Dubai retailers must stop sending mass e-mails, SMSs to attract customers, consultancy says

DUBAI: Dubai retailers should stop bombarding customers with mass e-mails and text messages and should adopt other marketing strategies to attract customers, according global management consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton.
“UAE retailers must leverage the value of both internal data, including customer profiles, social media, footfall and transactions — and external data, including customer social profile, traffic and weather data to curate their offering to drive sales, while also optimizing their engagement with customers,” the consultancy’s vice president Danny Karam said.
“It is about getting customers to personally engage with a retailer’s brand. Sending out blanket text messages or even e-mails is just not going to work any more.”
The consultancy said that identifying contact points, such as stores, e-commerce sites, interactive displays where brands can learn about their customers is critical in building personalized data profiles of individual shoppers, which in turn facilitates predictive intelligence-based marketing.
In an earlier report — Next Generation Retailers: Power Up Your Analytics — the global consultancy said the global retail sector was changing in the face of an unprecedented shift in customer behavior, fueled by advanced technology and wider acceptance of online shopping and e-commerce.
Estimates indicate that one in every three text messages a UAE mobile subscriber receives is considered as a spam message, most usually either from a retailer or a property developer.
UAE telecoms regulators in 2009 issued a policy regarding unsolicited electronic communication, which stated that “mobile phone service providers must obtain consent from their customers in order to send them marketing messages through SMS”.
Social media plays an important role to help retailers develop a more personal understanding of their customer base, Booz Allen Hamilton said, and data platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter could help them understand their market’s preferences and interests.
Monitoring what’s trending online or hashtag clouds used by target audiences could also help develop targeted, personalized sales campaigns, the consultancy added.