Digital and mobile marketing is making it possible for retailers and brands to work together for mutual benefit. And it's technology -- specifically, technology that enables real-time, customer-specific insight into consumer behavior -- that gets the credit for bridging the gap.
All of us need to know the exact ROI of our promotions and marketing efforts - it's the one thing that we're ALL seeking -- all retailers, all brands, all marketers.
Retailers and brands have long sought the same thing: to gain visibility with, and more business and loyalty from high-value consumers. Unfortunately, these two groups traditionally have been at odds about how to achieve those goals. Brands want to stand out, especially to the most valuable customers. Retailers, meanwhile, don't necessarily want to share valuable data that would help brands optimize and target their offers.
The ability to track the performance of those digital and mobile offers in real-time through the point of sale is now driving brands and retailers toward more mutually beneficial approaches. Now, marketers at both retailers and brands can track consumer responsiveness and purchases down to the item level, providing insight about consumer behavior throughout the path to purchase.
A platform that lets retailers track what's working at the register means those retailers can start to leverage and benefit from the loyal following of the brands they carry in their stores. For example, they might decide to invite consumers responding to an offer to join the store's own loyalty program, creating a one-to-one relationship with consumers that didn't exist before. All that in exchange for simply sharing some of their consumer data with brands.
That same platform, meanwhile, gives brands far better visibility into the effectiveness of a given marketing approach. They now have the ability to track every offer in detail -- down to when and if an offer was redeemed, at what different locations, at what times of the day and on what days of the week. That detailed data about buyer behavior helps brands optimize their offers, which can be adapted and updated in real-time as the data dictates so that they are truly targeting their offers to the highest value consumers (the same consumers they are driving into retail stores).
Armed with such in-depth data, brand marketers can optimize campaigns based on actual results and ensure that they are reaching the right audiences at the right places and times, creating more consumer traffic that directly benefits the retailers. The result is more targeted offers that boost consumer loyalty -- to the brands and the retailers -- and increase purchase activity.
What was once an uneasy relationship between retailers and brands is now a win-win for both groups, not to mention the far more satisfied and ultimately more loyal consumer.