Interview with Lia Grimberg, Divisional Vice-President, Customer Marketing for The Bay.
Last week we had the amazing opportunity to interview Lia Grimberg. Lia is the Divisional Vice-President, Customer Marketing for The Bay. Lia is a data-driven marketing expert that understands customer needs using customized marketing communications to increase ROI. Close to almost 20 years of experience in the retail and financial services industries. During the interview we discussed what is data and how important data is for business, types of the data collected, how companies gather data and how data can be collected without affecting customer trust. The other relevant subject that she pointed out is Loyalty programs and how we can use data to improve customer relationships through loyalty programs.
I would like to outline the types of data that companies collect. We can separate data into two different groups: First- Party Data which includes contact data; transactional data; web-browsing data; loyalty data; and others. Second and Third-Party data includes partnership data; audience data; aggregate data.
Below you can find the type of data collected that was shared by Lia Grimberg during the interview.
Data is improving customer relationships on so many levels. This relationship makes the customer feel that the company knows what they want and what they need. On the other hand, customers are concerned about their privacy. According to Canadian Marketing Association 2018, 77% of Canadians have concerns about their data privacy.
Companies such as The Bay follow 4 standards to use data without hurting customer trust. Legal Standards are established by law, or rule to compel treatment of certain classes of data and which is guided by PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act). Ethical Standards are established by industries or professional organizations seeking to establish the level of non-legally binding treatment of information. Policy Standards are the company’s Data Privacy Policy and Good Judgment Standards.
According to Lia a strong loyalty program positively impacts the full customer funnel. Four stages impact the customer funnel: The first stage is Acquisition, which brings lower acquisition costs and identify the best acquisition channels and prospects. The second stage is Onboarding which increases reach by higher channel engagement; lower reach cost; and higher promotional response. The third stage is Customer Affinity which counts with a higher share of wallet and increased spending; higher margin; and improved return to promotions. The fourth stage is Retention which has higher lifetime value; reduces churn and higher brand advocacy.
During the case study, we had the opportunity to discuss ideas for loyalty programs for a retail store to increase the frequency of new customers. The group discussion was insightful collecting different ideas from such different perspectives and opinions. We used first-party data to develop new loyalty programs offering more customized offers.
After the interview with Lia and learning about Loyalty Marketing and data use to increase loyalty I was fascinated by this marketing segment. With my 20 years of experience in business and analyzing customer behaviour, I like the concept of reading the customer through their data and using them to convert sales and loyal customers.
Data is a tool that needs to be understood and used wisely to drive sales and ROI.
Roberta Pelucio
