With access to big data now unprecedented, WARC speaks to Domino’s Linda Hassan in an eTail exclusive, who explains how marketers can leverage it to enable hyper-personalisation and create value for their customers.

WARC: The post-pandemic retail landscape has accelerated the adoption of omnichannel retail across physical and digital touchpoints. While this is a global phenomenon, what unique trends, characteristics or challenges are you seeing in Asia?

Linda Hassan: While this is seen as common nowadays, one thing that stood out is customers accepting mediocre qualities of channels as long as their needs are fulfilled. While speed of service and product acquisition become more advanced – such as same day delivery – convenience has superseded the product and service quality offered. Hence, competition exists in a different way. 

Businesses which excel at being convenient in the overall value stream will stand out versus other businesses offering the same product category, which in my opinion will not be sustainable. Brands prioritising both quality of service/product with added convenience will thrive better.

Marketers now have unprecedented access to data about their customers, across channels and touchpoints. What’s possible now that wasn’t before?

With most businesses moving to online, customers’ digital footprint has become easily available and accessible. But whilst data is easily available, not every business has the right strategy to leverage it for progress and growth.

With the speed of data collection, advancing technologies around big data, analytics and AI, adoption has been somewhat constrained by many factors. Hence, the outcome of such tools which can produce hyper-personalisation has not been fully leveraged. This is perhaps caused by a lack of resources and skillsets around the overall ecosystem.

What is the main challenge facing marketers in Asia when taking advantage of this data? What mindsets and behaviours need to change?

Many marketers got excited by the buzzwords hyper-personalisation and AI. Hence, one may immediately jump onto the bandwagon without realising that the overall data architecture must be properly set up. This becomes a business project that involves investment in people, tools and technology ventures, which can be financially and resource challenging for certain businesses.

Most marketers have the vision but lack understanding of the right tools to leverage big data, hence projects at most times become a white elephant if it fails to be looked at from an overall business perspective and its sustainability.

What advice can you give marketers on how to restructure their teams or processes to get a more holistic view of their customer? What has worked for the brand?

The overall customer metrics have to be developed and structured with the aim to have an understanding of the customer health metrics. A simple example could be how many new customers return in X number of days.

With such an understanding, there needs to be a dedicated team that looks at all aspects in creating a relationship with the customer. This would be beyond just setting up the technology infrastructure, such as data storage, integration, access, cleaning and unification. Customer relationships will encompass overall aspects of customer retention which include the satisfaction index and engagement rates.

How is this a more holistic way of working that is changing what it means to deliver value to the customer?

Businesses must understand that they have to deliver their promised value around their USP, such as service or product, well before looking at leveraging data. As more and more businesses go into leveraging data and technology, the product and service differentiator is what will stay relevant to the consumer.

Similarly, how is this more holistic way of working changing what it means to measure effectiveness?   

Measuring leading indicators such as marketing metrics will be a good start, such as engagement rates, ADGBT (average day gap per transaction), while looking at longer-term lagging indicators such as rates of return, order count growth and CLV.

What will you be sharing at eTail Asia and what are two key things you are looking forward to at the event?

My topic focuses on breaking data silos to understand what is meaningful and relevant for the customer. My aim is to share case studies on how data is taken for tasks to benefit both customers and the businesses.

I look forward to meeting subject matter experts in their own areas who will be sharing insights around chosen topics and meeting other industry leaders from various brands to exchange views on current topics.

eTail Asia board

Download the eTail Asia agenda to find out more about Linda’s case study on Main Conference Day 2, 8th June.