In this article:
- Luxury brands intensify their connection with customers by learning about them through zero-party data.
- And are learning how it can fuel both retention and acquisition efforts.
Luxury brands that seek ways to connect with customers outside physical stores are turning to zero-party data for more personalized engagement.
“Drip is replacing drop,” declares Vogue Business. It explains in the context of luxury tote brand Telfar that has shifted from wide access on e-commerce to exclusive access on Telfar TV. Purchase is only unlocked by scanning a QR code.
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This safeguards the brand from the bots that are programmed to buy up the inventory when the totes come up the market. The channel also is a medium for the designer to talk to fans of the brand and for them to communicate with each other by sharing videos of themselves with the products to be seen on the channel.
In many ways, it feels like the new middle way between the all-physical experience of going to the store, and the touchless experience of buying online. Is it going to be the best of- or the worst-of-both worlds? We lean to the former.
In a way, the channel takes the place of a physical store as it does more than a site to connect with customers, which is becoming an essential strategy for when third-party cookies are no longer available for tracking.
That is exactly what has made more and more brands turn to zero-party data, as we covered recently here. For luxury brands, in particular, it’s a model that could work well because they aim for a more niche market that values both exclusivity and personalized attention.
The brands that are doing that are taking cues from the neighborhood shops that do that for their regular customers, according to Jared Watson, assistant professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business. He doesn’t allude to the show Cheers, though it represents the essence of the personalized experience — going where everyone knows your name and your favorite drink because you told them, and they remember.
Vogue Business quoted Ana Andjelic, a brand strategist who notes that buying media doesn’t pay off for most luxury brands because large-scale advertising only works for “low-value customer acquisition.” What they need to do instead of casting a wide net is concentrate on “granular consumer segmentation which leads to precision targeting, better retention, and higher value customer acquisition.”
This is exactly the kind of smart marketing initiatives brands that use advanced CRM Marketing hubs can execute – as they can use existing customer data to power more personalized acquisition efforts, among other personalization tactics.
Zero-party data is now where it’s at for brands that want to get close to their customers – and adding the collection of ZPD into their marketing strategy, while also injecting that data into the CDP, is only getting more and more popular with leading marketers. That holds true for both drips of exclusivity and more modestly priced items meant to be personalized.