Idea in Brief
Targeting individuals with perfectly customized offers at the right moment across the right channel is marketing’s holy grail. As companies’ ability to capture and analyze highly granular customer data improves, such offers are possible—yet most companies make them poorly, if at all.
Perfecting these “next best offers” (NBOs) involves four steps: defining objectives; gathering data about your customers, your offerings, and the contexts in which customers buy; using data analytics and business rules to devise and execute offers; and, finally, applying lessons learned.
It’s hard to perfect all four steps at once, but progress on each is essential to competitiveness. As the amount of data that can be captured grows and the number of channels for interaction proliferates, companies that are not rapidly improving their offers will only fall further behind.
Shoppers once relied on a familiar salesperson—such as the proprietor of their neighborhood general store—to help them find just what they wanted. Drawing on what he knew or could quickly deduce about the customer, he would locate the perfect product and, often, suggest additional items the customer hadn’t even thought of. It’s a quaint scenario. Today’s distracted consumers, bombarded with information and options, often struggle to find the products or services that will best meet their needs. The shorthanded and often poorly informed floor staff at many retailing sites can’t begin to replicate the personal touch that shoppers once depended on—and consumers are still largely on their own when they shop online.
