How Retailers Can Use Information Governance and Big Data to Drive Brand Loyalty

In today's extremely competitive retail industry, marketing programs are most effective when retailers take advantage of all available customer data and use it to better segment their customers and connect with them. The advent of Big Data is complicating the marketing process and putting new pressures on retail organizations, but can also open the door to customer insights and opportunity.

Establishing an information governance program involving customer data will help retailers effectively reach their customers and drive loyalty. Key attributes of customer information include the following:

1. Social media data. Retailers want to leverage social media data from Facebook and Twitter to improve brand loyalty. However, you need to answer the following questions when establishing your information governance practices:

• Do we understand the terms of use of the social media platform? For example, Facebook clearly states that a user's friends' data can only be used in the context of the user's experience on the application.
• Do we understand the implications of merging social media data into our customer relationship management and master data management (MDM) systems? Let's consider a situation where an organization merged "married to" information from a user's Facebook profile into their MDM system. If the organization stops using the Facebook platform, it will need to obtain explicit permission from the user to retain this information. This can be problematic when the organization has merged Facebook data into a golden copy that's been propagated across the enterprise.
• For reputation analysis against Twitter feeds, consider the following: Will the Twitter data truly reflect the population? Are disgruntled people more likely to use Twitter? Do younger people use Twitter more often? Are more affluent people more likely to use Twitter?

2. Identity information. Identity information can include organization name; individual first, middle and last name; preferred name; and suffix. Information governance establishes policies to link these records. When used in conjunction with other attributes (e.g., phone number, address), governance can aggregate duplicate records and establish a 360-degree view of the customer. Marketing is an important stakeholder for this information, as it's critical to developing a customer profile and providing the ability to segment and launch high return campaigns. In-store credit departments are also interested in this information to better manage credit exposure with customer organizations and individuals.

3. Phone numbers. Marketing departments depend on phone numbers to obtain a customer's ID and tie that customer's purchases to their overall transaction history, enabling improved customer insight. However, it's imperative that store operations train and incentivize store associates to capture accurate phone numbers at the point of sale. An effective information governance program needs to work with marketing, store and web operations to establish real-time validation rules to ensure that sales associates and customers enter appropriate phone numbers at the point of purchase.

4. Shipping information. Information governance rules need to be in place to ensure store associates and call-center teams are trained on alternate addresses (i.e., shipping vs. billing) to avoid the costs and time associated with rerouting, returning and repackaging items. When customers receive their packages on time with minimal inconvenience, they're likely to make repeat purchases and remain loyal to the brand.

By implementing sound information governance around customer information, I've observed retailers increase the number of store visits by 10 percent, the average basket size by 5 percent and the number of customers by 1 percent in the first year alone. As Big Data continues to grow, retailers will have greater opportunities to drive customer loyalty and business success.

Sunil Soares is the director of information governance at IBM. Kurt Wedgwood is an information strategy consulting partner at IBM.