How to utilize CDP to improve your business during unusual conditions?

Many retailers and service providers are facing problems during these turbulent times. Luckily the best sales season is around the corner and many consumers are more comfortable buying online. We gathered you a list of ideas on how to use customer data platforms like Custobar for better communications and marketing, especially in this unusual situation. We hope these tips will make it easier for you to reach your customers.

Stay safe!

Marketing tips

Activate your customers who only buy from your physical stores. When stores are closed, all customers become online shoppers. Promote your eCommerce directly to customers who have only visited your brick and mortar stores. Read more thorough instructions here.
Back-in-stock automations – if you get some products back to stock, you can inform the customers who have been previously browsing or adding those products to the shopping basket.
Abandoned shopping cart automations – Our customers who have created abandoned cart email automations in Custobar have a conversion rate up to 40 % from those messages alone. Especially during Black Friday and Christmas shopping, consumers are browsing different sites to find the best offers and leave behind many abandoned carts. A gentle reminder can seal the deal and make the consumer finish the purchase. Read more about abandoned cart automation here.
Don't forget the power of SMS campaigns and push notifications. In these times, inboxes are flooded due to remote work and companies’ announcements. SMSes and push notifications from apps cut through the noise.
Target campaigns especially for a specific target group based on their browsing history and sales data. What product categories customers might especially need now when they spend more time at home and with their family? Check those who have purchased or browsed children's books, for example, or bought children's products and make a campaign on "how to make staying home a little funnier for your son or daughter."
Make zip code range searches to contact customers about local availability. If, for example, one of your stores still has plenty of Christmas products in stock, you can use zip code ranges to contact the customers who live nearby and inform them about your Christmas product discounts.
This is the right time to start thinking about micro-segments. Find small audiences of 100-1000 people and test by promoting one product per message. Think carefully about the product and the audience. You can easily create 10 to 100 different messages without sending too many emails/SMSs to one recipient. Learn what works best. If you are cutting down hours from your in-store staff, one option would be to get them working on your Customer Data Platform (CDP) and use their knowledge to do the micro-segment campaigns. Here's how Record store X does it.

Communications tips

Inform your customers about how your deliveries are working at the moment. Is everything working as usual, or is the expected delivery time longer?
Are you having problems with delivering on time? Don't wait for the customer service unit to get crowded because of calls from unhappy customers, but inform them about the delay well in advance. You can communicate delays by having a generic manual campaign ready to fire as soon as you become aware of the delays. Create a new audience of the customers who have a sale pending delivery to automate the process. That way, you can target only those customers who would benefit from the delivery information without deterring customers who have not yet placed an order. Please note, that the option of recognizing customers whose sale is pending is only available if you already use Custobar to manage your order fulfilment automations. In case you need any help with setting up automations, please contact us at support@custobar.com.
If your customers are increasingly contacting the customer service for a specific reason, you can be proactive and communicate the solution to the customers in question. Just create a segment in Custobar out of those customers who are affected by the problem and send them a targeted message. You can also integrate the customer service ticketing system like Zendesk and Freshdesk to Custobar to utilize the data for segmenting. If you need help with the integration, please contact our support@custobar.com.
If you have planned customer or partner events which are cancelled you can use Custobar to inform those segments who have been invited.