Original Post by Business Weekly
After the 2022 “Double 11” shopping festival, many e-Commerce platforms have surprisingly remained tight-lipped about their performance, a stark contrast to their previous eagerness to announce results. It’s hard not to sense that running a business is becoming increasingly difficult.
“Retail brands looking to accelerate digital transformation must invest in D2C operations,” said Steven Ho, founder of 91APP, with conviction. Each wave of change in the e-Commerce industry significantly expands the overall market scale, evolving from the initial C2C model to the current B2C model led by e-Commerce shopping platforms.
Today, with intensified market competition and rising customer acquisition costs, building a consumer-centric Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) channel has become an undeniable trend. The D2C model, which emphasizes data-driven marketing, will accelerate brands’ ability to capture market share in the retail sector.
In response to this trend, 91APP not only provides comprehensive D2C solutions that integrate omni-channel inventory and collaborate with diverse external partners to enhance operational efficiency, but also offers extensive data application services. This enables brands to successfully unlock the sales insights in their data, maximizing the benefits of D2C.
Building First-Party Data: Uncompleted Transactions Still Hold Value for Retargeting
The benefit of D2C for retail brands lies in maximizing the value of first-party data, allowing brands to gain insights into customer preferences.
To manage customer relationships effectively, brands need to analyze member spending behaviors and preferences, understand the relationship between customer needs and the brand, and utilize segment communication to achieve D2C results. However, many brands focus on analyzing metrics like average order value and repurchase cycles from completed transactions, overlooking the hidden opportunities behind uncompleted transactions.
“We record every click made by consumers; even if a transaction is not completed, the behavioral data from their visit can help brands with retargeting,” emphasized Happy Lee, Chief Product Officer at 91APP. Consumer clicks are valuable assets for brands, and the 91APP system includes a Customer Data Platform (CDP) that integrates first-party data from consumers’ browsing and product selection records on websites and Apps, as well as participation in marketing activities, purchase amounts, frequency, and membership history.
With the customer data platform, brands can segment consumers based on their relationships with the brand. This allows for strategizing to improve conversion rates among active consumers and re-engage lost ones. Brands can analyze members’ browsing behaviors: which products they viewed, which items they saved, and which products they added to their shopping carts. This enables brands to put communication efforts on consumers with higher tendency to purchase but have not yet checked out.
As a result, even if members don’t make a purchase, brands can optimize future communication materials by analyzing browsing behaviors, thus increasing future repurchase rates. This approach ensures that marketing resources are used effectively and maximizes the impact of every dollar spent.
During the 2022 Double 11 shopping festival, brands collaborating with 91APP utilized the “purchase intent model” in the customer data platform to identify consumer segments most likely to shop in the next seven days, concentrating resources on sending promotional messages. The results were impressive, with conversion rates of the highest purchase probability group reaching 12.8% within seven days, compared to a staggering 64 times higher than the group with the lowest purchase probability.
This clearly demonstrates that collecting data is just the first step in managing customer relationships; more importantly, brands must leverage data to understand consumer purchasing intent and interpret the needs and preferences of different consumer segments. Only then can brands tailor marketing strategies to enhance sales conversions.
91APP offers the “Purchase Intent Model” that allows brands to identify members with high purchase likelihood and enhance communication, thereby improving marketing effectiveness
Utilizing Third-Party Data to Discover New Angles for Communicating with Potential Customers
We can understand a person by observing their habits and engaging in actual conversations. Similarly, by talking with their friends, we can have a better understanding of their personality and traits. In the same way, if brands want to expand their market and uncover potential opportunities, they need to go beyond first-party data to understand consumers’ other interests and preferences in addition to the products they purchased.
By effectively utilizing both first-party and third-party data, brands can gain a more complete understanding of consumer profiles. This enables them to design marketing materials tailored to different consumer segments, achieving precise communication and optimizing consumer acquisition.
“What content have members or visitors browsed on external platforms? Which products did they click on? The tags generated from the collection and analysis of these data can be leveraged by brands,” emphasized Happy Lee. He noted that third-party data encompasses a wide range of dimensions, including the online footprints of users who have not yet registered as members.
While first-party data already provides a wealth of information, why should brands also collect third-party data? The functions of the two are quite different. First-party data strengthens existing customer relationships, while third-party data helps outline target consumer profiles. The former focuses on consolidating current members, while the latter opens up new opportunities. When managed effectively, third-party data can enable brands to move beyond traditionally defined consumer segments, creating entirely new marketing materials and expanding their potential audience.
For example, Timberland boldly themed one of its marketing campaigns around “fur babies.” At first glance, this may seem unrelated to the brand image, but consumers were highly receptive. This creative idea was supported by data. Timberland discovered through third-party data analysis from 91APP that consumers interested in their products are not only passionate about outdoor activities; they also enjoy music, love video games, and are very fond of their pets.
Successful traffic development often hinges on marketing strategies that resonate with consumer interests. By using topics that appeal to consumers as a stepping stone, the cute theme of “fur babies” naturally captured attention and brought a significant influx of new traffic to Timberland.
CDP X DMP Synergistic Effect: The More Detailed the Customer Profile, the More Accurate the Customer Acquisition
“The foundation of e-Commerce marketing solutions is data,” said Happy Lee. 91APP not only helps brands build their first-party data assets and strengthen member management, but also enables them to leverage third-party data to gain a more comprehensive understanding of members or potential consumers. This allows brands to target specific consumer segments for advertising, driving more precise traffic and enhancing marketing effectiveness.
In fact, first-party and third-party data complement each other. First-party data reveals the true nature of interactions between members and the brand, while third-party data helps brands identify previously unnoticed consumer preferences. By comparing both types of data and applying them to media advertising and marketing strategies, brands have the opportunity to expand their audience and attract higher-value traffic. This effective traffic can then be converted into more first-party data, creating a data-driven operational cycle.
In the long run, retail brands transitioning to a D2C business model do so not only to escape the brutal discount wars on e-Commerce platforms but, more importantly, to shift from a reactive to a proactive stance, firmly seizing the business opportunities their data can bring. 91APP assists brands in discovering a more complete profile of their members through the synergistic effects of CDP and DMP, opening communication with topics of interest to achieve outstanding results in consumer acquisition.
As for when is the best time to transform to D2C and explore the data opportunities? Steven Ho confidently answered, “Now is the time, or you will miss a great opportunity (Now or Never)!”
