Tackling the Twin Trends in Retail Promotion

This Tip was adapted from a DemandTec Viewpoints blog post authored by Elizabeth Magill.

Gone are the days when consumers simply watch their Sunday paper and U.S. mail for deals from favorite retailers. Today, they check email, track updates in Twitter and Facebook, swipe through smartphone and iPad apps, and watch for incoming text messages. Consumers are swimming in communications — and getting through to them is hard.

For retailers, this dynamic has resulted in two inter-related trends that are increasing complexity in managing retail promotions.

• The dramatic expansion of media channels — many of these digital — when combined with the expansion of loyalty programs and other means of collection, has led to the availability of a wealth of customer data.
   
• Retailers are increasingly taking advantage of this customer data to drive messages and offers that are targeted to groups or individuals.

IBM DemandTec has developed a set of best practices, detailed in a new eBook. (Use the form below to download your copy.) In this Tip, we focus on two best practices that are crucial to addressing the twin trends of increased tailoring of content across an ever expanding number of customer touchpoints:

1.  Centrally managed content

To effectively execute targeted messages across multiple channels, marketers need a central database of promotional messages and offers so that content can be "versioned" by media channel, geography or store zone, as well as by language or market segment. Content includes copy, images and pricing to name a few possibilities.

2.  Plan in a shared, collaborative environment

Retail promotions are typically planned across many departments and with manufacturing partners, agencies and other third parties. With so many disparate systems involved, the end result is inevitably redundant data entry, errors, and lack of visibility and accountability for the different groups involved. To effectively communicate targeted messages across multiple customer touchpoints, retailers need a shared, collaborative environment that provides role specific views and capabilities, and a common place to define all marketing events, including articulating the goals, targets, and themes.

Perhaps the most important feature for collaboration is a common calendar, providing visibility to all the promotions and events occurring at any given time across the organization. Merchants will want to view this calendar by category, while an event view is critically important to both marketing and merchandising. Forward facing views are something a retailer may also choose to share with its manufacturing partners who will gain insight to upcoming events, and can plan around those themes.

READ IBM DEMANDTEC'S BEST PRACTICES IN PROMOTION PLANNING AND EXECUTION...

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