Customer profiling through CRM and Business Intelligence: how important is it?

Is it possible to profile customers who purchase your apparel online and in-store? Not only customer profiling is possible, but it is a key strategy for maximizing your sales by leveraging CRM systems and Business Intelligence. Read on to find out how to optimize your sells strategy!

Customer profiling: what it is and why it is important

In the fashion tech industry, competition is increasingly intense, with more and more consumers buying clothing both online and in traditional physical stores. In this ever-expanding and evolving environment, industry players are faced with crucial challenges: how to attract and keep the attention of customers? How to offer a consistently excellent and personalized experience to existing ones? How can you anticipate trends dictated by the market and turn them in your favor? It is in this scenario that the importance of customer profiling through the use of CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, and BI, Business Intelligence, systems comes into play.

Customer profiling, CRM and business intelligence: crucial drivers for companies

Firstly, it is necessary to define what customer profiling is. It is the process of collecting, analyzing and organizing information about customers in order to create detailed and comprehensive profiles. These profiles contain demographic data, preferences, buying behaviors, interests, habits and any other relevant insights that can enable companies and brands to better interpret and understand their customers, having all the evidence aimed at constantly optimizing their buying experience. Customer profiling provides an in-depth view of individual shoppers and their behavior, making it possible to personalize the customer journey and the experience itself, improving services and offers and optimizing marketing strategies.

Regarding, on the other hand, the systems that can contribute to optimal profiling, we have, as previously mentioned, CRM and Business Intelligence. Relative to the former, we refer to the business strategy designed and adopted to manage and improve customer relationships.

It is based on the use of technologies, processes, and methodologies to capture, organize, analyze, and use customer data with the goal of delivering a personalized and satisfying shopping experience.

Business intelligence (BI), on the other hand, consists of a set of technologies, processes and tools that enable companies to collect, organize, analyze and present business data to gain a complete and accurate view of business activities. It helps transform raw data into explicit and meaningful information, providing a solid foundation for strategic planning and decision-making affecting the business.

How to leverage CRM and business intelligence for customer profiling?

We have seen the potential offered by CRM and business intelligence systems, but how do these positively affect the proper and profiling of customers? Tracking relies on the availability and accessibility of the data at hand. It is this information that allows you to provide insights into the past, current and future behavior of your target audience. Let us therefore look together at the key information for profiling:

• Demographic data: include information such as age, gender, marital status, occupation, geographic location, and income and help identify groups of customers with similar characteristics
• Buying behaviors: these data reveal what customers buy, when they buy it, how often they buy it, and how much they spend. This information is critical for creating personalized offers and targeted promotions
• Preferences and interests: collecting information about customers’ preferences and interests, such as preferred brands, clothing styles, colors, fabrics, and details, helps to create offers and products that match their expectations
• Online and social media interactions: monitoring customers’ online activity and social media interactions provides an additional useful piece to understanding their interests and preferences so that they can be targeted and reached by ad hoc communications
• Feedback and reviews: opinions expressed by customers through feedback, comments, and reviews provide valuable information about their satisfaction with products and services

Creation of detailed profiles and segmentation into homogeneous groups

With all this information at their disposal, companies can create detailed and curated profiles of their customers and thus segment them into homogeneous groups, optimizing their business activities.

This allows them to provide personalized communications and offers, anticipate customer needs, adapt marketing strategies, improve the buying experience, and build long-lasting relationships with their customers. In particular, the latter benefit produces additional positive effects, starting with increased brand loyalty. This is reflected in an increase in the likelihood that the relevant person will actively become a brand ambassador, establishing a favorable word of mouth.

It is also important to emphasize that customer profiling must be handled ethically and with full respect for the privacy of individuals. Companies, in fact, must obtain customers’ consent to collect and use their data and ensure the security of personal information. Responsible management of profiling is a key element in establishing and maintaining consumer trust.