THE MIRACLE OF CONNECTED DATA & HOW IT CAN DRIVE BUSINESS EXCELLENCE

Fabindia is one of India's largest private platform for retailing garments, furnishings, home products, personal care products, ethnic products, and fabrics which are handmade by craftspeople across rural India.

- Karan Kumar

Marketing today is as much an art as it is a science. I say science because theoretically today, we are better placed than ever before to plan, manage and target campaigns for their highest efficacy. Consequently, measuring and driving campaign ROI today is possible in a much more robust and comprehensive manner than ever before.

But all of this pre-supposes that we know our customers. That we are able to read patterns into their behaviour and can use those patters to break the overall meta group into smaller and thinner slices, targeting each slice with customized offers and communications to trigger individual and nuanced behaviour. It is this that has come to form the basis of concepts like custom targeting, moment marketing, and programmatic-led re-marketing. However, to make any of this possible, and effectively so, the marker must have the ability to both store and mine customer data, being able to arrive at sharp understanding and insights which will in turn fuel the marketing & campaign engines. This is easier said than done, especially if it needs to be done in the rigour that it deserves.

Collecting ‘what’ data is relatively simpler. Often from your POS, this data will help you tag a customer in your database often using his unique mobile number or email id. This data will also tell you what does this customer normally buys, how often does he buy it and what is the average value he purchases every time he makes a transaction with the brand. All of this and some more depending on what your system is configured to collect and analyse.