Since 1964 Amtico have been one of the worlds leading designers and manufacturers in luxury flooring, and flooring solutions amongst both the residential and commercial flooring market. Amtico currently have a presence in over 600 independent stores in the UK.
The challenge
Identifying the most viable locations for retailer recruitment, taking into account the demographic profiles that each retailer serves
Having a rich insight into the overall market potential of each Amtico retailer
Understanding and being able to map their target consumers across the UK
The Solution
Investing in InSite enables Amtico to prioritise retailer acquisitions based on the greatest headroom potential whilst leveraging demographic data
InSite enables Amtico to quantify their market potential based on the demographics of their consumers
An actionable and strategic tool that Amtico are able to share with multiple stakeholders across the business
Pay is only one factor that influences the number and quality of candidates for your roles, and their loyalty.
It’s no secret that staffing is an ongoing challenge for most providers of elderly care. Market competition doesn’t only come from other care settings. Potential staff may be looking for local work in a range of sectors locally, where hourly pay is higher and the responsibilities seem less demanding. How can you compete to attract and retain quality staff for your elderly care services?
Take a targeted approach to recruitment and retention by applying marketing principles
Traditionally, elderly care providers have used their instincts to decide on good locations for their residential or in-home care operations. In recent years, some have made good use of market data to investigate and understand their potential customer base. By looking at the age and affluence of potential care clients in their catchment area, savvy operators can anticipate the level of need, design the right services and price them competitively. Today, we’re advocating the same approach, to understand staffing supply and demand.
In our work with a few forward-thinking, large-scale elderly care providers, we’ve helped them to factor in staffing availability when looking for new sites or deciding whether expand operations in an existing location. There’s a great opportunity for mid-sized operators to take advantage of the same approach.
Using local market insight and benchmarking to identify potential staff
Using demographic and location data, we can:
Profile the demographic characteristics of ideal candidates for elderly care roles
Contrast them to the Acorn profiles of typical users of the elderly care services
Flag high-risk locations likely to face the biggest staffing challenges
Highlight areas of demographic overlap, with a strong potential customer base and staffing base
Identify the best catchment areas to recruit suitable candidates
Analyse the likely needs and priorities of available candidates in the area
Contextual dynamics in practice: understanding local recruitment landscapes
Our current work with elderly care providers is commercially sensitive. So, we’re using an example from a different care sector with a very similar recruitment and retention challenge – children’s nurseries.
Our client told us that recruitment challenges are hampering business performance – they had had to close some sites because of a lack of staff. They needed to factor the potential to recruit into acquisition decisions. We profiled 11,000 staff members in 400 nurseries in the UK to discover their Acorn groups and identifies primary and secondary target staffing groups. We mapped nurseries in their locations, showing where the customer base and the staff base overlapped. This helped our client tailor recruitment messaging to available local staff priorities. They could plan to expand their service provision in locations where they knew they could recruit to meet demand.
Modelling the recruitment potential for new and existing locations
The approach is not only relevant for new elderly care locations and investment. By understanding the local employment landscape, you can recruit in a more targeted and effective way and find out what matters to the people you’d like to employ, so you can shape working practices and promote aspects of the role that will be most appealing.
Location and mobile app data can you help you focus recruitment in areas where there are candidates who can easily access your sites and domestic clients. Your potential staff don’t necessarily live on the doorstep but there may be nearby areas that have good transport links, where workers already tend to travel from.
Offering roles that local employees want to take
Of course, pay is a very important factor when it comes to attracting competent and committed staff. Premium elderly care operators may be able to pay staff more and offer a more luxurious workplace. But these are not the only things that influence employees. You can provide other, affordable benefits and mould your working environment and employee programmes to match what workers really value. Profiling target candidates in your local area can help you understand their priorities – from family-friendly working hours to free lunches and incentive programmes.
Beyond pay and benefits – understanding the appeal of elderly care roles
Working in elderly care is a socially responsible job. For some candidates, recognition of the value of their work can be a strong motivator. Creating better career paths and more tangible pathways for carers can make a big difference to your recruitment. Some larger elderly care operators are trying to emulate nursing pathways: clear role definition and progression can help to retain committed staff. If you understand more about the potential candidates in your area and your existing staff, you can decide whether this approach could support recruitment and retention for one or more locations.
CACI’s specialist elderly care and senior living team works with clients in the UK to help them improve operational and financial performance with access to vital insights into their customers, employees and locations. To find out more, contact us.
It is now crucial for wealth managers and financial service firms to better their consumer understanding. They can do so by ensuring they are well-versed in the entire consumer lifecycle and journey, understand optimal communication techniques required for effective customer marketing, collect enriching customer-centric data to tailor marketing and distribution effectively, and establish innovative ways of measuring these areas to remain compliant.
Access to insightful demographics on the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviours of investors within the market can help drive improved distribution performance, revenue growth and increased client engagement. This crucial investment market knowledge can be provided by CACI.
How does CACI support a firm’s wealth management customer journey?
Through a detailed understanding of current investor behaviour needs and growth opportunities, CACI can support businesses by quantifying acquisition opportunities across regions to inform effective growth and investor engagement strategies.
Once businesses have been equipped with the appropriate datasets to target high net worth individuals (HNWI), CACI can support the optimisation of marketing performance across channels and help businesses improve their distribution performance through digital, direct and intermediated channels to drive improved marketing return on investment, increased customer acquisition and better investment retention performance.
CACI offer a range of support for wealth managers and firms to meet customers’ needs while ensuring compliancy, including:
Support in better understanding existing investors.
Understanding the market and identifying opportunities, particularly in identifying how and where to acquire HNWI.
Determining where potential and current customers are located, as well as their value.
Receiving demographic data and behavioural insights on investors to better understand the customer landscape.
Demonstrating compliance with Consumer Duty, with meeting customers’ needs remaining at the heart of what CACI do.
How CACI use data science & analytics to support the wealth management customer journey
CACI’s data science & analytics services have three primary capacities to support the enhancement of the customer journey:
Using pre-existing information on younger investors in wealth managers and firms’ portfolios to build bespoke datasets. CACI’s multi-sector knowledge and access to unique lifestyle datasets enables the building of this bespoke consumer data insight, providing wealth managers and firms with a detailed picture of the opinions, preferences and spending potential of HNWI.
Modelling prospects for HNWI based on demographics.
Assessing firms’ historic data to determine how HNWI already in their portfolio achieved this position by tracking their movements and identifying signals and triggers, to enable modelling of future investors.
How CACI’s Fresco solution supported one business’ customer acquisition & marketing strategy
CACI’s Fresco solution was employed at one business to establish a granular understanding of existing investors. This allowed for the development of a targeting propensity score, which enabled the pinpointing of potential investors that would be most likely to join the business. CACI then identified and mapped opportunities across the UK, considering regional differences and high value areas to target. Detailed insight into prospects supported the development of a consistent marketing targeting strategy within the business, which was also rolled out across traditional and social media.
Results:
Development of a targeted audience strategy focusing on high propensity and high value audiences.
Reduction in digital marketing spend.
Increase in digital marketing ROI (return on investment).
How investor segmentation, personas & geographic data application transformed a business
CACI developed investor segmentation, detailed personas and geographic counts to support a market sizing initiative requested by one client.
The resulting data uncovered hundreds of variables at an individual level and provided rich insight into a range of traits and characteristics. This not only supported the business’ understanding of its current customers, but of the wider UK investment market. CACI developed personas to help the business gauge an in-depth view into consumer behaviour, insight into the market and the potential reach for key segments. Finally, geographic mapping helped the business understand acquisition and growth potential across catchments and regions, and cross-sell models were developed to support the immediate activation of distribution and marketing activity.
Results:
The business experienced steady and sustainable growth in its acquisition, retention and reactivation.
Increased investment values were received from both new and existing investors.
The business was equipped with actionable insights to help inform ongoing and future marketing and office location strategies.
Throughout this blog series for the wealth management industry, we break down the opportunities for businesses to attract and retain high-net-worth individuals. Continue reading at the links below:
For over 20 years, Knight Frank has partnered with CACI to achieve a long-term vision of becoming the world’s leading independent property advisor. Knight Frank works with various industries and businesses on their property and location planning strategies. Accessibility to reliable and accurate information to successfully serve clients and the ability to build authority as a market leading commercial agent have remained at the business’ core throughout.
Despite Knight Frank’s wider recognition for its work within residential property, the business is evenly split between residential and commercial real estate. In recent years, the general climate surrounding realty has become increasingly challenging, with macroeconomic conditions weighing heavily on this industry globally, particularly in terms of capital market investments. To manoeuvre these challenges, Knight Frank has been using CACI’s GIS software, InSite, along with various CACI datasets such as Acorn, the UK’s leading geodemographic segmentation tool.
The Challenge
Knight Frank’s primary challenges have been twofold:
• Determine how to navigate ongoing global uncertainty in the real estate industry.
• Handle volatility in capital investment markets.
Stephen Springham, Head of Retail Research at Knight Frank, elaborated on the impact that these challenges have had on the business.
Stephen explained:
Capital market investment is key to real estate markets and obviously that is probably at the sharpest end of economic sentiment. Investor sentiment isn’t sky high at the moment, so that is probably the biggest barrier we have to overcome, although we’re probably not radically different from most global companies in that regard.
The Solution
CACI’s InSite software has significantly supported Knight Frank’s business endeavours through both the nationwide insight from Acorn, as well as the shopper understanding from the machine-learning
catchment model, Retail Footprint. “It’s a window to the world of data. A lot of those datasets are bespoke and unique to CACI,” Stephen explained.
Additionally, CACI’s business consultancy solutions and thought leadership have been supporting Knight Frank in improving their overall business functions by supplying the business with the necessary tools to effectively advise retailers and support due diligence regarding buying and selling within the capital market.
The Results
According to Stephen, there has been a noticeable uptake across the business in data usage, with several transactions on shopping centres Knight Frank completed over the course of last year that were achieved
thanks to the support of CACI’s data and InSite tool.
One of the business’ recent and most notable acquisitions came in 2021, with Knight Frank acting for Redical in the purchase of the Victoria Gate/Victoria Quarter Shopping Centre in Leeds. This £120-million deal was executed in part through a deep dive of data provided by CACI’s InSite tool.
The Future
While Knight Frank continues to have an open dialogue with CACI on any new developments or datasets that could continue to support the business’ initiatives, CACI’s InSite and data have created a notable foundation.
While wealth and asset managers may have developed a sophisticated and loyal base of investors, it is no secret that their client base is ageing and shifting. There have been noticeable changes in both the types of customers and their behaviours, whereby moving away from traditional investment styles and seeking out alternative areas of wealth to gain market share have become commonplace.
So, why would wealth and asset management firms benefit from having younger investors in their client base?
Their trajectory to wealth has high earning potential for wealth management businesses
Reaching the broader and untapped market of high-earning young investors has become critical for wealth and asset managers to continue to be successful. Supporting potential investors who are en route to wealth inheritance, who may find themselves in a position to sell off a thriving business in the near or distant future, or whose career path suggests high earning potential, are all inviting factors to drive wealth and asset management firms to acquire younger clients.
According to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a High Net Worth Individual (HNWI) is someone who either earns more than £300,000 per annum or has net assets of more than £3,000,000. Firms with a client base that is more likely to pass down their wealth generationally are left to wonder the amount that might one day be re-invested into the firm, while young investors are more likely to distribute their wealth differently as a result of their current life stage and emerging alternatives, such as Crypto currencies. While the average new and younger potential investor may, for example, only bring ~£100k in assets to the table, potential exists for this investor to be on the trajectory towards becoming a high-net-worth individual.
Their financial industry knowledge is superior
Young investors building or inheriting their own wealth are often more knowledgeable (and environmentally conscious) about their financial options than previous generations. With 80% of 18-24-year-olds having reportedly invested in ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) stocks according to the Saltus Wealth Index 2022, their expectations onthe importance of sustainable or green investments may likely differ, and they may be inclined to ensure that ESG factors such as how the businesses they invest in respond to climate change, water management, health and safety policiesare likely to be considered.Theseinvestors may also be more likely to consider whether investments meet global standards for sustainability reporting (GRI) in transparency and accountability.
They are not afraid to take their services digital
The investor arena has increasingly filled with entry-level investors who havelofty expectations for customer service, especially with digital services.They are aware of the capabilities of self-sufficient online investing; therefore, they expect the same level of speed and ease of use in all their financial affairs.
How can wealth management businesses identify and secure young investors?
Without a comprehensive understanding of the behaviours and traits of potential younger investors, firms may struggle to target the right investors through their own initiatives, or target young investors at scale through digital channels. CACI is equipped with robust datathat can providevaluable insight into potential investors at scale across the UK, garnering information on who the potential clients are, what they like, and what they do. CACI can also track existing clients’ signals and triggers to model with future investors in mind.
Throughout this blog series for the wealth management industry, we break down the opportunities for businesses to attract and retain high-net-worth individuals. Continue reading at the links below:
The distinction between attracting and retaining high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) within the existing investment landscape can feel like a blurred line for many wealth and asset management firms.
As a result, firms may now be experiencing the impact of lacking the necessary customer-centric data to effectively and compliantly deliver positive experiences and outcomes. Understanding the steps that must be taken to ensure that wealth management firms are digitally safeguarded, while adopting customer-first practices and identifying the HNWI they would like to attract, will be critical.
How do wealth & asset management businesses know who to attract?
It is through enhancing customer data that is backed by demographic, lifestage, lifestyle and attitudinal insight that will enable wealth & asset management firms to better understand, reach, and serve customers. Without having the right data available, they will risk lacking an integral understanding of who to attract.
Wealth products were historically sold by independent advisors who knew the local area and could identify the ultra-wealthy with ease, including where they were likely to be, often by word-of-mouth. This is no longer the business model for many wealth management firms looking to identify potential business at scale and deliver direct sales to new investors who expect a different type of engagement.
What major challenges do wealth & asset management businesses face in attracting & retaining high net worth individuals?
Competition for investment
The everchanging investment landscape has caused wealth and asset management firms to re-evaluate existing investor experience approaches. To keep up with the changes in client demands, firms that lack integrated insight and digital engagement capabilities will find themselves at a disadvantage against competitors, and unable to provide the tailored experiences investors now expect.
Cost of living
With no definitive end in sight for the cost of living crisis, there is increased interest in targeting affluent individuals from across sectors, many of which are mature in their data and digital capabilities. Wealth Management firms will experience increased competition and pressure for those available assets. Firms are tasked with reassessing their customers’ journey end-to-end to determine how to effectively safeguard against these unpredictable times.
What techniques should wealth & asset management businesses use to retain investors?
Effectively identifying and catering for the right customers
No two customers are the same, and firms that may have opted for a traditional approach that meets the needs of all customers will quickly realise that personalised and customised experiences for each unique customer is the best way forward. It is integral for firms to understand what their clients want and where they are seeking out financial products that meet their unique needs, to help them access the right products. This approach will allow customers to gain the most use of their tailored solution and will encourage them to remain with the firm for future support in their financial endeavours.
Utilising consolidated data to retain customers
Firms that effectively utilise consolidated data will notice long-term growth and can leverage this to outcompete their competition. Firms have client data, but without an understanding of how to enrich it, decipher it and make use of it to improve their customers’ experiences, they will not determine how to retain customers effectively. Customising solutions for clients that are built on demographic, attitudinal and behavioural insight will be paramount for this.
Acting upon customers’ short and long-term needs
Firms need to better understand the current and future needs of investors to appeal to a wider investor audience. Those that acknowledge the need for enhanced client understanding can introduce insight into their business that will drive improved customer-first experiences and outcomes.
How can CACI help?
Consumer Duty is an authoritative intention that will guarantee trust between financial institutions and consumers. Firms must innately understand their customers to adapt their products and drive messaging that effectively engages them and improves results, whilst also ensuring compliance with the directive.
CACI is uniquely positioned to support businesses through agency, consultancy, data provider and system integration capabilities, all of which work in conjunction to drive value for your business. Our services and data products work in conjunction with our strategies and values to continue to connect firms with their customers.
Throughout this blog series for the wealth management industry, we break down the opportunities for businesses to attract and retain high-net-worth individuals. Continue reading at the links below:
How do you decide when to create a loyalty programme?
All businesses will eventually face the existential question of whether they should implement a loyalty programme or not. Understanding the value in doing so is paramount— customer loyalty is a big question for a lot of brands, and few know where to begin to devise a promising loyalty scheme, with many brands lacking an understanding of the potential return on investment. It is also integral for brands to have a business case prepared prior to formulating the loyalty programme’s design, as this knowledge will sway the development entirely.
Why brands might be thinking of this now
There are several factors that may prompt the creation of a loyalty programme– increasing share of wallet, encouraging customers to buy directly from a brand versus through a third-party retailer, or enhancing direct customer relationships to drive repeat purchase behaviours. No matter what the driving forces, businesses have become increasingly aware of the impact that customer insight has on informing an effective loyalty programme and the potential cost and risk of not introducing one into your own business.
What risks are associated with creating a loyalty programme?
Improperly planned and executed loyalty programmes can result in hefty costs for businesses, plummeting bottom line profit figures and an inability for revenues to bounce back.
Additional elements you must consider when implementing a loyalty programme include:
Getting the value exchange right
If customers do not understand the point or see the value behind your business’ programme, it will not be successful. Getting the value exchange wrong can erode your brand’s impression on customers. If the programme appears worthless as opposed to rewarding, it will fail to increase customers’ sentiment or engagement with your brand.
Getting the level of innovation right
Loyalty programmes must be innovative and uniquely tailored to a diverse customer base. Your business must meet customers’ expectations in one cohesive programme versus through multiple solutions, which demonstrates the importance of value exchange– meeting the wants of customers without sacrificing your business’ value.
Getting the loyalty mechanic right
You must be mindful of what customers are looking for from a loyalty programme, but this understanding must be backed by a data-driven approach that allows you to understand the unique selling point for your customers. There are a few approaches you can take:
Tiered loyalty programme: This splits benefits into tiers or levels that customers spending certain amounts of money can achieve. The higher the tier a customer reaches, the greater the benefits will be.
Points-based loyalty programme: Customers are given points with every purchase they make, and when they reach a certain number of points, the points can be used towards a discount or reward.
Subscription-based loyalty programme: Customers that sign up for subscription-based loyalty programmes will pay for their subscription upfront or in monthly or yearly instalments to receive exclusive discounts or rewards.
A lack of access to customer-centric data and an understanding of your customers’ wishes, however, will hinder a loyalty programme’s capabilities.
What should you consider before creating a loyalty programme?
Is your business bought in, engaged and set up to support a loyalty programme? Do you have the right technology and CRM in place, an existing loyal customer base and the ability to continue to sign up new customers?
Is a loyalty programme worthwhile for your customers and for you? Have you listened to your customers’ value mindset in terms of the product or offering to conclude the best potential ROI from your loyalty programme?
Is your business clear on how to enter the market in a way that will demonstrate ROI? Does it have the necessary mechanics or programme in place to pilot in the market to provide a successful ROI?Are you aware of the potential opportunity it can bring?
If you can answer these three questions, you can conclude whether now is the time to create a loyalty programme.
What steps should your business take to implement a successful loyalty programme?
Ensure your business is equipped with the necessary data to determine a loyalty programme’s value and discern what a good outcome for your business would be. This can be done through data analysis, best practices and benchmarking that will help you effectively align internally to understand existing capabilities and how best to proceed.
Confirm that your customers want a loyalty programme. If they do, what does a valuable loyalty programme look like for them, and what is the opportunity for your business? Identifying the value to the customer as well as to your business through data enrichment and data science will be a key next step.
Determine the ROI that your loyalty programme can deliver and understand what type of mechanic should be used in the pilot market to achieve this. An assessment of the scenarios of mechanics should be carried out to determine this. Once the opportunity from a viable mechanic is understood, determining how to effectively enter that market in a way that will deliver ROI will be crucial.
How can CACI support you with implementing a loyalty programme?
CACI’s data science capabilities and Customer Engagement consulting team can determine the actual costs that your business will face in running a successful loyalty programme and support your business through an innate understanding of loyalty across enterprises.
We do this by using our own proprietary data, data science, and expertise to understand the headroom in the market and help determine KPIs, understand which of your customers want a loyalty programme and how they want it to look to inform what potential opportunity exists. Areas that we assess to inform this include demographic richness, compliance for use, permissions, and our own products to fill any gaps around customer segmentation to determine who customers are and ask the right questions.
Our teams of data scientists and consultants will scenario plan with your business to comprehend the mechanics and experiences that must served and managed to your customer groups to build the pilot. Once this business case is understood, and a feasible pilot market has been identified, we can design a sophisticated end-to-end offering to help you deploy a successful loyalty programme.
Could your business benefit from a loyalty programme? To learn more about how CACI can help you, contact us here.
Navigating everchanging expectations from customers, as well as new rules from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to ensure that increased consumer protection is in place, has led wealth managers to not only find new ways to better understand their existing clients, but innovate ways to identify and attract new high net worth individuals (HNWI). This has caused many wealth management firms to scramble to increase their digitisation and customer-first policies quickly and effectively.
The ability to define these HNWI and UHNWI can be cumbersome, especially when the HMRC, FCA and individual banks and wealth managers all use varying criteria to measure this. Wealth and asset management firms looking to grow their business through the acquisition of these individuals will have to consider the importance of overarching data and scalable transformation to do so.
While you may recognise the need to better understand your clients, legacy practices and technology can often hold you back. Currently, we have noticed four major barriers in attracting and retaining customers:
1. Sparse investor data to inform decision making
Building a high-net-worth portfolio of investors requires the right financial products. Financial and consumer data products that identify people with incomes above £100k are far and few. This makes differentiating between an investor earning £100k and an individual with a £500k annual salary complicated, and identifying and targeting high-net-worth groups a challenge.
You cannot rely on your clients’ intergenerational wealth either as, once it is passed down, it is often the case that inherited wealth will be spent or not reinvested. However, if it is reinvested, it is often done with other brands, as different investor groups have different needs. This can leave you questioning how much wealth will actually remain with your client.
2. Lack of understanding of current and future investors’ needs
Once you acquire a new HNWI investor, utilising your cross-sell and upsell capabilities to extract the most benefit from their available wealth will be crucial. The ability to understand your clients is paramount, including both present and future needs in order to establish a long-term relationship.
Consumer Duty has been introduced to make firms more accountable over the suitability of their products and services, to meet the needs of those they are sold to. You will need to review the entire investor lifecycle and journey, revisit how and what to include in your marketing strategies, and establish new ways to measure all these areas to remain compliant and trusted.
Outreach to younger target investors
Younger investors are not as likely to behave as their older counterparts. For example, they may not necessarily attend the same in-person industry events, and often need to be targeted and communicated with via digital channels or social media. They will also want to manage their assets via digital platforms to be more self-serving. This means you need to work harder to intrigue and engage with younger investor audiences.
3. Maintaining GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance
By attempting to reach your target investors via additional or new channels, you must consider data protection and GDPR. Substantial penalties can come with breaches; therefore, you must ensure that any data handling is done carefully and correctly. Plus, you need to provide clarity to your audience as to where you have sourced their data from and why you are legitimately contacting them.
4. Delayed response towards technology-first approaches
The last five to 10 years have seen a significant move towards digital transformation and customer-first policies, particularly with banks and building societies. While this ongoing transformation has been relatively steady for some sectors, the wealth and asset management sector has struggled to adapt.
To appeal to investors, brands must now adopt and embrace digital practices by implementing business models that will facilitate customer-led and technology-first transformation.
How can CACI help?
CACI is already a trusted partner to leading wealth and asset management firms, supporting investor acquisition and retention through predictive analytics and data solutions.
Throughout this blog series for the wealth management industry, we break down the opportunities for businesses to attract and retain high-net-worth individuals. Continue reading at the links below:
In today’s competitive market, understanding how best to engage with your customers and reacting to their behaviours is critical to success.
Following the launch of Braze’s third instalment of the Global Customer Engagement report, I explored the three key customer engagement trends within the report. I also considered how brands impacted by these trends should respond to these familiar challenges.
CACI is an award-winning partner of Braze. We know consumers better than anyone else. Our breadth of demographic data combined with our expertise in marketing and data technology and campaign delivery makes us a key partner for brands looking to deliver innovative customer journeys.
Trend 1: Retention-focused strategies
The first trend identified in the report is how brands are increasingly focused on retention to combat the unsustainably high acquisition costs. The report highlights that brands increased their marketing budget on retention from 33% in 2020 to 45% in 2022. This enables marketers to invest in their customers and design solutions to keep them coming back to their brand.
The challenge is that a sub-optimal strategy can end up costing you time and money. A strong retention strategy delivering value to your customers is worth its weight in gold, as not only are acquisition costs high, retaining customers today is becoming increasingly harder with the breadth of touchpoints available for your competitors to interact with existing customers.
Identifying and combatting these behaviours while understanding how to add value throughout the customer lifecycle is vital. While Braze has a variety of channels and techniques that enable you to deliver your retention campaigns, the hard work happens outside of the platform.
To help brands develop the right strategy to maximise value, CACI’s CRM Strategy team are first focused on getting to the heart of what makes or breaks customers’ interest in your brand. We use our breadth of skills across customer data and campaign delivery to help develop and deliver award-winning retention strategies across a variety of sectors. We recognise that every strategy is different depending on your organisation’s needs, goals and customer behaviours. That is why we take the time to innately understand and ensure each strategy is bespoke to cover each of these areas.
Trend 2: Data management
The 2023 report highlighted two main data management challenges that we also see when working with brands:
Brands have too much data
The days of batch imports and overnight data loads for campaigning are slipping away, and real-time data is becoming increasingly prevalent. With more real-time touchpoints comes more data needing to be categorised, organised, refined and adapted.
This is where having a strong alignment between your tech stack components becomes crucial. The ability to process this data at speed and understand the quality of the data– not the quantity of the data– is paramount.
However, not all brands have an aligned tech stack suited to this influx of data. CACI’s Marketing Technology Solutions team help brands see the wood from the trees regarding their overall data architecture by delivering gap analyses that find and prioritise the gaps to plug.
We’ve recently completed an extensive Braze and architecture audit for a global retail brand which assessed four key areas: Architecture, Usage, Process and Data. The results of this have helped fuel this brand’s understanding of their existing data structure, what gaps are present and then supply a roadmap of priority actions across the next 6 months. This work will enhance the customer experience and deepen customer understanding.
There is a capability gap
The report is correct when it says: “Data management doesn’t end with technology—teams need to be set up to effectively use data.” Skills within CRM are ever-growing, and with more emphasis on data, there are desires to analyse this data immediately and understand how your brand can leverage this within the customer strategy.
Our Campaign Operations team enable and elevate brands daily to unlock key features of Braze such as Conversion Events and Funnel Reports to inform campaign performance. Beyond Braze, utilising the power of Currents has helped brands understand macro and micro campaign performances, resulting in changes to customer strategies and optimised test and learn processes.
Our team of Certified Braze Consultants are a blend of operationally and data-focused power users who bridge capability gaps by working with you to unlock the untapped potential of Braze. Additionally, the team supports our Data Scientists to identify micro customer behaviours that affect campaign performance.
Trend 3: Siloed teams
Like the capability gap, siloed teams can be incredibly detrimental and limiting to a brand’s CRM programme. According to the report, 16% to 28% of marketers in small to large scale companies reported that customer engagement was owned by either marketing in collaboration with other teams, or by cross-functional digital teams. Collaboration between Data, Tech and CRM has become increasingly vital to build out relevant testing strategies and evolve customer experiences.
The report explained that this is not just a regional or even an EMEA issue, but a global one. At CACI, we have the knowledge and tools to drive and manage successful transitions in a company to help increase adoption and enablement of new business processes and technology solutions. Our Operational Change consultants will work with a cross-functional team of experts in-house to create end-to-end solutions to real-life business problems.
How CACI can help
The Braze report provides an excellent overview of the challenges we are all facing in creating and executing effective customer engagement initiatives through the trends of retention-focused strategies, data management and siloed teams.
CACI can supply end-to-end support along the customer engagement journey and help turn observations into strategic and tactical solutions through our powerful combination of data and technology, ensuring customers remain at the heart of any engagement strategies.
To learn more about how CACI can support your business’ customer engagement strategies and initiatives, get in touch with our team of experts today.
