Retail Customer Profiles and Segmentation

Customer Profiling

A customer profile is a series of descriptive phrases that paint a picture of a selected retail consumer target. A good profile will answer the questions

"Who are these people?"

and

"Where do they live?"

A profile is built from demographic, expenditure, lifestyle and media preference data and is used to immediately understand the characteristics of a given customer. Profiling is an effective tool because it helps retail marketers manage current customers, develop strategies aimed at specific prospects and reduce the overall costs of marketing and customer acquisition.

Using profiles to explore untapped markets is one of the most effective ways to increase retail direct marketing response rates and ultimately acquire new customers. A good profile leverages known demographic, expenditure and behavioral characteristics against an unknown population and reveals similarities or differences you can exploit.

Segmentation

Retail Marketers and analysts use segmentation to organize and manage market and customer data. A segment is built by analyzing data and grouping (clustering) elements that share sought characteristics (in the case of retail, demographic, expenditure, lifestyle and media preference information). Segmentation is essential for cost effective, accurately targeted direct marketing.

By organizing customer and market data in this way, organizations are able to understand the differences and similarities between groups of customers and prospects, and develop effective messaging, products and distribution channels appropriate to the specific needs and wants of a given segment.

Custom Segmentation:

DMSRetail can deliver customized segmentation systems to Retail clients based on their specific requirements and circumstances. A custom segmentation system blends client data with DMSRetail's detailed consumer information databases to build actionable consumer and market intelligence, inform strategic messaging or positioning and refine targets.

Often a client will require a custom segmentation system to support a large, data-centric initiative or to organize and leverage under utilized data assets.

DMSRetail's ability to produce comprehensive segmentation systems at the most granular level gives clients a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Predictive Segmentation

Predictive segmentation embeds a predictive element into each of your segments, so not only do the consumers in each segment look and act alike today, they will look and act alike in the future. In this way, the predictive element helps to define the segment

The key benefit to retail marketers is a tool that can be used today and in the future. In addition, the predictive scores can be used independently to support tactical initiatives.For example, if we are building a retention model we can add the predictive scores; this will allow us to see which customers show the greatest likelihood to attrite in the short and long term.