There has been a spate of articles recently about the value of using granular data to target customers more accurately and personalize product recommendations (example 1, example 2). The tone of the articles has been positive, bordering on breathless. And given CQuotient’s raison d’être, we are only too happy to see the coverage. That said, [...]
Read moreOne of the hot new terms in retail these days is “Omnichannel.” It was all over the NRF conference in New York this past week. Despite how it sounds, however, it is not just another buzz word. I think it will prove to be one of the defining themes in retail. Bain & Co. defines [...]
Read moreWe just got back from the National Retail Federation‘s Big Show, the premier annual conference for retail technology. The retail technology sector is alive and well. The conference appeared very well attended with lots of exhibiting vendors, large and small. I wanted to share a few (biased, naturally) impressions: There was tremendous buzz around “big [...]
Read moreScott Thompson made the following statement today, only 6 hours into his tenure as new CEO of Yahoo (coming over from PayPal): I am certain that the battle of the next generation of internet businesses will be made up of who has more data and who knows how to use it better than anyone else… [...]
Read moreAccording to Bloomberg, brick-and-mortar retailers are suffering from a case of Web envy. Brick-and-mortar stores have long wanted to track consumers the way online merchants do and are starting to figure out how. They’re using security cameras to monitor shopping behavior and tracking mobile phones to divine which stores people visit. The article goes on [...]
Read moreI just finished reading Customer Centricity Essentials: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and Why It Matters by Professor Peter Fader, who co-leads the Wharton Business School‘s Customer Analytics Initiative. Prof. Fader has published extensively on customer modeling and analytics so I was eager to get my hands on the book. The book is short [...]
Read moreIn the email marketing industry, there has been no shortage of people saying that relevancy is the key to successful campaigns. The more the relevant the content, the more consumers will engage with you and the more they will complete the action you want them to (buy, read, register, etc.). The ultimate goal being highly [...]
Read moreGoogle Wallet launched recently. What’s in your wallet? Cash, credit cards, loyalty cards, coupons and receipts (we can ignore the rest for purposes of this blog post ). The digital version of every one of these will be available through the Google Wallet app on your Android smartphone. The convenience factor for the consumer is [...]
Read moreYou are a retail marketing executive. You are familiar with personalization and know that it can make a meaningful difference to your business. You also know that your team tries to make direct-to-customer communications as relevant as possible. But how good are you really? To help with this question, I created a simple Personalization Grader. [...]
Read moreRecently, Alistair Croll at O’Reilly made a provocative statement: “There is no such thing as Big Data” By this he wasn’t saying that there aren’t massive amounts of data piling up for every business – clearly there are. Instead, he was saying that businesses have made such little use of the data that it might [...]
Read more