Retailers best at targeted marketing

Published 13th June 2008

GI Insight’s latest study has found that when it comes to directing targeted and relevant offers and communication to customers, retail sectors fare far better than financial services and the public sector. This correlates strongly with the penetration of loyalty schemes, the primary vehicle for understanding customers’ value and spending patterns, and thereby developing individualised marketing strategies.

Supermarkets are the clear leaders at using the information they gather on their customers to communicate with relevant and personalised offers – 19% above the all sectors average. Fashion retailers, e-commerce firms, department stores and music retailers are also significantly above average in their customer understanding and communications relevance.

The mature techniques of British supermarkets stand head and shoulders above the other sectors studied. As an aggregated set of sectors, retailers in general are obviously getting the targeting game right more often than financial services, although the finance super-sector’s average is being dragged down by the poor performance of credit card issuers.

Andy Wood, Managing Director, GI Insight, comments: “It can be no coincidence that previous GI Insight studies show retailers to also be the clear leaders in using loyalty schemes to combine profile and transactional information to understand their customers’ value to the organisation and then develop and implement data-based strategies to improve customer retention and increase their satisfaction and value.

“However, the retail sector should not become complacent. The study also found that young consumers are treated in a far more personalised and relevant way compared with people aged 45+, despite the fact that these older people are in the highest earning phase of their working lives. This may reflect a continued prejudice from marketers who like to concentrate more on acquiring customers in the early stages of their adult life, rather than developing and fostering them in their more mature years.”