Personalization works. It’s proven to drive revenue and loyalty. In fact, one 2022 study found that 86 percent of consumers like personalized offers. So why isn’t your retail business doing personalization as effectively as top retailers?  It’s not as if you lack customer data. You’ve got huge quantities of data — customer transactions, browsing history, channel preferences, mobile app usage, demographics, and more. With all that data, your business should be able to deliver personalized messages to the right shoppers at the right time over the right channel.

That’s the theory. The reality is often far different. The problem is that customer data is scattered across silos. It’s fragmented and inconsistent. Many retailers lack the unified 360-degree view of data across all channels that’s needed for effective personalization.

Another approach is for business-side staff to round up data into spreadsheets or databases — another tedious chore. The data may be fed into a personalization solution but if that data isn’t sound to start with, the retailer faces a sizable risk of off-target messaging that can hurt brand equity and to complicate matters, a personalization project may be isolated to a business unit like loyalty or marketing. Unless data is connected across all business units and the full omnichannel environment through which customers use for everything from search to purchase to support, personalization results are going to be mixed.

And of course, business applications change frequently. It’s not uncommon for sizable retailers to have dozens of systems in place, for ecommerce, point of sale (POS), loyalty, customer service, merchandising, and more. Whenever a retailer adopts a newer, better system, whatever brittle integrations have been cobbled together have to be rebuilt.  In fact, integration is the #1 obstacle that retailers face when implementing a new system, according to MyTotalRetail’s annual retail technology report for 2022.

Omnichannel Personalization

Effective Data’s appeal is its leadership in the integration platform as a service (iPaaS) market and is trusted by thousands of organizations around the globe, with a strong presence in the retail space along with other verticals.  We are perfectly suited to solve challenges like retail personalization and to equip retailers with intelligent connectivity and automation to break down data silos, accelerate business processes, and unlock the power of data — crucial elements for personalization success.

Rethinking Retail’s Innovation Priorities

Ongoing innovation characterizes Effective Data’s commitment to the retail sector. For example, We can leverage data capture mechanisms directly on in-store POS terminals to further personize your data. In effect, your POS terminals function as Internet of Things (IoT) devices that feed customer transaction data into a repository such as a data warehouse to augment a customer profile.

The retail industry itself has a strong focus on innovation, but it’s tended to prioritize the latest and greatest front-end customer experience applications. Less attention is paid to back-end systems like an integration platform when it comes time for the C-suite to approve a technology investment.  The effectiveness of front-end applications depends heavily on their integration with other systems across the full retail environment. In many cases, it’s up to departmental leads to make a business case for unlocking the value of data for personalization and other initiatives.

Whether your company is new to EDI or wants to expand your EDI offering without adding additional infrastructure, our Ed Connect cloud platform gives you the opportunity to personalize your data across your landscape.

To learn more about how you can take advantage of Effective Data’s Integration offerings, please visit our website at Effective-Data.com or reach to our account team for assistance.