Analytics
News, events, thought leadership and more.
Next week, thousands of retailers will converge upon the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center in New York City for the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) “BIG Show,” the retail industry’s largest annual conference. For four days, C-level and senior executives, regional managers, single-store operators and just about anyone else who is in retail will hear about the latest trends in mobile retailing, brand management, sustainability, marketing research, store design and operations, and, of course, customer analytics.
For many attendees, this last topic, customer analytics, is priority #1 in today’s tight margin retail environment. Making sense of the vast amount of customer data that exists in any given retail organization is a huge challenge: how do you pull in data from existing internal databases and data warehouses, add information gleaned through customer loyalty programs, integrate new types of data from social media sources, and correlate all of the above with location intelligence, predictive modeling, psychographic research, and other external data sources that help you not only understand existing customers, but also target the most profitable new ones?
Retail customer analytics is all about making the most of your marketing mix, so you can maximize your revenue and profit. What’s more, you have to do this quickly and efficiently—there’s no time to waste in the fast-moving, low-margin retail market.
Just ask Southern States Cooperative, a leading distributor of farming supplies with 1,200 retail locations in 23 states. While the company was successful in driving revenue for specific promoted products through its customer loyalty program, it was using a general ‘rule of thumb’ to determine to whom it mailed catalogs or promotions, essentially targeting customers who would have purchased products anyway. To really grow its business, Southern States needed to drive promotions to new prospects, but the company didn’t have an effective way to do this.
Why? Because it could not easily blend internal customer data with market research, customer loyalty, and transactional information without long wait times and complex processes.
Enter Alteryx Strategic Analytics. With Alteryx, Southern States was able to combine all the data it needed from a number of different departments and data warehouses – as well as psychographic research, point of sale data, and loyalty program information – using a single tool, enabling the company to better identify the right customers for targeted mailings. Not only was the company able to increase revenue, but it also cut down on its mailing costs, reduced some processes from six hours to three minutes, and was able to better serve all of its customers – both existing and new. For the full details, check out this case study.
If you’ll be at NRF next week, we invite you to come hear more about how Alteryx helped Southern States overcome the challenges of getting a complete picture of the customer – and focus on the profitable ones. Join Southern States’ manager of company insights, Greg Bucko, and myself on Monday, January 14th at 9:15 am EST in Room 3D05 in the EXPO hall – or stop by Alteryx booth C242 on the show floor – to learn how Alteryx can help you drive change in your strategic approach to the customer.
Paul Ross
VP of Product and Industry Marketing
Alteryx
