In today’s increasingly digital marketplace, retailers find themselves at a crossroads. Their customers are seeking products and information online, and they’re entering retail stores more knowledgeable than ever before. In order to stay a step ahead of savvy customers, retailers are turning to high-tech marketing practices to give themselves an edge. A common way to do this is to use customer contact information to market products and increase customer engagement.
However, capturing accurate customer information at the point-of-sale (POS) isn’t always easy, even if it’s required.
Imagine you’re an in-store associate with a dozen people waiting in line. Every second counts, so when a customer states their email address, you might not have time to read it back to them to confirm that you entered it correctly. Combined with the noise of a busy retail store, it’s pretty easy to see why mistakes can be made. That is just one of a myriad of factors that contribute to incorrect or incomplete customer contact information.
If good contact data allows you to target messaging to individual customers and increase your marketing efficiency, then bad contact data wreaks havoc on your ability to market your products appropriately. Take email addresses, for example. An incorrect email address not only results in a bounce, but collect enough of them and your sender reputation can be tarnished, resulting in less efficient email campaigns moving forward. It’s a very slippery slope.
ALDO’s need for accurate email data
ALDO, a leading retailer of fashion footwear and accessories, found itself in a similar situation. The retailer has over 1,600 stores around the globe and is dedicated to providing customers with quality and cutting-edge trends at affordable prices. Today, ALDO communicates with its customers via email after they make a purchase by sending follow-up emails, thanking them for their purchase and inviting them to finalize their user profile on ALDO.com.
By completing their profiles, shoppers can indicate their preferences about the types of communication they prefer to receive. With more information about their customers, ALDO can send relevant and timely marketing messages tailored to their specific preferences.
During a busy holiday season, the retailer wanted to increase the size of its email subscriber database, but it was concerned about the quality of emails it collected in its stores. Today, when a customer checks out at an ALDO store, the store representative asks the shopper if they’d like to receive email communications and offers from ALDO. This process resulted in a high rate of bounced emails, so ALDO sought a solution that would ensure the accuracy of the email addresses captured by store associates without interrupting or slowing the checkout process for shoppers. The retailer also wanted to provide an additional incentive for store associates to be diligent when collecting email addresses.
Experian Data Quality’s solution
ALDO looked to Experian Data Quality to help with the email accuracy problems that it had been having. It needed a solution that verifies email address deliverability and identifies and corrects syntax and domain errors. Because ALDO was already using Experian Data Quality to verify all physical mailing addresses during the checkout process on ALDO.com, the relationship was a natural fit. ALDO selected Experian Data Quality's email services for their accurate results and fast transaction speeds.
The Results
According to Director of IT, Alex Popov, ALDO has been very happy with the success of the email collection project. The retailer has seen an incremental increase in the number of accurate and deliverable emails in the database, and its email bounce rates have declined as a result.
Verifying data before it enters the database has improved ALDO’s operational efficiencies. Now, customers receive their emails right away, eliminating the need for data cleanup. And perhaps more importantly, ALDO is delivering on its promise to customers, enhancing shoppers’ perception of the brand.
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