Protecting Personal Data While Enhancing Customer Engagement: How To Manage PII and Boost Loyalty And Retention

Retailers need to develop ever-closer relationships with their customers in order to win their spend and improve loyalty. Many are increasing investment in personalised retail efforts and structured loyalty programmes to help to achieve these goals. By better identifying their customers, as well as their individual needs, retailers are able to target them more specifically, boosting their propensity to spend in the process. Yet it’s become harder than ever to meet these goals. Privacy changes have impacted how retailers collect and store data, while consumer awareness over the role of data is also making them more aware of the value of the data that they can choose, or refuse, to share. Protecting personal data is key.

Today, loyalty is built through many avenues. Traditional loyalty schemes go beyond mere points and prizes, with retailers often investing resources to engage consumers emotionally by offering unique, relationship-building experiences or services. Think of John Lewis and its members-only shopping events and experiences, or Pets at Home’s VIP scheme, which offers a range of benefits including one that aims to engage through empathy by allowing members to raise money for animal charities of their choice. Today, loyalty must be driven by offering what the customer wants, when they want it. It’s about building a relationship, not just a programme, so that the brand is top of mind for customers and that they are recommending you to others. But such a relationship requires knowledge. And knowledge requires data. So how have new privacy regulations impacted on retailers, and how are they operating in this new age?

In this white paper, we look at how retailers and brands need to carefully manage their data and put the right protections in place, enabling them to be safe guardians of their customers’ PII while also delivering the frictionless loyalty programme experience their customers expect. Any strategy also needs to drive up KPIs such as revenue, retention and conversion. We examine the challenges of collecting and storing data, explore how retailers are interacting with their data, look at what this means in a commercial operation and ask where retailers need to go next.