Big Brands Get Personal With Customer Data [Case Study]

See how Target, Fig & Olive, and Bank of America are using omnichannel personalization in their marketing

Big brands in every industry vertical are leveraging the power of customer data to deliver personalized campaigns and promotions to increase sales, deepen engagement, and improve customer loyalty.

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How are you using customer data to inform your personalized marketing campaigns?

Here are some examples from three industry leaders to get you inspired:

Retail Industry — Target

In 2012, Target made the news by sending a promotional mailer advertising baby gear to a teenage girl before she told her parents about the pregnancy.

The retail giant was able to do so by creating a customer profile on each shopper to store demographic information and track buying behaviors.  

Since then, Target has further refined its personalized marketing strategies (besides taking more care to avoid public-relationship disasters) most notably with their app Cartwheel.

The app uses customer data from a centralized database as well as real-time in-store interactions to offer recommendations and discounts based on past purchases and app usage.

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Cartwheel features shopping lists with a scanning function, and allows guests to personalize the homepage by choosing exactly which categories to feature.

In addition, the app’s Personalized Recommendations suggest tailored offers based on guests’ in-app activities and Exclusive Offers reward loyal guests with personalized, higher-value offers.

The app boasts over 7 million users while active users have increased their spending at Target by nearly 30 percent.

Restaurant Industry — Fig & Olive

With eight locations across the country, Fig & Olive struggled with the large amount of customer data they have collected both from the point-of-sale systems at their individual locations and from OpenTable.

To leverage this wealth of customer information, the restaurant group developed a centralized reservation center so they can combine data from all locations.

This allows the company to track the dining habits and visit frequency of guests across all of their restaurants.

Using the centralized data platform, the company ran automated personalized email campaigns targeting specific customer behaviors.

For instance, the “we miss you campaign” that offered complimentary crostini to guests who had not visited in the last 30 days resulted in 300 visits and more than $36,000 in sales—an ROI of 700%.

Their automated email campaigns have an extraordinarily high open rate of 53%. Their personalized communication strategy has increased customer loyalty and spending.

In addition, the restaurant group used their customer relationship management (CRM) platform to gather feedback from their guests through online surveys.

By gathering and acting on customer feedback, Fig & Olive decreased negative reviews on Yelp by 36%.

Financial Industry — Bank of America

Bank of America launched BankAmeriDeals, a program that has served 1.5 billion offers to its 30 million online and 14 million mobile banking customers during a 2-year period.

Using data in bank customers’ accounts to discover their purchasing habits, BofA partnered with popular merchants to offer customers deals on products and services.

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The program, while keeping the customers’ personally identifiable information within the bank’s database, allows participating merchants to “link” offers of up to 15 percent “cash back” within BofA’s online and mobile banking customers’ accounts.

BofA further increased the relevance of the offers by going beyond national brands. It partners with regional and local merchants to deliver the right level of relevance to the right customers.

This program has helped the bank deepen engagement with their customers, creating a win-win situation for the merchants, customers, and bank.

77% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience.

Personalization is no longer a “luxury” in marketing if you want to cut through the clutter.

It’s time to set up your business to leverage customer data and deliver an outstanding customer experience that increases conversion.