Often I use Starbucks as one of the best examples of a company doing customer loyalty marketing right – as they typically use their marketing database very well, sending out emails and direct mail postcards personalized to myself as an individual. Yet today a chink in the armor surfaced, and it actually points to a deficiency that I think is very common across companies & marketing departments. While it’s very easy today to make an email “personalized” in terms using a person’s name across the content, it’s much harder to take other interactions that a prospect / customer has and overlay it across all your touchpoints to ensure all your messages are relevant.
Case in point – I was sent an email about Starbucks’ new iphone app. (Apparently the old one will break, and you gotta get the new one.) The problem is that I don’t currently use an iphone app. However, I just downloaded a Starbucks Android app a few weeks ago. If Starbucks were truly at the cutting edge of customer relevancy they would have taken the data that I gave them when I downloaded my app and matched the email that I used within the app, which is the same email address as is linked with my rewards account and email opt-in subscription. All of that data should have fed to a database that updated my profile in terms of what channels I’m using to relate to the brand. Android, yes. iPhone, no. It’s a pretty simple distinction, but it’s a data complexity that’s hard for Starbucks, and I think all major consumer brands to get a hold of.
Part of the problem is that usually companies use a stand alone service to send out their marketing emails. That service, while excellent at delivering emails and producing reporting for those emails, fails when it has to integrate data from other systems. It’s not just email, because companies have to deal with data collected from social media efforts, customer website visits, loyalty program interactions, direct mail responses, phone calls and other touches. This is why it’s critical that every company invests in their systems so they communicate with each other. There isn’t yet a holy grail company that will handle this perfectly across channels, but there are quite a few that are coming close and make it a priority to easily integrate with other systems whether it be custom apps for that platform, or more generally, an API that can be used to sync relevant fields.
In the end, it’s really the customer’s experience that matters. When a loyal Starbucks customer like myself gets disappointed by a “miss” experience like this, and I get an advertisement from Pete’s Coffee or a local coffeeshop that impresses me, then I’m one step closer to being an ex-customer. But for now, I’ll forgive Starbucks, because I know how frustrating data silos can be.
