marketing efforts.
In this article, we'll delve into the types of data that the fashion, furniture, and electronics industries might find valuable concerning their customers' preferences and purchase intentions. Furthermore, we'll offer insights on effective methods to gather this data.
Essentially, we're discussing zero-party data collection strategies. "Zero-party data" can also be referred to as customer preference data or customer purchase intent data.
Fashion Industry
If we operated an eCommerce business in the fashion industry, these are the questions we'd pose to our customers and website visitors:
What is your size?
What clothing styles do you enjoy wearing the most?
Which other brands, besides ours, have you worn before?
Do you have a preference for any particular colours when it comes to clothing?
Are you shopping for a particular occasion?
What product or category are you interested in purchasing today?
Are you buying for yourself or for somebody else?
Are you going to need new (boots) for this winter?
The challenge is: how can we effectively gather this data on a vast scale without making customers feel as though they're undergoing a survey?
We recommend two primary strategies:
Not asking too many questions at once.
Designing a shopping experience where customers provide valuable data about their preferences and shopping intentions without it feeling intrusive.
For instance, if you’re interested in knowing your customer’s shoe size, consider integrating a feature on the Product Detail Page. Introduce a small button allowing customers to "save" their preferred size. This not only streamlines their shopping experience—eliminating the need to reselect the size for each product—but also helps in optimizing the product recommendations, prioritizing items available in the customer's size.
To visualize this strategy, here's how it's implemented in our demo store:
Regarding the principle of "not asking too many questions at once," we suggest the following approach:
Consider your email collection banner. Imagine adding just one question after a customer shares their email address with you. By positioning the question post-email submission, you ensure that there's no added friction to the email collection process. The experience could be visualized as follows:
How Can Size Preference Data be Leveraged in the Fashion Industry?
There are numerous applications for size preference data. For instance, we've already implemented the "size preselect" use-case, where we automatically choose a customer's preferred size on each Product Detail Page (PDP). This led to a 3.38% increase in cart additions.
Other potential applications include:
Deprioritizing Out-of-stock Items: Reorder the website's product display to show fewer items that aren't available in the customer's size.
Newsletter Personalization: Instead of a generic "Up to 50% off on all shoes," you could send targeted messages like "Up to 50% off on shoes in size 44."
Tailored Recommendations: Feature a "Discounted Items in Your Size" section, which presents products specifically in the customer's size.
Streamlined Quick-add on Collection Pages: In a typical Quick-add experience on a collection page, a customer clicks the "+ Quick Add" button and then selects a size (see the example below). Knowing the customer's preferred size lets us bypass this second step, making the shopping experience smoother.
When collecting data, such as a customer's preference for a particular sport (as illustrated in our previous example), there are several personalization strategies one can implement:
Email Welcome Series Personalization: Tailoring welcome email series based on the customer's sports preference. Instead of a single, generic welcome sequence, we can create multiple versions that highlight products corresponding to each sport preference.
Segmented Newsletters: When introducing a new product line, such as a series of running shoes, there's no need to notify your entire email subscriber base. We can target only those subscribers interested in running.
Customized Homepage Experience: Think of the homepage as a brick-and-mortar store's shop window. The beauty of eCommerce is the flexibility it offers—your online shop window can vary for different customer segments. If a customer has expressed a keen interest in running, wouldn't it be more fitting to prominently display running-related products in their personalized shop window?
Furniture Industry
If we operated an eCommerce store specializing in furniture, these would be the key questions we'd pose to our website visitors:
Do you have a home renovation plans?
Do you have any preferred furniture styles, materials, or colors?
What is your living situation? (House or Apartment / number of rooms)
Do you have a garden or outdoor space?
What are your hobbies or interests?
Do you always seek the best-in-class products, or are you looking for the best value for your money?
Is there any furniture that you anticipate upgrading in the near future?
Are you purchasing on behalf of a business?
In our view, the insights gleaned from the first question on our list can be particularly invaluable.
Discovering that a customer intends to renovate their whole apartment may indicate a larger budget to work with in the near future.
Imagine a potential customer enters your store, prepared to invest several thousand euros or dollars in the near future. Wouldn't you want to ensure that the majority of that budget is directed toward your offerings?
An effective method to capture customer preferences might be through an enhanced search feature, similar to what's implemented by marketplaces specializing in real estate sales.
A strategy we've observed among several retailers involves integrating a questionnaire into the website experience, much like what Doe Beauty has implemented. Attached are screenshots illustrating their approach to gathering customer preferences. We believe a comparable strategy could be adapted for the furniture industry, potentially even as a feature of the homepage experience.
Electronics Industry
If we were in the electronics industry, these would be the key questions we'd pose to our website visitors:
Do you have a home renovation intent?
What electronics products do you consider to be your favorites?
Do you have any preferences for specific brands of (mobile phones)?
When do you plan to upgrade your (mobile phone)?
What is your experience with a (specific product)?
What types of electronics products do you currently own?
Do you always seek the best-in-class products, or are you looking for the best value for your money?
Are you purchasing on behalf of a business?
What are your hobbies?
A compelling strategy we've observed within the electronics industry involves identifying website visitors purchasing on behalf of businesses.
One electronics retailer, boasting several hundred million in annual revenue, maintained a dedicated team for regularly reaching out to their B2B clientele. This team had a daily list of business customers to contact.
Leveraging tools like Bloomreach Engagement, they tracked recent website activity of these customers, noting which products they had viewed. This data was then relayed to a dedicated Slack channel accessible to B2B sales representatives.
Armed with this information, sales representatives could prioritize their call lists, ensuring they were not only reaching out to the most engaged business customers but also had insights into the products these customers were considering.
One More Simple Strategy for Zero-Party Data Collection
As we conclude this article, we'd like to introduce an additional simple method for gathering zero-party data from your customers.
Consider integrating a single question into your regular newsletter dispatch. For instance, in the example provided, we're inquiring about the customer's pant size. Armed with this information, the subsequent newsletter could pose another question, like the customer's preferred color. We can seamlessly weave these questions into our newsletters until we've gathered all the pertinent details about our customers.
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