How do you stay on top of what your catalog customers and potential customers want in an ever changing market? To build loyalty, it is important to reflect upon your successes as well as weaknesses or gaps. How can you accomplish this? With big data.

Big data, which is a collection of data from digital and traditional sources, can aid in catalog growth to attract new customers, which in return, expands your house file. And who doesn’t love that!

Prior to big data, gaining access to rented lists to create and expand your house file was challenging. List selection was smaller in size and access to this list could take several days to obtain. Today, big data allows you to expand circulation and create a diverse, targeted list by utilizing cooperative databases with other cataloguers. This shared database allows for a greater list collection, and better selectivity. It provides access to up-to-date lists with the use of The National Change of Address database (NCOA).

According to a recent article from business.com, big data “can observe various patterns and trends associated with your customers’ behavior to trigger their loyalty” and “gain more business intelligence.” Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Maybe.

The use of big data can come at a price and burn up valuable time. To prevent this, outline a plan, targeting key areas of focus, and then use this information to project a plan for future catalog marketing strategies. Use your data to “create a better user experience for the customer,” says Maria Marinina, author of “How to Build Long-Term Brand Loyalty With Your Big Data.”

This is accomplished by:
Focusing not only on past successful marketing strategies, but also on previous challenges or failed marketing plans. Marinina offers this advice: “Once you’ve found a problem or a weakness, build a new strategy to resolve it. Then, use big data to measure the success of this new strategy.”

Are you building new strategies to foster growth and cater to your catalog customers?
Define your catalog customer, then utilize this data to market to them. Group together and identify customers by their buying behavior, and who has similar likes and dislikes, based on previous purchases.
Groups can be broken down further by demographics, age, household size, income, and lifestyle interests. This is known as a market segment.

Tips for utilizing market segments
Segment loyal customers. Group them by how often they shop from your catalog, the time of year they buy, and how often they buy.

Define customer likes based on previous purchases and shopping patterns.

Define and group together customers with similar purchasing power- small dollar amounts, discount spenders, and high dollar spenders.

Your collection of data can also improve how you cater to your customers’ needs, prevent negative experiences, and grow positive customer interaction. Did a customer receive a relevant catalog based on their interests? Have customers in a certain demographic requested a catalog more than once?

Stay competitive
Targeting and investing in the right customer will create the largest ROI. Stay competitive and price adjust your items based on the current market, and predict pricing for the next quarter with the use of big data.
With this fresh look at your big data results and marketing goals, let Dingley’s experience guide your catalog needs to create lasting loyal customers.