Know your customers wherever they are
Data you can partner for Companies with complementary data sets can combine insights by partnering. Vendors such as Visa have partnered with retailers to introduce highly targeted location-based offers to consumers as they make purchases. Scan your Visa at a Gap to make a purchase, and get offers on your smartphone for retailers within walking distance. Match the data with the customer This wealth of data is only useful if you can build the complex algorithms needed to connect data collected from these streams to your unique customer IDs. You'll also need IT systems that automatically update a customer's profile each time he or she interacts with you at a given touchpoint and scrub the data to ensure accuracy (e.g., validating emails). The organizational and technology challenges are significant, and we have touched on only a few of them here. But we've seen big pay-offs for retailers who can follow individual customers across media and channels. Increasingly, such a capability is not just nice to have; it will be essential for any retailer who hopes to stay in the game.
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