To be highly effective, marketing initiatives must build on a sound understanding of customers. This just isn’t happening. Consumer behaviour research by Econsultancy shows that 81% of marketers believe they have a holistic view of customers while only 22% of customers believe the average retailer understands them. By bringing analytics to the front desk, real-time analytics is a means to bridge this disconnect between marketing experts and customers, and enhance the effectiveness of marketing, explain Ashwin Meshram and Sunpreet Singh Bindra, founders of ONE Rewardz, a complete customer engagement solutions company.

Analytics yields insights into customers’ minds and preferences, which help drive customer interactions. Analytics is usually a backend function that analyses customer data over a period of time. However, it is not enough for brands operating in highly competitive retail environments to rely only on data trends picked up by traditional analytics. To become their customer’s first preference, and stay so, businesses must act promptly, when he or she is engaging with the brand, and base their actions on the very latest customer data available. Insights are effective only when they are valid. In that, real-time analytics enables businesses to draw the most effective insights from fresh customer data.

Real-time analytics is gaining ground because customer needs and preferences are evolving very rapidly. Today more customers are moving away from their last seasons’ preferences. Analysing purchases made last week/month can afford better predictability of customer behaviour than can analysing purchases made in the last season.
 
Real-time analytics mandates 24x7 connectivity with customers to keep track of their in-store browsing. This is most effective for online stores. Continuous connectivity is also essential to prompt customers for feedback via their mobile phones after every interaction with the brand.

A number of solutions on offer have made it easy for businesses to process data in real-time. A good real-time analytics solution will seamlessly integrate with the POS system (online and offline). Besides obtaining customer feedback and generating detailed real-time customer analytics, it will facilitate running a customer loyalty programme. It will permit collective views of customer preferences, such as top selling products, best performing outlets and yields of marketing campaigns, as well as facilitate drill downs to the level of individual customers.

FabFiera is an online marketplace for unique ethnic apparel, Indian handicrafts, jewellery, etc. It has deployed the ONE Rewardz customer engagement solution to great effect.

“Just three months after the deployment, we recorded 30% increase in customer engagement based on customer willingness to provide feedback post interactions with the brand. Also, 80% of customers have been converted from dormant to active. Now our loyal customers are acting as brand ambassadors,” says Vidit Ghai, CEO — FabFiera.