Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format. With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)

Customer data is vital to cross-channel loyalty

The company surveyed 100 retail organisations to determine the current state of cross-channel customer loyalty, and found that the inability for a retailer to capture relevant customer data poses two main problems:

1. Due to a lack of customer data, customer insights are unavailable to create personalised offers (e.g. based on prior purchase behaviour or demographics);
2. If retailers are unable to ascertain channel preferences for communication delivery, marketing efforts are often duplicated across multiple channels, making them less effective and reducing the overall return on marketing investment.

In response to this pressure, the retail organisations surveyed generally indicated that, instead of simply cutting prices, they were offering rewards to their most loyal customers based on how often they shop (i.e. segmentation by frequency). The idea is that, by increasing the frequency of customer visits, the retailer gains more selling opportunities.

A key capability highlighted by the study is the ability to deliver personalised promotions across all channels. According to Chris Cunnane, senior research associate for Aberdeen Group, "The ability to use customer data and analytics to develop personal promotions cuts down on the marketing clutter that a typical consumer has to decipher when considering a purchase, and can be used to sell similar items at the point-of-sale."

And, to improve cross-channel loyalty performance, the survey showed that customer data and the use of emerging channels are of utmost importance. Aberdeen's analysis found that leading retailers have already placed an increased focus on:

1. Implementing a CRM application
   With a CRM solution in place, these retailers can evaluate customer purchase history, and develop plans to improve recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) performance across the entire enterprise.
2. Social media campaigns
   Social media cannot stand alone, and must be combined with the loyalty programme to truly involve the customer in the brand experience. Retailers can start their venture into social marketing by setting up an online community as part of an opt-in micro-site, with product information, promotional offers, and web events exclusively for their loyalty members.
3. Developing mobile and digital marketing campaigns
   By not implementing this technology, retailers are unable to take advantage of location-based promotions, smart posters, 2D barcode promotions, or social media applications within the mobile environment. Changing customer preferences for marketing messaging must be addressed; as these changes are met, retailers can expect to remain top-of-mind, and increase their wallet-share.

The report has been made available for download from Aberdeen's web site - click here (free registration required).

Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format.

With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

You'll learn to sell yourself, sell your products, and sell your brand on the internet, writing high-conversion landing pages, social media posts, and more. You'll start attracting customers you didn’t even know existed, and learn the top trade secrets for customer retention.

You'll become a lean, mean selling machine. See how the experts do it and learn to adapt what they've done for your own profit. You'll learn to write strong, powerful, effective sales copy, whether it's for a sales script, sales letter, flyer, insert, advert or just about anything else.

You'll learn how to sell whether you're selling by telephone, by mail, or even meeting prospects face-to-face. You'll find out how to size them up, present yourself, nail down their true needs, close the sale, and learn to tackle the tricky ones.

You'll discover the biggest secrets of successful direct mail sellers, sales letter writers, and how to segment and choose the right prospects for each campaign.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)