Part One of a Two Part Series:

Whether your goals are to grow share of wallet, keep loyal customers from defecting, extend lifetime value, or attract a new demographic, the data-driven customer insights you have access to -- or don’t -- may make the difference between success and failure.

Brands spend over $50 billion per year on Big Data and advanced analytics, according to McKinsey & Company, gathering customer insights to personalize relationships and cultivate brand loyalty.  Why is it then that over 57% of consumers enrolled in loyalty programs are dissatisfied with the relevance of the communications they receive from brands?  And why is it that over 55% of frequent travelers belong to two or more loyalty programs? 

Despite the huge investment brands make in data and analytics, there is still a knowledge gap in the data-driven insights brand marketers are currently relying on to personalize interactions and anticipate what customers actually want and need, because clearly customers “just aren’t feeling it.”  

And one of the most conclusive sources of customer knowledge that brand marketers can use to fill that gap can come from a digital asset that already exists in your product suite -- your mobile app. 

Sure, your CRM database, enhanced with third-party data is a vital tool in the endless quest for revenue generation, loyalty cultivation, and new customer acquisition. Along with advanced analytics, it is your centerpiece for gaining knowledge and organizing customers into segments to predict buying intent, develop relevant, personalized offers and content, and determining optimal touch-points.

But do traditional data sources and segmentation methods provide the level of insight you can trust to know customers and predict and act on buying intent?

Consider this:

• Customer spending level is certainly an indicator of value, but it tells you nothing about who they are or why they spend with you, leaving you unarmed to respond when their spending habits change.

• Purchase transaction history provides an indicator of interests and needs, but tells you little about what’s driving customers to purchase what they do and who they buy for, leaving you ill equipped to confidently anticipate and act on future buying intent.   

• Demographic data provides insight into buying-power and helps inform buying intent, but it is often based on geo-clusters tagged at the household level -- leaving you unable to speak to customers based on their individual wants and needs.   

What if you had a way to definitively know your customers -- as individuals -- based on their everyday behaviors, interests, and affinities?  Where your customers go and what they do in their spare time tells you a lot about them and can give you the conclusive power to anticipate their needs, personalize engagement, and influence their buying behavior.   

With the explosion of smartphone adoption, brands have naturally developed digital assets to meet the needs of their customers, namely mobile-adapted websites and mobile apps. At the same time, app-based local behavioral analytics and segmentation solutions have emerged, giving marketers access to up-to-the moment, highly predictive psychographic customer knowledge. 

Savvy marketers have already begun to take advantage of the unprecedented local, offline intelligence their apps unlock, using knowledge of what customers most value in their personal lives to create engaging and relevant interactions and in-the-moment targeting, both within the app and across customer-facing assets -- all in a privacy-friendly manner.  

Is your app an underutilized sleeping giant? It doesn’t have to be that way.

Be on the lookout for our second installment, where we’ll shed light on and provide examples of the powerful insights your mobile app can deliver, as well as share specifically how you can act on those insights to grow share of wallet, drive incremental revenue, and minimize customer churn.