Do you really know your customers?
Next time you are with a group of girls sharing a bottle of wine, open a can of worms and ask them if they return much of what they buy on-line. It sounds like a conversation killer, but you can bet the next round of Jagerbombs that your jaw will hit the ground when you hear what a few of them get up to on-line.
I know (because we have the biggest returns data lake in the known universe) that if your gang is typical of the market, you will probably have the following groups:
Buy and Keep Katie
Katie is tech savvy and transacts with efficiency. She has a busy lifestyle and although loyal will be brand promiscuous. She tends to know what she wants and is emotionally neutral. She can buy little and often or have bundled splurges of purchase, but she never buys with the intention of returning any of her items. We should all love Katie, she keeps what she buys and is profitable – she’s an all-round good gal!
Sensitive Susan
Susan expects high standards, if your standards are not as she expects, she will treat it as a personal insult and get angry and upset. She has little patience and will jump on a review site to tell the world what you have done wrong in a heart-beat. She will then send your CEO a long letter of complaint chronicling all your mistakes. Before your fatal error, she was loyal and valuable, but you are now in her little black book, her arms are folded and she is in a huff. Susan loves high-touch customer service and can be brought back to the fold with a sincere apology and virtual hug.
Loss making Lucy
Lucy is a retail nightmare and should keep every retailer awake at night. Her bedroom is her dressing room and she will think nothing of maxing her credit card out to try out the latest trends just to send everything back. She has no retail conscience and will hold on to stock and make it unavailable for Buy & Keep Katie. She exploits free delivery and returns policies and makes sure everything is refunded before any credit card payment is due. Lucy can also be dishonest, sometimes Lucy will even wear and return or even commit fraud. Strangely, marketers love Lucy, they send her incentives and promotions and encourage her to buy (and obviously send back) all of your lovely stock.
Exploring Emma
Emma is comfortable with online shopping and open to new ideas. Whilst she has her favourite buys, she likes exploring into new categories and brands. Whilst exploring she may buy a couple of sizes until she knows what fits, but will generally keep one and keep exploring. She loves new season launches and promotions. Regular communications which provide information as well as recommendations are key to this segment. Offering low risk products in new categories is a sure way of generating retained sales growth and a happy Emma.
So now you get the idea, all women (and some guys) really are not equal in the online shopping stakes - a sizeable chunk of your customers are Loss Making Lucy’s who are poisonous to your profitability.
So this is where the next generation of personalisation comes into play. Clear Returns big data solutions can identify and predict (with 96% accuracy) what your shoppers want and match your customer to products that they will keep. This increases sales and decreases your returns rate – a double profit hit.
And yes, we can even rescue Sensitive Susan for you to make sure you don’t lose one of your most loyal and profitable customers.
Get in touch to talk more.
Viv Sutherland
Director of Sales
Tel: +44 (0) 141 554 4175
Email: [email protected]