Richmond and Merseyside, UK  (7 March 2013) – Data marketing experts from IBM, Transactis and two leading retail brands will discuss at a breakfast forum on 14 March how the responsible and effective use of data can be a driving force that wins retailers the trust and loyalty of increasingly empowered consumers. Speakers from online retailer GetTheLabel.com and high street chemist Boots will outline how they put theory into practice when it comes to winning customer confidence through database marketing.

In an increasingly multi-channel consumer environment, it is more important than ever that retailers gather data from a variety of touchpoints and use it to build and strengthen relationships with their customers. During the briefing, the speakers from Boots and GetTheLabel will show how they have overcome organisational and technological challenges while revealing some of the strategies that have enabled them to increase sales and engender long-term customer engagement.

Boots loyalty campaign manager Paul Ravenscroft, whose team have been at the centre of CRM progression at Boots in recent years, will talk about how the company’s long-established Advantage Card loyalty programme has helped it connect with customers, explaining the role that effective data use has played in securing their trust.

Matt Healey, commercial and finance manager of GetTheLabel.com, will explain how the intelligent use of data has helped the eCommerce and catalogue retailer’s online sales grow from zero to £15m in three years, and outline the challenges that the company has faced in developing customer relationships rapidly with limited budgets – while also being confronted by the pressures of building an online retail business from scratch.

During the breakfast briefing, speakers from Transactis, which provides consumer analysis and insight, and IBM, which supplies Unica database marketing software, will also discuss the findings of their joint paper, The Power and Peril of Data. They will highlight some of the key research findings that demonstrate the importance of data in building customer relationships. For example:

    Inappropriate use of customer data leads to mistrust, dissatisfaction and loss of business – 95% of consumers say failure to properly take note of their data would lead them to defect to a competitor and 69% confirm they have, in reality, already done so

    Consumers want more informed communications from the companies that they have relationships with – 73% say retailers do not, in fact, communicate enough with them

Transactis will discuss how the sector and the consumer’s role within it is changing, and how an effective use of data will enable retailers to stay one step ahead, while IBM will comment on what consumers really want from their relationship with retailers.

Specific issues covered in the forum will include:

    What impact consumer trust and data wastage can have on customer retention;

    How the growth of the multichannel consumer is changing the retail landscape;

    How new communication technologies are changing consumer expectations;

    How retailers can turn these challenges into opportunities.

The forum will take place between 8:30am and 10:30am at the IBM Client Centre, 76-78 Upper Ground on London’s South Bank. Refreshments will be served at the event, and there will be an opportunity for networking after the conclusion of the discussion.

If you would like to attend the breakfast forum, either visit www.transactis.co.uk/engage to register or contact Amanda Felstead at [email protected] or 0151 290 5645.