Customer Intelligence Helps Marketers Compete with DTC Brands

DTC brands like Casper, the successful mattress company, have made names for themselves as the next generation of unicorns. DTC companies’ seismic success has been mainly attributed to their ability to consistently nail the customer experience. Clearly, without a supply chain filled with wholesalers and third-party retailers, the Caspers of the world have been able to streamline the customer journey, which makes it easier to engage with their customers in a more meaningful way.

At the heart of this enhanced ability to engage is data. DTC brands, by definition, collect a wealth of first-party data that traditional brands with more complex supply chains generally find difficult to collect. The siloed nature of traditional brand marketer structures has made it overwhelmingly difficult for them to mimic the efficiency with which DTC collect and act upon valuable customer data. But in 2019, brands across a range of verticals including automotive, CPG, entertainment, telco, and so on, do actually have the ability to compete with DTCs in terms of maximizing their data. 

With the emergence of customer intelligence products in the marketplace, marketers can now leverage technology to collect, manage, and analyze vast amounts of customer data in a central repository. A Customer Intelligence Platform has the unprecedented ability to provide marketers with real-time actionable insights into each customer, based on their own unique relationship with a brand. This makes it possible for traditional brands to act as nimbly and as powerfully with personalized messaging that engages each customer with what they want, right when they want it.

Digital transformation is an ongoing pursuit for most traditional brands. Adapting to an era of countless digital channels and new technology is an enormous undertaking; data technology and infrastructure rationalization are increasingly being recognized by internal stakeholders as a priority. Staying nimble, being willing to evolve and experiment with new opportunities and emerging technology, is a strategic imperative that all brands would do well to embrace. To compete with the exponential growth of DTC upstarts who have captured both the imaginations and the wallets of customers, brands need to ensure that they’re maximizing their omnichannel strategy to engage with their customers throughout the customer journey and beyond.