This easy-to-digest ebook consists of four sections, each focused on a different set of marketing challenges. It’s short, it’s to the point, and best of all, it gives you crisp examples of how real online, off-line, and cross-channel retailers are using Marketing Intelligence to overcome their biggest challenges, and how you can, too!

1. marketing intelligence
HOW RETAILERS
ARE USING
MARKETING
INTELLIGENCE
TO OVERCOME
THEIR BIGGEST
MARKETING
CHALLENGES BEST
PRACTICESIN
MARKETING
INTELLIGENCE

2. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
The four sections of this ebook are:
HOW THIS
eBOOK WORKS
This easy-to-digest ebook consists of four sections, each focused on a
different set of marketing challenges. It’s short, it’s to the point, and
best of all, it gives you crisp examples of how real online, off-line, and
cross-channel retailers are using Marketing Intelligence to overcome
their biggest challenges, and how you can, too!
SOWITHTHATOUTOFTHEWAY,LET’SGO!
1 2 3 4
ATTACKING
ACQUISITION
CROSS-SELLING
AND UP-SELLING
CUSTOMER
RETENTION
CUSTOMER
WINBACK

3. Even the best retail marketers struggle to capture one more
customer, lose one less customer, or gain that one extra dollar of
revenue. For most of us, the challenges are real and they’re
in front of us every day. Our CMO wants more with less. Our
customers get smarter (and more smartphone apps) every day.
Our competitors seem to have more insights than us. And that’s
just on Monday!
ByTuesday, we’re trying to understand why the last campaign
underperformed, where we should spend money for the next
promotion, and which categories should get the most visibility
this weekend.
WHAT ARE
YOURBIGGEST
MARKETING
CHALLENGES
It’s a constant struggle to know what customers want and what
you can do to influence them. Even more, it’s tough to prioritize
your marketing efforts because you don’t have a clear view of
what’s working, what’s not, and what’s really needed to reach
your marketing goals.

4. Maybe you should be focusing on one of these instead
(or all of these):
• Driving cross-channel shopping
• Building loyalty
• Retaining customers in the face of increasing competition
• Increasing average transaction/basket size
• Leveraging all customer, transactional and digital data
• Acquiring new customers
• Understanding how different offers and channels
drive conversion
• Reducing churn
The only way to really know where you should focus is to better
understand your customers and how your marketing efforts
impact their behaviors.
For that,
YOU NEED MARKETING INTELLIGENCE.
Until then, read on to learn how others are using Marketing
Intelligence to attack these different challenges in four
different areas.
SOWHATISYOUR
SINGLEBIGGEST
MARKETING
CHALLENGE?
AREYOUSURE
ITSHOULDBE
THATANDNOT
SOMETHINGELSE?

5. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
Every retailer can use more customers. Portions of your
customer base are always leaving, and growth targets are
always out in front of you.
But just saying,“We need new customers”isn’t really a
strategy.You want the right type of customer, one that is
likely to come back more than once, make profitable
purchases, and become a loyal, long-term customer.
Drilling down, you’ll start to ask questions like:
• What is the most strategic approach to acquiring customers
based on our overall corporate goals?
• How do I know what type of prospect is most likely to
engage with my brand?
• How do I identify my best customers, and then how do
I use that insight to better target new customers?
• Where do I use this information, and when?
• How do I measure success in customer acquisition?
Once again, you need Marketing Intelligence to answer these
questions. Sure, you can just use your disconnected, siloed,
weeks-old data to make an educated guess, but you know
how that usually turns out, right?
CHALLENGE:
CUSTOMER
ACQUISITION

6. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
But let’s not just throw those questions out there without answers. Here’s how retailers with Marketing Intelligence are answering
those questions:
What is the most strategic approach to acquiring customers
based on our overall corporate goals?
Look for prospects that fit a“most likely to engage”model to
become profitable and loyal
How do I know what type of prospect is most likely to
engage with my brand?
Analyze your best customers and create indicators of their
“look-a-likes”
How do I identify my best customers, and then how do
I use that insight to better target new customers?
Look at RFM variables, then append age, gender, family type and
buying channel propensity then further dive into what products
they are buying.
How do I measure success in customer acquisition? Track click and conversion rates for different channels and
strategies by segments. Leverage attribution metrics to measure
which channels and tactics were most successful.
The most successful acquisition strategies look beyond driving one-time transactions and more towards identifying prospects who are
more likely to engage with a brand over time and drive profitable sales. An understanding of the profile and purchasing behavior of current
loyal and high-value customers is key to finding more of the same.This insight will help guide the“who”(profile of new customers),
the“where”(specific websites, social media, magazines, list purchase) and the“what”(which products are of greatest interest) needed to
acquire your best new customers.

7. A high-end sports retailer had both online and brick-and-
mortar stores, but lacked data-driven insights.Their in-store
sales associates felt they knew their best customers, seeing
that loyal customers shopped in-store once or twice per year
and purchased everything for the season during those visits.
With that anecdotal insight, marketing determined that the
best way to drive incremental traffic was by acquiring new
customers who mirrored this demographic and purchasing
behavior, but they first needed to identify these“best”
customers.Their hands were tied, however, since purchase
data was siloed by channel, they had no demographic data,
and they couldn’t determine which marketing partners
produced the best results.
Here’s How Marketing Intelligence Helped:
1. Aggregated online and in-store data, and added
demographic data to create a detailed view of their top,
bottom, and average customers.
2. Identified the top 30% of their customers based on RFM
and determined that the majority were men aged 35-55.
3. Analyzing those customers by categories purchased revealed
an overwhelming affinity for outerwear and jackets.
Marketing created campaigns that targeted this demographic
profile with promotions for men’s outerwear across multiple
channels, but used Marketing Intelligence to constantly track
attribution and reallocate budget to the channels that were
offering the most impact.
RESULTS:
200%MORENEW
CUSTOMERSVS.PAST
CAMPAIGNS.
40%NEWCUSTOMER
RETENTIONAFTER1YEAR.
CASE 1:
DISCONNECTED
ON-AND OFF-LINE
INSIGHTS
ATTACKING
ACQUISITION

8. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
A“fast fashion”retailer noticed a drop in sales and believed
it was the result of a change in their merchandising mix.
Their newer clothing was trendier, apparently attracting a
different customer who might respond better to different
marketing tactics.
They wanted to confirm their assumptions but they couldn’t
easily view customer purchase histories. However, if they
were right, they needed to quickly understand their new
customers and actively attract more.
CASE 2:
CHANGING MIX
ATTRACTS NEW
CUSTOMER TYPES
RESULTS:
16%INCREASE
INTARGETED
SEGMENTSPEND.
REVERSEDDECLINING
SALESINUNDER45DAYS.
Here’s How Marketing Intelligence Helped:
1. Marketing split customers into those who purchased since
the merchandising change and those who hadn’t.
2. For each group, they compared the number of new vs.
existing customers, purchase frequency, and transaction
and total spend.
3. They compared the categories favored by the different
segments and found that new merchandise was heavily
purchased by new customers.
4. Comparing demographic data showed that newer customers
were younger, with more in their 20s and less in their 50s.
Marketing discovered that new customers were not only
spending 16% more per transaction, but were 37% more
likely to respond to display ads over direct marketing. By
quickly revising their marketing tactics, the company reversed
their sales decline in less than 45 days.

9. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
So maybe attracting new customers is easy for you. But,
you’re always looking for ways to influence customers to
spend more, right?
Maybe you’ve introduced a new category that you want
customers to notice (and buy). Or, maybe you want to push
customers to higher-margin items, or to raise average
transaction values.
WHAT NOW?
CHALLENGE:
CROSS-
SELLING AND
UP-SELLING
Whatever your motivations, you’re probably already
asking yourself these types of questions:
• Are customers who’ve purchased across multiple merchandise
categories more engaged and more valuable?
• Am I effectively using up-sell and cross-sell promotions as
relevant content in marketing programs?
• Are we taking advantage of past purchase knowledge to drive
add-on sales with our customers?
• Can I use up-selling to counteract the margin hit resulting
from discount promotions?
You’re probably also asking yourself,“But wouldn’t Marketing
Intelligence answer these questions?”
YEP,YOUR PARENTSWOULD
BE PROUD!

10. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
Beyond just those juicy questions, you’ll start to get curious about ways that Marketing Intelligence will be able to give you insight and ideas
about improving your cross-sell and up-sell initiatives. Here’s how:
What’s a more effective way of introducing new products to
my customers?
Look at past product purchases and target customers who have
bought similar, adjacent, or complementary products.
How do I figure out what other products my customers may
be interested in?
Leverage affinities by looking at the market baskets and nearby
purchases made by other customers buying the target category.
How do I know the best time (calendar, buying cycle)
to market up-sells in a particular category?
Look for the times when sales increase, peak and decline, and
identify the unique cycles for those specific product categories.
Knowledge of what merchandise your customers have already purchased provides an opportunity to build product- and price-driven
marketing campaigns targeted at those customers who are more likely to open, click and convert.
And, it’s not just the ability to answer your most pressing questions; Marketing Intelligence gives you ideas, the ability to quickly drill down
on those ideas, and the tools to turn those ideas into action.

11. CASE 3:
NEW PRODUCT
LINE SUCCESS
CAPTURING
CROSS-SELLS,
UNCOVERING
UP-SELL
OPPORTUNITIES
A national running store chain partnered with a vendor on
an omni-channel marketing strategy to help increase the
success of a new running shoe.They already had personas
for their different customers, but had no way to segment
individual customers.
They needed a way to market this shoe across both digital and
direct channels, plus evaluate the ROI of the program, since the
costs were to be shared between the vendor and the retailer.
Here’s How Marketing Intelligence Helped:
1. Using purchase histories, they identified the personas,
determined a value for each segment, and created a
demographic profile of each bucket.
2. The team set up an attribution model and a“timeline
segment”to monitor the activity of the different
personas over time.
3. Daily reports tracked the success of the various campaigns
and how the trendsetter, brand loyalist, and new runner
personas responded.
The retailer created precise, targetable segments, then created
hyper-targeted display campaigns to reach conversion rates
53% higher than typical, giving them an overall program ROI
of nearly 400%.
RESULTS:
53%INCREASEIN
CONVERSIONRATES.
NEARLY 400%
OVERALL PROGRAM ROI.

12. CASE 4:
OFFSETTING
THE COST OF
“FREE SHIPPING”
An online health food retailer used a“free shipping”offer as
an incentive to new customers, but as shipping costs rose, the
offer ate more and more of their profits.To regain profits, the
retailer wanted to promote higher-margin items but, lacking
insight on new customers, couldn’t determine which products
or categories to offer.
To start, they needed to quickly figure out a segmentation
criteria for new customers, then quickly bucket them into
segments. Next, they needed to identify which products
should be promoted to these different segments, plus when
and where to promote.
Here’s How Marketing Intelligence Helped:
1. Identified“free shipping”customers who purchased
across different online“shops.”
2. Drilled down to create profiles for customers based on
RFM metrics and category affinities.
3. Connected the products purchased most often with other
high-affinity products that were likely to be purchased.
Marketing was able to quickly identify product-profile affinities
which they plugged into their e-commerce system and offered
during browsing and checkout.This simple insight increased
promo-related margins by 7.3% and helped them refine their
acquisition messaging to increase conversions by 18%.
RESULTS:
7.3%INCREASEIN
PROMO-RELATED
MARGINS.
18%INCREASEINPROMOTION
CONVERSIONS.

13. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
CHALLENGE:
CUSTOMER
RETENTION
Regardless of how well you attract and monetize existing
customers, you never want to lose a good customer. Clichés are
clichés for a reason, which is why one of the most popular retail
marketing ones says something about it being more expensive
to find a new customer than to keep an old one.
Customer retention is a key priority for retailers, especially
in today’s world of constant advertising, customer-focused
apps, myriad channels of engagement, and the fact that your
competitor is always just a smartphone tap away.
Any good marketer thinks about retention constantly,
and asks questions like:
• How do I deal with increasingly aggressive competition
and decreased customer loyalty?
• How do I provide value-added opportunities for
existing customers to engage with me instead of looking
to the competition?
• Will targeting current customers with relevant messaging
and products and great service drive increased loyalty?
MAYBE MARKETING INTELLIGENCE
CAN HELP?NOPE,AIN’T NO MAYBE
ABOUT IT!

14. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
You’re dealing every day with the changing nature of retailing and the information imbalance caused by mobile apps, social media, and larger
competitors with bigger budgets. But Marketing Intelligence can help you compete and keep customers with answers like these:
How do I determine the best way to communicate with
different groups of customers?
Develop key customer segments such as loyalists, potentials,
active and inactive based on RFM, behavior, and other attributes.
Should I invest equally across the marketing to all
my customers?
Identify customers based on their current and potential value,
then invest in customers with the best potential for long-term
profitability and goal attainment.
How can I identify customers most likely to be retained
or to defect?
Develop best-customer profiles with demographic attributes
along with transactions, then identify look-a-likes within
your segments.
To retain your customers, you must first know your customers. I think Confucius may have said that.
Retaining new customers and strengthening the loyalty of already engaged customers requires the ability to identify customers with
potential. Developing“best customer”profiles based on purchase behaviors and demographic data will give you the insights to engage with
them in a more targeted manner. Further applying this profile to new customers can also help identify those with potential and help you
market to them in a relevant way.
Bottom line: to be effective, messaging must be as targeted and personalized as possible.

15. CASE 5:
BATTLING
AGGRESSIVE
COMPETITOR
DISCOUNTS
REMARKABLE
RETENTION
A brick-and-mortar sporting goods retailer began selling a new
line of environmentally-friendly ski products, which attracted a
highly profitable segment and sparked the emergence of several
competitors.They wanted to protect their market share against
the competitors’discount-based offers, which they were certain
would eat into their sales.
With their existing tools, they couldn’t identify“green”product
buyers and, lacking demographic data, they knew that targeted
marketing campaigns would be difficult.
Here’s How Marketing Intelligence Helped:
1. Developed various customer profiles based on products
purchased and overall customer spend value.
2. Added third-party demographic data and created deeper
profiles for each segment.
3. Forgreencustomers,lookedathowtheybehavedovertimeand
preparedtotrackhowtheyrespondedtonewmarketingefforts.
4. Createdanattributionmodelthatwouldallowthemtomeasure
theeffectivenessoftheirmarketingbychannelandcampaign.
Withmarketingandcustomerdatafinallyconnected,theyfound
thatgreencustomerswerespending$44peryearmorethan
averageandhadaffinitiesthatdifferedfromtypicalcustomers.
Thisallowedthemtocreatehighly-relevantpromotionsthat
increasedconversionratesby31%,raisedaveragetransactions
by12%,andminimizedlossestocompetitors.
RESULTS:
31%INCREASEIN
PROMOTION
CONVERSIONRATES.
12%INCREASEINSEGMENT’S
AVERAGETRANSACTION.

16. CASE 6:
REDUCING TIME
BETWEEN
PURCHASES
An online casual work apparel retailer was struggling to
retain customers when they noticed an increase in the average
time between purchases.They set out to increase purchase
frequencies, which would also mean fewer opportunities to
visit competitors.
They estimated that their average customer returned every
four months, but were unsure if this varied for first time
buyers versus repeat buyers, if it varied across different types
of customers, or if it was even a valid estimate.
Here’s How Marketing Intelligence Helped:
1. Uncovered purchase histories, then built personas based
on categories purchased.
2. For each persona, built a timeline segment to understand
time between purchases for first-time, second time, and
repeat customers, and to see if frequency was different
across categories.
3. Finally, monitored each segment to see how behaviors
changed after the new marketing campaigns were launched.
Marketing Intelligence gave this team the ability to go beyond
their hunches and finally understand their customers at a
detailed and actionable level.That knowledge enabled more
targeted messages to more specific segments, increasing email
campaign click-through rates by 27% over average and resulting
in a higher-than-expected 430% ROI for this specific program.
RESULTS:
27%INCREASE
INCAMPAIGN
CLICK-THROUGHRATE.
430%ROIFORFIRST
INTELLIGENCE-DRIVENCAMPAIGN.

17. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
CHALLENGE:
CUSTOMER
WINBACK
Even the best retailers with the best marketing teams still lose
customers. It might be that customers change over time, or that
product lines drift, or competitors pop up to fill a void or create
a new sub-segment. However it happens, there’s value in trying
to win them back.
WHY SHOULDYOU ADD
CUSTOMER REACTIVATIONTO
YOUR MARKETING PLAN?
Here are just a few reasons:
• Lost customers may be fueling a competitor’s growth.
• Many lost customers were once valuable, loyal customers
who may just need a reminder about what you offer.
• If you can easily and cheaply get some of them back,
it’s additional profit that might have a big ROI.
Best of all, you already know something about them since they
were a customer at one point.That’s a great place to begin.
COULD MARKETING INTELLIGENCE
HELP?YOU BETCHA!

18. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
The easiest place to start is by determining the duration of no activity that categorizes someone as inactive. It might be days, months,
or years, but it’s definitely unique to your market.
Then, start to ask yourself more questions about how to get them back and think about what data you need to be effective. Start with
questions like:
How do I reactivate lapsed customers? Develop a marketing stream that includes a compelling reason
to return by leveraging past purchase knowledge with a
related offer.
Which customers are likely to be won back, and who
shouldn’t I bother with?
Focus efforts on customers who were more recently engaged and
have been valuable customers in the past. Leverage RFM metrics
to prioritize the different segments.
How can I get ahead of the problem and reduce my
churn rate?
Determine red flags to indicate slowing shopping behaviors
and reduced brand interest, then proactively communicate with
those customers.
Identifying previously-valuable customers who have not shopped recently (and“recent”is unique to you), then determine potential
opportunities to win them back by looking at their past marketing behaviors and purchasing activities.
YOU ALREADY HAVETHIS DATA, SO ALLYOU NEEDTO DO IS ACT ON IT.

19. Focusing on distinctive international apparel collections
for children, this retailer knew that every customer would
eventually“age out.”This increased the importance of
reengaging“lost”customers and proactively identifying
and getting ahead of“at-risk”customers to ensure that they
kept shopping.
Here’s How Marketing Intelligence Helped:
1. Integrated marketing, CRM, POS and other data for a single,
drillable view of past and current customers.
2. Created timeline segments to track customer activity based
on time from last purchase, which uncovered attrition rates
and customers close to being lost.
3. Created an attribution model to justify the costs of the
program to their executives.
Marketing was finally able to see customers who had previously
left and what they purchased before they left.They created
targeted campaigns based on these purchases and brought
back hundreds of these“lost”customers with their very first
campaign. Even more, they progressively addressed attrition by
targeting“at risk”customers and, in just three months, reduced
overall attrition by 11%.
CASE 7:
TARGETING
“AT RISK”
CUSTOMERS
WINNING AT
WINBACK RESULTS:
11%REDUCTIONIN
ATTRITIONINONE
QUARTER.
FIRSTCAMPAIGNREACTIVATED
“100S”OFCUSTOMERS.

20. CASE 8:
COMBATTING A
DROP IN SAME
STORE SALES
A brick-and-mortar consumer electronics retailer noticed a
reduction in year-over-year same store sales, as well as a drop
in average transaction value. Since their competitors weren’t
experiencing a similar drop, they knew that they were losing
customers, and higher-value customers at that.
In trying to develop a winback strategy, they needed to identify
those lost customers and focus their efforts on winning back, at
first, the higher value sub-segment of those lost customers.
Here’s How Marketing Intelligence Helped:
1. Identified customers who had recently become inactive
and what they purchased when active.
2. Sub-segmented those customers by potential value by
looking at past spend values and frequency levels.
3. Created timeline segments to track the activity of all
customers going forward and proactively combat customer
loss before it happened.
In identifying inactive customers based on value, the team
was shocked to see the revenue impact of attrition: tens
of millions of dollars! Marketing Intelligence opened up
opportunities to engage inactive customers, gave them the
tools to act on their findings, and helped them slow and then
reverse their attrition in under 30 days. Even more, with so
many inactive customers now prime for segmentation and
targeting, they were able to win back nearly 2,000 customers
with their first email campaign.
RESULTS:
REACTIVATED2,000
CUSTOMERSWITH
ONEEMAIL.
LESSTHAN30DAYSTOSTEM
ATTRITIONTREND.

21. PivotLink | How Retailers are Using Marketing Intelligence to Overcome their Biggest Marketing Challenges
WHAT NOW?
WHAT ARE YOUR BIGGEST MARKETING CHALLENGES?
WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO TACKLE THEM?
The best place to start is by increasing your Marketing Intelligence,
and that means getting a solution that will bring together,
in one view, all of your customer, marketing, transaction, and other data.
No, wait. Let’s take that back.
The best place to start is www.pivotlink.com.
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

22. marketing intelligence
PivotLink Headquarters
One Post Street Suite #825
San Francisco, CA 94104
P: 866.625.9884
PivotLink.comPivotLink.com
THIS eBOOK IS BROUGHTTOYOU BY PIVOTLINK
Over 60 mainstream retailers rely on PivotLink every day to deliver merchandising
and marketing analytics insights. As one of the pioneers of Software-as-a-Service
delivered analytics and intelligence applications, PivotLink has continually evolved
both its application portfolio and cloud computing infrastructure to keep up with
new data sources and to power more sophisticated analytics.
Our vision is to leverage cloud computing, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) busi-
ness model, and advanced computing innovation to take cost and complexity out
of retail and marketing analytics, effectively leveling the analytics playing field.
By allowing organizations of any size to leverage sophisticated yet easy to use and
affordable marketing and retail analytics applications both consumers and the
companies that serve them are the winners.