How Retailers Can Use Data Onboarding to Improve Marketing Efforts

As email, postal and other marketing channels flood consumers with messaging, retailers struggle to meet the highly complex expectations of their hyperconnected customers. Today's consumers demand more personalized, optimized and unique shopping experiences. While the process known as data onboarding isn't new, it's still growing in popularity within the world of retail.

Data onboarding enables retailers to integrate offline customer data with online identities to target customers across multiple channels and devices — e.g., display, mobile, email, social and addressable TV. To remain competitive, retailers need to include data onboarding as part of their marketing strategy and planning process.

Extend Reach and Targeting Capabilities Online
With data onboarding, retailers can take their offline CRM data sets (purchase, loyalty, point of sale, etc.) and convert them into a holistic digital audience for online targeting. Once a CRM list has been onboarded, retailers can effectively target a customer anytime, anywhere, across all devices. Without data onboarding, personalization and optimization is not effectively attainable.

Better Understand Who Your Customers Are
Data onboarding is breathing new life into the millions of dollars retailers invest in their CRM systems. Most retailers map their offline CRM records against a robust database of demographic, lifestyle and purchase data to gain a 360-degree view of each customer. Armed with this detailed customer information, retailers can separate this data into specific online segments that can then be easily targeted.

Track the Online Customer Journey From Start to Finish
CRM onboarding also paves the way for closed loop marketing. Using unique IDs, retailers can track customer engagement from online campaign interactions through final purchase. Retailers can gain insights about the entire customer journey and then use those insights to create hyperpersonalized and engaging experiences. Customer journey analysis is now considered the most valuable conversion rate optimization measurement method, according to eConsultancy.

With data onboarding, retailers can use the wealth of their CRM data in online advertising to gain greater consumer insight, develop stronger campaigns, and use that knowledge to create personalized experiences that every consumer craves.

Jessica Paviluk is the director of marketing at Throtle, a people-based data onboarding company that enables brands to accurately reach customers online, across all media devices and formats.