Dashboards have been quite a topic of contention in certain circles with the recent recirculation of Taylor Brownlow’s essay ”Are Dashboards Dead?”.

While I’m of the opinion that no, dashboards are not dead, they have been undeniably overused and often misunderstood, with a disconnect between a dashboard’s actual function versus our perceived function of them. 

Why is there dashboard fatigue?

Many of us have experienced dashboard fatigue, and rightfully so. As businesses, how many dashboards have we commissioned that were never fully utilised, if used at all? The answer is too many.

The reason for low engagement isn’t the fault of the humble dashboard, but rather that a dashboard was never the appropriate solution for the end user, or its design wasn’t tailored enough to the business use case.  

When faced with a business problem requiring data insights, we often jump straight to dashboard creation. However, there are many other solutions that can be tailored to deliver data insights, such as concise reports and static presentations. With an increased understanding of where dashboards fail, the conversation has shifted to questioning their relevance altogether.  

So, what place do dashboards still have in businesses, and how can we better understand where they excel to drive improved outcomes? 

What potential challenges may arise with dashboards?

There are many instances where dashboards may be less effective or complicate matters for businesses, and other methods provide a better solution. Instances may include: 

• When the user needs a concise answer to a question:
  Dashboards require interaction and exploration, which can be time-consuming. If a stakeholder needs a straightforward answer, a tailored report is more efficient.  
• For business specific, niche questions:
  Not every level of enquiry warrants the resource-intensive creation of a dashboard. For narrow, targeted questions, simpler reporting methods suffice. 
• One-time insights:
  Dashboards are overkill for static data projects, such as measuring the success of a single transformation. In these cases, producing a well-crafted report or presentation is more resource-efficient. 
• If the data is exported for analysis:
  If users regularly export dashboard data to manipulate it elsewhere, it’s a sign that the dashboard doesn’t meet their needs or wasn’t necessary to begin with. 

When might dashboards be the right solution?

Company-wide reporting platforms

Dashboards provide a unified view of performance across teams, offering consistent delivery of insights to aiding faster decision making, customisable filters for views specific to each business unit, efficiency in distributing insights without the need for manual reporting and increased data accessibility through data visualisation. 

Regular cadence reporting

For tracking ongoing metrics such as daily sales, customer trends or campaign performance, and measuring progress against targets, dashboards provide updated insights without the wait. 

Exploratory analysis

Whenusers want to discover patterns, relationships or unknown trends within the data, dashboards allow for interactive interrogation. These tools are especially valuable for data-savvy end users, enabling self-service exploration without requiring an analyst’s intervention. 

Monitoring ongoing initiatives

Dashboards are excellent for tracking live projects or recurring business processes, offering real-time visibility into performance. 

The future approach for dashboards

With the above in mind, we’re moving to a more informed approach where dashboards are no longer a tiresome, default solution, but a carefully considered tool.

The future isn’t about abandoning dashboards, but about being intentional and strategic in their creation and deployment. The key is facilitating dashboard creation in a way that adds tangible value and is thoughtfully configured to provide meaningful, actionable insights that empower decision making. 

How CACI can help

At CACI, we work with you to deliver the best solutions for your analysis needs. Our extensive experience in successfully implementing dashboards across diverse industries highlights several key scenarios where dashboards have proven to be highly effective.  

Whether it’s creating a bespoke, one-off report or developing a suite of comprehensive, customisable dashboards, contact us to find out more about how our user centric approach and industry expertise can help you gain meaningful analytics that will drive strategic business outcomes. 

During a recent visit home, my family and I took a trip into Liverpool. As part of the day out, I had a wander around Liverpool ONE and— as feels mandatory for anyone who visits— popped into Liverpool ONE’s new-and-improved Zara store.

The elevated Zara is markedly an easier shop— more spacious, easy to navigate and more aesthetically appealing— transforming it into a showroom-style experience. While I didn’t purchase anything at the time, it did make me consider how a change in store format might inspire additional spend.

How a physical Zara store influences online spending

This updated Zara experience in Liverpool ONE isn’t just a boost for in- store shopping, its presence also inspires a substantial increase in online purchases too. Prior to the renovations, the store already contributed to a 25% increase in online sales locally. Zara now offers a hybrid shopping experience which inspires more customers to shop online, creating a blend of online and offline shopping.

The new-and-improved  store has further embraced hybrid technology to bridge the gap between physical and digital shopping, with innovative features like Store Mode. With Store Mode, shoppers can check real-time stock on the app or website, or even order items for same-day pickup in-store.

Other tech-focused improvements combat the infamous queues, including RFID trackers for quicker item processing in changing rooms, self-service kiosks and online booking for changing rooms. These features are a welcome upgrade that not only improve the in-store experience, but also provide a smoother transition between online and physical shopping.

Assessing the broader impact of in-store experiences

To understand the full impact of Zara’s presence, it’s essential to consider more than just in-store sales. Recent data from CACI’s “Voice of the Nation” survey reveals that a positive in-store experience can drive 36% more purchases, with a showroom-style layout adding another 19%. However, this effect varies by demographic— younger shoppers are drawn to interactive showroom features, while older customers respond positively to an overall pleasant in-store environment. 

For landlords, recognising the broader value of physical retail spaces is key. The halo effect of a well-designed store can enhance a brand’s online sales significantly, but this impact depends on factors such as the store’s type, location and shopper demographic. For example, a city centre location can drive 13pp more online spending for fashion retailers than a similar store in a Regional Mall. For a store generating £1 million in revenue, this difference could equate to £130,000 in additional online sales. 

How can CACI help?

As consumer behaviours shift towards a blended online and offline shopping experience, it is important that both landlords and tenants can quantify the online halo to understand the true value of a store in influencing online spend. 

CACI can quantify the online halo for over 41 million combinations of shoppers, locations and asset types, helping brands to maximise their retail impact. Further insight into the online halo will be shared in our upcoming blog series that will explore how and why major cities demonstrate the strongest online halo impact and the overall effect on sales, how the halo impact increases by the number of locations with overlapping catchments, the interlinking of the online halo with target demographics, and impact of proximity on outlet store versus concept store performance. 

Discover how the online halo can support your business strategies for the future, contact us today! 

A new sportswear retailer emerges on the international stage.

Gymshark, a fast-growing activewear brand, has been rapidly expanding its global reach and brand presence as it ventures into the world of brick and mortar. Having recently opened new stores in the UK (Stratford City), the Middle East (Dubai) and a pop-up concept in New York City, this brand with a prominent social media and predominately online presence is now rapidly infiltrating physical retail.

Despite not yet launching across wider Europe, it’s only a matter of time before these markets will be ventured into via physical pop-ups and stores. Selecting the right locations out of countless options may be a daunting task that comes with the territory, however. So, once the time comes for Gymshark to decide which locations to expand into that will maximise their increasing growing brand recognition and ROI, how should they effectively go about it?

In this two-part blog series, we’ll walk you through a hypothetical European market expansion for Gymshark in France, sharing how the brand can use data to accelerate and enhance their international store network strategies.

Three French cities that demonstrate viable market expansion potential based on insights taken from CACI datasets and segmentation tools will be focused on, as well as key takeaways that Gymshark (or brands in a similar position) could consider when it comes to international market expansion.

How France was identified as an optimal location for a Gymshark European expansion

CACI possesses a complete universe of defined retail areas to consider, a detailed understanding of different types of consumers and where they shop. This enables us to guide a brand like Gymshark to maximise success and value from go-to-market strategy and launch through to expanding into broader brand recognition and market share capture.

With this in mind, and with Gymshark expanding into physical and new regions, we investigated European markets that might fit their need should they decide to expand into Europe.

With Gymshark already a brand on CACI’s Brand Dimensions, a dataset tracking hundreds of the UK’s most popular and emerging brands to reveal spend, sales and average transaction value insights, key groups in French Acorn could also be identified.

Key Acorn groups were identified by using Brand Dimensions data followed by selecting key Acorn groups within French Acorn data, which correlated accordingly. In France alone there are over 10,000 retail areas, each with differing levels of existing premium clothing shops and competitors, types of customers, footfall, population and spend.

By comparing this to the expected view from Retail Footprint Europe, we could identify locations that were currently failing to engage Gymshark’s key shoppers but had the opportunity to.

From these collective findings, we were able to conclude the following three French locations that could benefit from the opening of Gymshark: Paris, Marseille and Besancon.

Why Paris would perform well in a Gymshark France expansion

According to our findings, Paris presents the highest performance potential and should be a primary focus for Gymshark. Aside from being the biggest city in France -an obvious bonus for any brand – Paris presents the best shopper demographic, a strong array of existing premium retailers and the ability to attract the relevant demographic groups that would align to Gymshark’s brand identity of being a premium retailer with similar retailers already in the centre.

Retail Footprint Europe enables the use of transactional data across brands to develop an understanding of the typical Gymshark shopper, brand positioning and establishing criteria for the most suitable locations for Gymshark to consider regarding new store openings.

Considering these criteria, Paris ranked incredibly high on Clothing and Footwear, with the Haussmann-Opera retail area Klepierre centre ranking among the top three across France.

Why Marseille would perform well in a Gymshark France expansion

Marseille presents itself as another viable option as our findings show it to be the middle ground between high affluence profiles and younger, ‘student life’ populations found in other larger, prominent French cities. The city’s strong clothing and footwear and high proportion of premium retailers also contributes to its performance potential. However, its lower ‘young and affluent’ target demographic runs a potential risk.

Why Besancon would perform well in a Gymshark France expansion

Despite Besancon presenting itself as more of a curveball, the granularity of our Retail Footprint findings demonstrate that in spite of its smaller size and lesser known location, the city is home to a strong clothing and retail offering including premium retailers, a high percentage of young and affluent shoppers and is overall more likely to attract the right shoppers.

Key takeaways that Gymshark can consider for a French market expansion

These aforementioned insights would enable Gymshark to better understand their long-term audience capture of sites through physical retail and experiment with different formats and experiential offerings.

Combining Retail Footprint data across Europe with demographic, transactional, brand alignment and footfall data can ultimately be used to shape an evolving store network strategy, and the national view further solidifies an understanding of the entire retail landscape of France.

Through these insights, Gymshark would be able to accelerate store openings with greater confidence and success if or when they decide to expand into Europe.

Ready to Find Your Next Market?

With insights from Retail Footprint Europe, pinpoint the best locations for your brand’s growth across Europe.

Stay tuned for next blog in this two-part series, where we’ll assess which Klepierre centres in these high-performing potential French cities could perform well in a Gymshark French market expansion.

Want to increase your visitors’ spend by 25%? Invest in your amenities.

Facilities are a vital part of retail and leisure destinations. Despite not directly producing turnover, they play an essential part in driving performance. Through research from our Shoppers Dimensions dataset– our database of over 1 million respondents across 270 UK-wide destinations which enables key performance indicator (KPI) benchmarking of assets against similar locations across the UK to contextualise performance and enhance decision-making– we analysed how various KPIs are impacted by consumers’ experiences and perceptions.

So, how exactly are services and amenities within retail destinations affecting consumers’ behaviours? How can retail destinations leverage these insights to bolster experiences and perceptions?

How do consumers’ overall shopping experiences influence their spending behaviours?

According to our research, retail destinations capable of improving their rating of a person’s overall shopping experience may recognise an increase in their average retail spend by £21.

There is an uplift across the board when overall shopping experience is rated 5 out of 5, with average retail spend increasing by 25% and catering spend by 17%.

How do experiences & perceptions of toilets impact retail destinations?

It may not be a glamourous topic, but toilets are often called out by customers as an issue. They are expensive to renovate and maintain, and without a direct revenue stream associated with them, it is easy to think of toilets as a cost. Despite this, our data shows that investing in facilities can actually drive performance.

Firstly, when looking at shopping centre locations of those that rate the toilet facilities 5 out of 5, our data shows that this leads to an uplift in time that a person stays at the destination by 16%, which accounts for 12 additional minutes per customer. But how does this additional dwell time translate into spend? Customers that give toilets a top rating record a 26% uplift on their average retail spend, an increase of approximately £21.34 per customer.

Retail is not the only category affected. In fact, catering conversion experiences an uplift of 5 percentage points and the average spend on catering increases by 19%. There is therefore direct value to unlock by maintaining and improving these facilities, even if that means you have to spend a few pennies to do so.

How to attract more family groups from further afield 

Family groups can be a hard group to target, but once at the destination, they are likely to come for ‘Big Day Out’ trips which are associated with a higher average spend. For many destinations, this group tends to live further afield, such as in the suburbs of a city.

When family facilities are rated higher, there is an uplift in their drivetime by 23%, an increase in their dwell time by 17% along with an uplift of 25% in associated retail spend. Showing that better family facilities draw in these high-spending visitors from further away

How do car park experiences & perceptions impact interactions with the rest of the shopping centre?

One of the most interesting findings we came across when looking into the impact of ratings was with overall parking experience. This is another topic that consumers are passionate about; ever hard-to-please, the consumer wants it to be cheaper, with more spaces and of a better quality.

But do better perceptions really lead to stronger key performance metrics? In short, the answer is a resounding “yes”. Those who rate the overall parking experience 5 out of 5 see an uplift in dwell, retail and catering average spend and conversion. The greatest uplifts are in dwell time and average retail spend.

On average, dwell time will see an uplift of 17% (14 minutes) while average retail spend will see an uplift of 30%, leading to an average increase in spend of just over £25.

Key takeaway: higher perceptions equal higher spend

Overall, our data shows that the higher the perceptions, the more people will spend and the longer they will stay. This is the case when we look at the ratings for overall shopping experience, cleanliness, overall parking experience, family facilities, customer services, signage, architecture and toilet facilities.

While it might not be glamourous, strong perceptions of parking experience and toilet facilities do lead to an increase in key performance indicators, proving that there is value to be unlocked by investing in these facilities.

How can CACI help?

At CACI, we understand the impact that driving improved perceptions of facilities within a retail destination can have on consumers’ behaviours, such as which amenities encourage people to visit from further away, stay longer or spend more on their trip.

To gain a better understanding of how consumers interact with places, reach out to us to discuss how we can help you measure your performance and identify growth opportunities. 

On a recent programme development day, Phil Ballard, one of our award-winning Scrum masters facilitated the Ball Point Game. This is an industry-known Agile game which is usually run as part of an introduction to the Agile ethos for those keen to follow the Scrum methodology. 

Despite CACI having teams that are highly experienced in Scrum, we still found this activity to be useful not only as a “going back to basics” session, but also from the several other lessons learned from our own adaptation. 

Ball Point Game: basic overview 

Teams of eight are formed, with each team collecting a bag of balls. 

Within an Iteration (of which four take place), teams pass as many balls as possible among team members, with each ball passed scoring the team a point. Teams must adhere to the acceptance criteria of each ball being touched at least once by every member, each ball returning to the same person who introduced it into the team, each ball having “airtime” as it moves between team members, lost balls being fetched and re-entering the team where it left and dropped balls not being re-introduced into the system.

During each Iteration, teams will have one minute to talk among themselves and two minutes to perform the ‘Objective’. Prior to each Iteration, an estimate for the number of balls expected to pass through the team within the next Iteration is predicted. 

CACI’s spin on the Ball Point Game 

Considering teams are already experienced in delivering in scrum, we made things more lifelike by introducing additional requirements in Iterations 3 and 4: 

• The balls are being sold in packs of ten, with at least one of them being green. 
• All balls must continue to gain height as they are passed through the team. 

After all, what’s software delivery without a stakeholder wanting to change their mind? The idea behind these rules was to break the established process, force change and to see what behaviours the scrum-experienced professionals would exhibit. 

Ball Point Game goals

The Ball Point Game’s ultimate goal was to teach participants the value of continuous process improvement through basic agile principles using the simulation of an agile production process, including: 

• Teamwork/shared goals 
• Retrospectives/problem-solving 
• Planning 
• Estimating based on experience. 

All processes have a natural velocity. To speed things up, it is often not a case of working harder or faster, but a case of changing the process. 

Key takeaways

After all Iterations were complete, we discussed the results and asked teams to contribute their experiences with the following questions:  

• Which Iteration felt as though it was the best/worst? 
• How important was the retrospective between Iterations? 
• What changes did you make? 
• How did the team make decisions – did anybody take charge? 
• Were all ideas heard within your teams? 
• Was there anything notable in determining your estimates? 
• Were improvements made by working harder or faster? 
• Did you observe/experience anything else of interest? 

With the additional requirements added: 

• Iterative development is also based on learning from the live product and adapting to what the customer and end user needs. 
• Without anything being live, there is nothing to learn from and no way for the product to adapt. 
• Sprint teams must adapt to estimating with new requirements versus estimating on a known repeatable task. 

Additional findings from the teams

• The short timings of Iteration planning, along with the input of additional requirements, seemed to force an intensity. This, in turn, forced out several negative behaviours that we have not experienced on the programme, however, recognised within this competitive environment. 
• Low sprint commitments despite the team feeling it was a known task. 
• Sprint teams stopping when hitting commitment as there was an assumption that the game goal of the exercise was to have a stable velocity. 
• Argumentative behaviours exemplified (not the usual collaborative approach we usually see). 
• A competitive nature towards the other sprint teams, prohibiting the sharing of lessons learned. While the rules never stated they were against each other, it was inherently assumed when splitting participants into teams and asking them to perform the same task. 

On a more positive note:  

• Many questions were asked about the requirements, with a focus on what the user/customers’ needs and problems were 
• Looking outside of the team for improvement inspiration despite its interpretation as spying. 
• Reflection on what we do in practice versus the theory/Agile beliefs 
• Great discussions around the overall value of sprinting and iterative delivery. 

If you wish to find out more about the Ball Point Game or run it yourself within your programme or teams, please get in touch. 

Setting the stage for AI and CRMs

The field of Machine learning and AI has evolved rapidly in the last few years, especially in fields where large quantities of data and quick response times to queries are crucial.

But given lots of these techniques and methods have been around for a much longer period, why has it taken so long for other industries outside of small start-ups and ambitious tech giants to leverage these methods in similar ways? 

CRM is an essential component of any company’s strategy. The ability to communicate with and understand customers is more important than ever due to the low barriers to entry in highly competitive global markets. Companies have only brief moments to convince customers that they are the right choice for shopping, spending time, or engaging. Optimising these initial and subsequent contacts is paramount to success. 

Beyond just expanding your customer base and attracting new clients, CRM is vital for any company’s retention strategy. The most advanced cutting-edge models in the world are utterly useless if we don’t know how to activate and capitalize on the value they represent. 

ML foundation for CRMs

In the CRM space our main goals are increasing consumer retention or spend, and we do this via figuring out the most effective ways to communicate with people. This can be broken down into when to speak to them, how to speak to them and why to speak to them.  

Recommendation engines lie at the core of many of these architectures, models that are designed to figure out what you want before you even know you want it. Broadly they work by looking at the kind of customer you are, then at customers like you, then finding things that they’ve bought recently that you haven’t.  

You can even simplify this down into just looking for customers who have an identical purchase history to you. Maybe a laptop you can buy on Amazon doesn’t come with a charger, so commonly when people buy this laptop their next purchase is a charger (You can often see this simple logic in the “People also bought” section of Amazon). But even these simple implementations are incredibly powerful in some ways, an educated guess is always going to be better than a random one. 

So how do these methods relate to CRM? Well, the general structure can be pulled away and applied to any subject.

When we think about how to engage with a customer, we’re going to look for ways we engaged with similar customers and how these performed. The customer who likes Sabrina Carpenter will probably need to be spoken to in a different way to the Motorhead fan. 

This is simple stuff, right? Well exactly, but it’s a method to show that the underlying AI processes in these platforms aren’t really all that complicated – there’s a lot of room for improvement especially when implementing bespoke solutions with larger data sets.  

The next (generative) step  

So, we already have ML methods that can tell us when and why to talk to people, great! But what’s the next step? 

All that’s left of our final stage is how to talk to them and what to say, stages which can and are currently being revolutionised by the advent of enterprise grade Generative AI. 

A current pipeline for devising CRM processes may involve creating template communications that are then populated with more specific information, for example customers in a certain segment defined by age and tenure are assigned one template and differing segments are shown another. 

This approach can be time consuming if it needs to be completed for each campaign, and may miss a level of personalisation that people will respond to, feeling as though each message is tailored to them rather than being an email blast they just happen to be caught up in. 

Skilled AI engineers armed with LLM’s can create a unique voice for each consumer, ensuring that quite literally all communication they will ever receive are exactly personalised to them and their engagement habits with your brand. 

Imagine attempting this even a few years ago, assigning a team of people to trawl through millions if not billions of rows of data to ensure that each customer got the perfect messaging for them would have been completely impossible. 

In practice this level of granularity in communications is probably unnecessary but it speaks to the potential these models have in this space – the sky truly is the limit. 

Even starting off small with these steps, giving a small part of a communication a generative component, allowing for large scale A/B testing and continuous model training, the effectiveness of these comms will improve over time. 

Freeing this time up from your CRM team will give them more time to tackle more involved problems that can’t be automated. 

If you need help on this journey for a better CRM, contact us here.

Footfall has historically been the go-to method for measuring a shopping destination’s performance, conducted through pressure sensor mats, light sensors tracking shoppers’ entry and exit movements, advanced camera systems and more. Although ubiquitous across the retail industry, only measuring the number of people entering and exiting a store misses important aspects of true store performance.  The current pace of change in consumer behaviors demands that commercial landlords and occupiers know more about their performance drivers if they are going to thrive.

So, why is this the case? What do commercial landlords need to know about turnover and footfall to stay afloat?

How consumers’ changing behaviours towards shopping locations affect footfall

Since 2019, vendors across the UK have experienced an overall 11.5% drop in footfall. While this may sound like catastrophic news for retail destinations, the truth behind the headline footfall figures is perhaps surprising– an overall rise in consumer spending. Although a shift in consumers’ shopping behaviours is undeniably present, its impact may not be as profound as it seems.

Frequency has been a major driver of this, dropping by 31% over the last five years, meaning that consumers have been visiting shopping places much less often. However, the amount being spent by consumers when visiting shopping locations has climbed 29% over the last five years, counteracting declining footfall. 

This increase in trip spending is not just an inflationary rise – the fundamental reason to visit and our behaviours on visits have changed as a result. Successful locations are those that are adapting to the new shopper landscape.

How consumers’ changing spending habits, values & “missions” affect footfall

What consumers are spending any disposable income on has also been changing. While retail conversion has remained relatively unchanged, there have been evident increases in Catering and Leisure conversions on the same trips, meaning consumers are increasingly combining a shopping trip with food/drink or a leisure activity. It is this combination of shopping, browsing, eating/drinking and leisure that has led to the overall increase in spending per trip.  

These comparisons can be illustrated through what we at CACI call “missions” from our Shopper Dimensions dataset, which illustrate the trip someone is on at a given time, and attribute “missions” to the tangible actions someone takes once at the shopping destination, such as browsing, spending, time spent, etc., to assign a “mission” to each trip.  

According to our findings, consumers are relinquishing their less engaged “missions” but concentrating trips around the “Big Day Out” trip. This is illustrated in the shifting profile of the top three missions in Shopping Destinations, which explains why a decline in footfall does not necessarily equate to declining spend. At a glance:

• “Big day out” missions are our more engaged trips. They may be less frequent, but they are ones where multiple retail stores are often combined with Catering and Leisure, resulting in a trip spend 2.4x the average mission. Since 2019, these missions have grown to 23% of all shopping missions. 
• 37% of “spending time” missions have no purchasing associated with them. While they may contribute to footfall figures, they do not directly contribute to sales-through-tills. Having dropped off post-Covid-19, these trips are now holding flat at a lower shelf. 
• “Routine top-up” trips are quick, functional and emotionally disengaged trips that a spend of just 47% of an average trip. These trips are dropping out of our repertoire and can be substituted online.

We can therefore see that looking in greater detail at the changing nature of the trips made provides a clearer understanding of commercial asset performance than simply tracking the overall volume of trips.

Key levers to conclude turnover & application methods to target growth outcomes

To make a meaningful impact in asset performance, commercial landlords must move beyond measuring just the number of visits and start reporting the different levers of shopping location spend.  
 
While there are nuances behind the headlines that apply individually to each location, all spend at a shopping location can ultimately be boiled down to three key levers:

1. The volume (number) of unique shoppers they have 
2. The frequency of consumers’ visits to a shopping destination 
3. The value that each shopper spends per trip.

Commercial landlords should consider applying the following methods to each lever to effectively target growth outcomes:

1. Volume: Convert footfall (visits) into ‘spenders’ and target engagement strategies at driving scheme trial; measured by the percentage of the catchment population currently shopping with you (penetration). 
2. Frequency: Embrace the different role that your asset plays for different cohorts, diversifying the occupier offering to give shoppers more reasons to return on different missions. 
3. Value: Determine the highest spending shopper groups to target, segment customers and tailor offers to them to increase cross-shopping opportunities and drive value.

What does good look like?

Now is the time for commercial landlords to leave pre-pandemic comparisons behind. Footfall may be down overall, but the evolution of consumers’ shopping destination behaviour serves as a reminder that relying on the past as an indication of how assets should behave will not lead to longer-term success. If anything, these behaviours have demonstrated that the types of trips people continue to use shopping locations for are more engaged and valuable than ever before.  

Our unique view into how and where consumers are spending has been made possible with the help of datasets like Shopper Dimensions, which enable KPI benchmarking of assets against similar locations across the UK and leverage transactional and data spend insights to enhance decision-making. We can help you calculate the impact of each shopper metric and the headroom compared to peers and catchment.  

To find out more about what Shopper Dimensions can do for you and your business, speak to one of our experts today.

Key issues for countries and the businesses that operate within them to address in terms of climate change unfolded at the recent 28^th UN Climate Change Conference (COP28). These issues urge immediate and significant action to be taken on fossil fuels and clean energy, national adaptation and climate finance, methane reduction, land use and more.

What does environmental sustainability in business mean?

Environmental sustainability in business is the operation of a business that does not compromise the environment. A business that has considered environmental sustainability prioritises the environment’s best interest, with society and its ecosystems coming before making a profit. It involves responsible decision-making that minimizes carbon footprint or waste while simultaneously improving the quality of life for humankind and the natural world alike.

Unfortunately, however, operating businesses as usual has had an increasingly detrimental impact on our planet. According to the latest State of the Global Climate report by the WMO, 2023 was the warmest year on record at about 1.4C,increasing pressure to shift their operations to more environmentally sustainable practices. This inevitably causes businesses to consider—where do we start? How do we begin making a difference?

What is the importance of environmental sustainability in business?

According to an article published by Maryville University, businesses that do not act responsibly will result in “the majority of many species not surviving past the 21st century”, reiterating how critical it is for businesses within every industry to take part in improving their environmental surroundings.

Although companies have a way to go before fully grasping the repercussions of ever-growing carbon footprints, those willing to tackle this challenge early on will get a head start on reshaping perspectives and realities.

Environmental sustainability in business practices

Businesses can rely on the three R’s– reduce, reuse and recycle– to begin reducing their environmental impact. However, there are several other examples of practices that businesses can incorporate into their operations amplify their reduction, including:

• Life cycle assessments
• Designing environmentally friendly products/services
• Optimising product efficiency
• Decreasing supply chain carbon footprint
• Re-evaluating CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) expenses

Benefits of environmental sustainability in business

Reduces the impact of business costs

While the cost-of-living crisis is skyrocketing, improving the energy efficiency of business operations and decreasing waste will go a long a way in bracing for the impact of unexpected business costs. Using more energy efficient lighting or reusing existing resources can be quick-fix solutions for lowering costs.

Improves a business’ reputation

Environmentally sustainable businesses are viewed as a plus, and companies are eager to highlight this fact. Companies that can go “green” show that they’re serious about making a difference in the environment and are interested in more than just profitability. Businesses that can market themselves and develop their identity around their commitment to the betterment of the planet will notice incredible results in terms of their reputation.

Who is responsible for improving environmental sustainability in a business?

Businesses have been expected to pave the way towards environmental sustainability due to their notably significant contribution towards polluting the environment through waste, gas emissions and plastics generated. The responsibility does not necessarily begin with one individual within a business though– employees at every level of the business must work together to bring about change. A few examples include:

• Business owners and leaders: Business owners and leaders are typically capable of leading strategic decision-making that influences the wider business. They can develop effective sustainability strategies and initiatives that have the power to change policy and induce change.
• Business managers and supervisors: Managers and supervisors can supply valuable insights due to their more hands-on roles. They also typically have different perspectives and understandings as to how to improve business sustainability.
• Employees: Employees can supply valuable contributions when encouraged to voice their opinions and concerns on how the business can become more sustainable.

Impact of environmental sustainability in business

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is striving to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It’s going to take strong leadership, business-wide alignment on operations and an engaged corporate culture to successfully execute and maintain environmentally sustainable business practices. Businesses that start addressing these issues and challenge existing business processes will find themselves making a breakthrough towards becoming more environmentally sustainable while protecting the world around them.

How can CACI help you overcome these obstacles?

Our newly developed Mood Environmental Hub helps track all of your assets across multiple geographic locations and assess the environmental impact of your business.

With a single click, users can drill down from multi-site, business-level functions, to departments or even individual teams to determine asset types and locations, enabling a quick assessment of priority focus areas for improvement. It can also visualise existing data through user-friendly dashboards that show carbon impact, consumption and cost at an enterprise level.

The advanced modelling feature also outlines potential improvements, indicating ROI and carbon reduction impact. Additionally, you can easily check performance against carbon commitments such as Social Value through the initiatives tracker.

Producing carbon reduction target tracking reports or modelling for a business case is now a click away – to see how it works, you can book a demo here.

Findings from our latest Cost of Living survey show that while this may be the most wonderful time of the year for some, this sentiment remains aspirational for others in the current climate. 

With Christmas spending behaviours changing across all demographic groups, where are consumers opting to shop during this festive period? Which retailers are appealing to which age ranges, and which are benefitting the most from the resurgence of consuming food and drinks at home during the festive period? 

Christmas grocery shopping behaviours breakdown

Despite a gradual decline in the perceived impact of the cost of living on households over the last 18 months, 63% of all respondents surveyed remain “somewhat concerned” or “very concerned” about the increased cost of food and drink this Christmas. The most concerned groups are those in the lower affluence Acorn categories, comprising 66-68% of respondents. On the other hand, the higher affluence Acorn categories of Established Affluence and Luxury Lifestyles are among those marginally less concerned about these increased costs, at 52% and 63% respectively.  

So, where are these shoppers turning to for their groceries? How much of an impact does ‘value for money’ messaging and promotional activity have on consumers’ purchasing decisions ahead of the festive season?  

Where are consumers shopping this holiday season?

When asked about their preferred Grocery retailer for their main Christmas shop this year, there was an uptick in consumers’ preference for Sainsbury’s (16% in 2023 versus 11% in 2022), and a pronounced drop in consumers’ interest in shopping at Aldi from 19% in 2022 to 13% in 2023.  

Sainsbury’s was the favourable choice for 20% of Boomers and older generations, while only 7% of Gen Z respondents said that their Christmas grocery shop takes place here, turning to Grocery retailers like Asda (19%) and Aldi (17%) instead. Tesco came out on top at 25% and was the most popular choice across all generations and Acorn categories. 

Differences between where those who are/aren’t concerned will shop

Among those concerned about the cost of F&B, there’s a nearly three-way tie for the second most popular retailer between Sainsbury’s, Asda and Aldi for main grocery shop at 16% for Asda, 15% for Sainsbury’s and 14% for Aldi. For those who are reportedly unconcerned, however, the split shifts to 17% for Sainsbury’s, 13% for Asda and just 9% for Aldi. 

With heightening concerns around the cost of food and drink, Grocery retailers looking to attract price-conscious customers in the run up to Christmas should focus on creating effective ‘value for money’ messaging and promotional offers. The fight to retain customer loyalty is in full swing, with the holiday season being a key period for major Grocery retailers to retain and gain customers.

Therefore, retailers that promote competitive pricing and supply exclusive Christmas deals and limited time offers will attract consumers who are on the hunt for the best deals during the holiday season and retain their loyalty. 

Resurgence of socialising and consuming food & drinks at home

When asked how important various social activities this Christmas were, 79% of respondents surveyed considered the most important to be ‘food and drink at home’. Gen Z and millennial respondents placed the most importance on this festive social activity at 84%, along with families with children at home at 87%. On the other hand, only 75% of baby boomers and older generations felt this way.  

In terms of Acorn categories, each category ranked this social activity as ‘most important’, with ‘gifting’ coming in second place. 

As the younger generations and families with children are often the demographics attending or hosting holiday festivities in their homes during this time of year, there is an evident increase in the purchasing of food and drinks to cater to the increase in home visitors. Hosts are likelier to opt into buying higher-quality foods and alcoholic beverages to ensure their guests have a memorable dining experience, which further contributes to the uptick in spending at various Grocery retailers during this time of year. 

How can CACI help?

As the cost of living continues to impact consumers and contribute to changes in spending behaviours ahead of the holidays, CACI can help you determine the impact that these changes may have on your business’ performance both in terms of its online halo and physical store network, how to navigate the changing behaviours of various Acorn groups and devise strategies for success at each of your store locations.  

To learn more about how you can futureproof your business through data-backed insights, please contact us today.  

Transactional spending in UK supermarkets

When one of the UK’s largest supermarket chains needed to understand consumer shopping behaviours at a local level to enhance their relevance within existing and new stores, they quickly realised the impact that leveraging customer-centric data could have on achieving these goals.

CACI was selected as their partner to supply them with the consultancy and consumer behaviour data that they felt had been missing from their current data sources. The potential to gain a granular and cohesive perspective of customers with actionable insights to drive change was what encouraged the business to trust CACI to help reach their strategic objectives and better understand and cater to customers.

Challenges CACI was brought on to solve

• The external data about customer behaviour outside their organisation which they could access was generally based on small sample surveys and was not robust enough to support their enhanced customer understanding initiatives.
• Other data sources were overly aggregated, challenging the business’ ability to determine what the result of a major market change in a market might be, such as a store closing or a new store opening, or a major local marketing campaign. This also made understanding how consumer behaviours changed as a result more difficult.

Using CACI’s datasets to solve problems

CACI’s data was game-changing for this business as it was based on actual spend data, and what consumers were actually doing versus what they were saying they were doing. The huge and granular sample size in comparison was also tremendously beneficial for the business, as it was available at brand level, ultimately unlocking major potential for them.

Impact of CACI on the business

CACI’s consultancy and data was able to significantly enhance the current capabilities of the team and allow them to add a significant new dimension to a number of different projects and use cases.

Potential partner analysis

The ‘race for space’ in the early to mid 2000s, combined with the emergence of multi-channel trading and stronger discounter competition, meant that many supermarket operators have been left with stores that are too big for their catchments and, therefore, were not as efficient or profitable as they once were.

As a result, many supermarkets had to find ways to fill parts of their stores or car parks with partner retailers that would generate rental income, fill ‘baggy’ space, create a more comprehensive customer offers and help generate sales for the business by bringing in a different type of customer.

Understanding competitor performance

Through CACI’s data, they could begin to understand and benchmark performance between their brand and others in a granular way for the first time, rather than using data based on a small sample survey (Kantar) or that aggregated to market rather than retailer (IGD).

For example, before a new store opening, the performance of competing brands and what types of customers were shopping with them could be analysed in a way that has never been previously available.

They could also understand what happened once the new store opened – which brands won and lost in the market and which types of customers changed their behaviour. This understanding was key to influencing future new store opening decisions that the team could into future forecasting estimates and set expectations accordingly through data-backed evidence.

Defining missed sales opportunities

CACI’s data helped this business understand where customers were cross-shopping with their competitors on the same day as shopping with them.

One example was by analysing customers driving out of the business’ store and past their petrol station but filling up their car at an alternative fuel station on the same day. The business lost trade because the customer drove past the front of the petrol station and chose to buy petrol elsewhere.

While it did not necessarily answer ‘why’ a customer did not shop with the business, it did help generate questions and what to look out for in customers’ preferred shopping experiences so they could assess a particular store, determine which competitors were in the vicinity and what the business could do to compete– adjust the price, revisit the convenience of the store’s location and so on to drive improvements backed by data.

Another example was assessing the performance of one store in close proximity to a direct competitor’s smaller store. The business knew that they had been losing trade to this competitor for years, but they did not have the data to prove this loss.

This insight helped the business formulate strategies for marketing campaigns that would encourage shoppers to return to their store versus to their neighbouring competitor.

Format development

The business assessed quirks in catchments and emerging trends among competitors to conclude whether certain initiatives, such as creating a café space within a store, would be a success with their customers.

Ultimately, it provided the business with a different approach to the café format and its offers for customers.

Customer profiles

For this business, customer loyalty cards were paramount to building customer profiles of their own customers. However, understanding the profile of competitors’ customers and how they were behaving was out of reach. This data helped the business understand the profiles of other brands’ customers and how similar or dissimilar they were to their own customers. Most importantly, they gained insight into what their spending patterns and behaviours were and how they changed over time.

To learn more about how CACI can help you leverage data to enhance your business operations, contact us today.

There’s a long way to go, but innovative technology is proving key to tackling waste on the global scale needed to protect our planet.

Waste doesn’t just mean physical deposits into landfill. It’s also about overconsumption and excess, from squandering energy or making unnecessary journeys to wasting water or making needless purchases, even if they are supposedly environmentally friendly. Environmental campaigners promote the mantra ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ – if you can avoid demanding, producing and discarding an item in the first place, that means there’s less need to resort to recycling as a third best option.

The will to reduce waste is there and growing among consumers. But they need easy and affordable ways to choose low-waste lifestyles and products. Businesses, governments and service providers are stepping up to the challenge of becoming more efficient and sustainable to enable large-scale change. Everyone’s looking to technology for ground-breaking, digitally enabled approaches to waste reduction.

Convenience is key for consumers to prioritise waste reduction

Phone apps can help consumers to manage their waste. Waste processors like re3 have developed apps that provide information about recycling facilities and let people book visits to recycling centres. Local authorities have developed app-based incentives: in Nottingham, residents can earn points and prizes through the Green Rewards scheme by reducing waste with simple actions, from turning off lights to using public transport or recycling responsibly.

Capsule coffee machine owners can arrange free recycling collections for their used capsules through apps or on websites, making it easy to return rather than binning old capsules from brands including Nespresso and Dolce Gousto.

These are encouraging schemes that help avoid waste going into landfill. But there’s scope to use apps and consumer tech to prevent the creation of waste in the first place. The Scrapp app goes further, giving consumers information about the CO2 they save with each responsible recycling action and helping them reduce waste by understanding the carbon footprint of household items, so they can choose better to waste less of the planet’s resources. It also offers a reward scheme.

Apps help promote reuse as well as recycling

Using more reusable containers within a genuine circular economy, rather than recyclable ones, would cut down on production. Supermarket deliveries might arrive in sturdy bags or crates that consumers would retain until the next visit or drop off at a collection point. Applying tracker device technologies (similar to the Tile or AirTag) could make this viable, avoiding loss and theft and making sure customer deposits were refunded accurately and promptly.

This technology can also work for grocery goods bought in-store in reusable containers. Tesco and Loop have been trialling reusable containers for groceries through an app that manages deposits and refunds.

The UK recycling rate for waste from households was 46.2% in 2019

Better planning and analytics help transport organisations cut fuel waste

Commercially and on a much larger scale, technology solutions are helping businesses reduce their consumption of resources, from designing products to use fewer raw materials to cutting down on the energy needed for operations and services.

CACI’s Real-Time Airport system is helping customers in the aviation sector reduce fuel usage. By optimising aircraft movements through algorithms and analytics, Heathrow airport can delay planes starting their engines and cut down on the time they spend queuing before take-off with the engines running.

This has created a massive 10% overall reduction in taxi times at Heathrow – that’s a significant benefit to the environment through reduced fuel burn as well as a better experience for air passengers.

Data modelling can make waste reduction a key factor in overall strategy

Increasingly, organisations will use advanced modelling and simulation to understand the impact of their actions on waste generation. Building in energy and carbon consumption to business models means that companies can shape their strategy and prioritise their activities to minimise waste.

Rapidly evolving artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities can process more and more detailed and subtle information and show in depth the full range of consequences both for waste generation and wasteful use of resources. Companies can promote their low-waste approaches to customers and show the evidence behind their choices. It’s a more innovative and proactive approach to doing things very differently, rather than trying to reform old, wasteful ways of operating.

Digital convenience is key to influencing behaviour and sharing information

Apps, devices and websites use the power of digital media to raise the profile of waste-reduction and nudge consumers into making better choices. Apps like Nest provide information about heating costs and energy consumption then optimise energy usage throughout the day, cutting down on waste in gas and electricity. Utilities companies provide and connect digital smart meters, giving consumers real-time information on resource consumption so they have the power to change their habits to reduce bills and therefore usage.

Community websites and apps (such as Freecycle and Freegle) for passing on consumer goods and appliances locally give consumers a quick way to get rid of unwanted items or meet a need without buying new.

Private messaging protects privacy and means people don’t have to share their address until they’re sure the other person is genuine.

Carrie Johnson and other celebrities have raised the profile of fashion hire through platforms like My Wardrobe HQ, making it cool to rent an outfit for a smart occasion rather than buying new and discarding outfits after one or two wears. High quality digital photography and easy booking through online apps create a frictionless experience that high-end consumers are willing to embrace.

Using fuel more wisely and optimising electric vehicle transit

In travel and transport, ridesharing and public transport e-ticketing and information apps make it easier for customers to travel conveniently without needing to run their own vehicle, cutting down on private fuel usage.

Home delivery services operated on fast and efficient digital platforms cut down on individual journeys to the shops. But they have driven an explosion in courier and commercial delivery services, adding to urban congestion. Leading delivery networks already use logistics technology and data to optimise the efficiency of their delivery fleets, selecting the best routes and delivery sequences to cut down on fuel usage. As electric vehicles become more commonplace, adaptive software is key to planning routes that factor in battery life and charging times.

Reduce and re-use first and second

Recycling is good, but reducing and reusing are better, when it comes to waste reduction. Consumers and businesses are both tapping into the power of digital apps and data analytics to inform themselves and adopt new approaches that cut consumption of goods and resources.

Already, organisations can achieve substantial reductions in energy consumption and wasted materials by optimising their processes and harnessing technology to eliminate inefficiencies across their operations. Digital innovation makes it possible to combine this approach with user-friendly apps and websites, so it’s easier for customers to understand the impact of their choices and to consume and waste less.

If you’d like to know more about optimising processes and energy efficiency through data science or developing waste-reducing digital services and tools that meet current consumer needs, talk to the experts at CACI.

Want to read more from our ESG blog series?

• Climate risk disclosure is just the beginning
• Data is key for successful businesses to take decisive action on sustainability
• Driving smoothly into the consumer EV market
• Responsible and sustainable practices

Understanding which ESG factors are most important to your customer is fundamental to meeting their changing needs. With our newly developed ESG Score, you can identify those customers who are most concerned about ESG issues. Download the product sheet to continue your ESG journey.

Back at the end of November 2021, during a small window of lockdown restrictions easing, CACI held an event in London for clients and prospects. After 20 months of not being able to meet in person, it felt great to be reunited to share insights and experience. 

Given the time that has passed, we wanted to make this event memorable for all the right reasons. To do this we organised client speakers from the RAC, Laithwaites Wines and Domino’s Pizza Group. Recognising that many of you want to hear from your peers rather than us. 

“Activating data to deliver seamless customer experiences” was the title of the event we decided on. Granted it’s a mouthful to say, but we felt that the topic of activating data into the customer experience is overlooked. Often falling between the IT, data, and marketing functions. When it comes to delivering a customer experience strategy that connects across all channels and is consistent it requires all these business areas to work together. 

In this blog post I want to pick out some of the important client messages from that event. You can watch all the videos here.

Takeaway 1: Need for multi-disciplinary change teams 

Ian Ruffle and Jenny Cann spoke about the RAC’s implementation of Adobe Campaign and Snowflake. The project has been a big success for the RAC, delivering new use cases and positive benefits (including a reduction in inbound calls). 

To successfully deliver this type of change, Jenny showed how RAC and CACI formed a core decision making team across technical and marketing disciplines. This group provided clear direction for the project and united teams around a single vision for delivery. 

Watch the RAC case study

Takeaway 2: Don’t forget the creative 

Domino’s Pizza Group shared the ingredients of their journey to deliver personalised messages to every customer. Hayley Pryde of Domino’s introduced how this transformation has been delivered through good technology, having the right people, developing test & learn processes, and then selecting solid agency partners.

An added ingredient was the need for new creative assets that can be personalised in every channel. This required new imagery, a variety of copy options, and strong integration between creativity and technology. Assets needed to work in multiple channels and be relevant to the recipient. For example, if a customer always orders vegetarian options, it’s less effective to use “mighty meaty” imagery in the campaign. 

As Domino’s Pizza Group have discovered, having the best technology and processes will only get you so far if the creative assets are all the same. For this reason, they are working with CACI’s creative studio to produce a wide range of personalisable assets for performance and direct channels. 

Watch Domino’s Pizza Group talk about creative asset personalisation.

Takeaway 3: Get closer to the customer 

Through lockdown Laithwaites Wines saw a change in their customer profile. Whilst their loyal base of wine buyers continued to purchase, new customer groups came to the brand looking for great wine that could be delivered to their home.  

With a growing base of customers, Laithwaites Wines worked with CACI to understand the UK market for wine buyers. Using Laithwaites’ data, CACI’s demographics and lifestyle data, and market research we created a market segmentation that could be applied to Laithwaites’ business strategy. 

Personas and market plans were built from the segmentation, enabling the business to understand the differences in customer buying habits and needs. For each segment, core value propositions were drawn out and applied to communications. Importantly for Laithwaites Wines, the segments provided a way to calculate addressable headroom for each segment to set very specific targets for growth. 

To listen to James and Sophie talk-through Laithwaites Wines’ approach to segmentation, click here.

Even before social distancing changed the hospitality industry, some businesses like Mitchells & Butlers were already responding to customer demands for quicker and easier ordering.

For example, an order-at-table app – enabling customers to choose and pay for their food and beverages without leaving their table – is an essential part of the new, contactless pub experience. Done well, it’s also convenient for the customer who no longer has to wait for service or queue at a bar. It’s great for the pub too – helping to improve efficiency and boost revenue.

Since 2017, we’ve been working with Mitchells & Butlers to develop, integrate, and refine an order-at-table app which is now available in five of their leading brands – O’Neill’s, All Bar One, Ember Inns, High Street, and Sizzling Pubs, making up around 25% of the company’s near 1,700 venues.

In that time, we’ve learnt important lessons about what makes a great at-table app that keeps customers coming back for more. So if you’re in the process of adapting your own hospitality experience to make it more contactless, here are four key elements to bear in mind.

Real-time stock control integration is essential

Picture this: you’ve ordered food at a bar, only to be told a few minutes later that your choice isn’t available today. And then, under pressure, you choose something else which isn’t quite what you wanted. It’s frustrating to say the least. And while the bar tender could have told you your meal was out of stock at the time, they just didn’t have access to that information in the moment.

The same goes for an at-table ordering app. Without real time stock information, you risk frustrating and disappointing your customers, and creating unnecessary workload.

That’s why Mitchells & Butlers prioritised integrating its order-at-table app with the latest point of sale and stock control data to maintain an accurate menu that self-edits based on real-time product availability.

It also pays to keep out-of-stock items on the app menu – either crossed or blocked out – so your customers can still see what’s normally available to give them inspiration for next time.

Put the customer in control

Customers are leading increasingly busy lives, so offering the same choice and flexibility that they’d expect from face-to-face bar staff can be a significant competitive differentiator.

By giving customers more options at each stage of the ordering process, you can give them greater flexibility.

For example, a customer may have had their starter and main course, but now wants to take their dessert home. By offering the option to change part of their order at any stage, you’re giving them more options.

This helps to ensure the customer goes away happy, having had the experience they really want. And because you’ve made ordering that much easier, it can even increase your average transaction value.

Simplicity is the key to a great user experience

When thinking about your app’s customer journey – including how it looks and feels – the process should be no less convenient than choosing from a physical menu and relaying their order to a server.

So, while it’s important to give your customers a wide range of options at each stage, your user journey should be concise, with the ability to select products and pay for an order in as few steps as possible – without the risk of payment errors or double charges.

Also, bear in mind that journey starts before they even download your app. It needs to be easy to find and recognise in their app store, and enable them to get started quickly.

It’s this kind of thinking that refined each of the Mitchells & Butlers brand app s, leading to significantly higher user uptake.

The right technology partner can make all the difference

Delivering a great digital experience that works for both you and your customers relies on having the right technology, and choosing a partner that’s got experience creating customer-centric apps.

It’s important to look for a partner that understands your ethos and exactly what you’re trying to achieve – and one with a team that can work with your own IT staff to help ensure seamless back-end integrations and a clear project roadmap.

Putting the customer first benefits everyone

Bringing technology like order-at-table apps into a pub environment shouldn’t just be seen as a solution to recent social distancing changes. Rather, it’s an opportunity to take a more customer-centric approach to digital transformation; start from the experience your customer wants, and build from there.

That includes listening and learning to what your customers are saying after you’ve launched. It’s important to test and learn from the results – making continual iterations as you go to refine and improve the experience.

If you’d like to find out more about our work with Mitchells & Butlers – or if you’d like to talk more about getting the most from an at-table ordering app – get in touch with our team of experts today.

As consumer expectations become more complex, and with brand loyalty increasingly more difficult to maintain, the need to deliver a personalised and tailored customer experience is crucial to your brand’s success. This is true across all industries, with consumers engaging across more channels than ever before, against a background of increasing competition.

What is Segmentation?

Segmentation is a fundamental tool for marketers, helping you to understand your audience by dividing consumers into distinct groupings based on shared demographics, lifestyle behaviours and attitudes.

When we think of segmentation, it’s easy to simplify the process. Grouping customers by products or services purchased, or demographic factors such as age or gender or perhaps we may go as far as segmenting based on buying behaviour. Assuming that two customers will respond in the same way to the same offer, based purely on their prior purchase or route to purchase is not necessarily going to achieve your desired outcome. Instead, gaining  deeper understanding of consumers and anticipating their needs as individuals is key.

Here we highlight the benefits of customer segmentation specifically for the financial services industry, however it is relevant across all industries and CACI can support all sectors with segmentation.

Financial Services Customer Segmentation

Fresco is an off the shelf segmentation created specifically for the financial services sector. It divides the UK into 12 segments and 45 sub-segments based on an individual’s life stage, affluence and attitude to money, providing a universal vocabulary with which to describe customers, prospects and the market.

Many clients have taken Fresco at micro segment level (134 segments) and combined transactional and market research data to reaggregate Fresco, building a powerful and bespoke solution tailored to their organisation.

Here are just 5 of the ways you can leverage segmentation to improve your customer experience.

1. Customer Insight

Financial marketers need insight to deliver the right message, about the most appropriate products, services and advice, to the right customers. Adding a segmentation to a new customer means you can immediately start to communicate to them in the right way whilst knowing limited transactional information about them.

Looking at customers solely through the products they hold could mean you are viewing two customers with similar mortgage products as being broadly the same type of person and communicating with them accordingly. But, when viewed in terms of the Fresco segmentation, those two customers might turn out to be two completely different individuals, with very different attitudes to life, money and risk.

Understanding whether your customer is a Successful Professional, a Stretched Renter or a Retired Homeowner informs the type of products and services they might be interested in and the types of channel and messaging they are most likely to respond to.

Fresco can provide strategic insights into your customers, enabling you to evolve communications to suit your audience at an individual level.

This detailed customer insight provides in depth analysis of your most valuable customers by Fresco segment, so you can start to find more like them. This could be anything from buying direct marketing lists or buying lookalike Fresco audiences using display advertising or connected TV to understanding area penetrations of Fresco segments for location of out of home advertising.

2. Proposition Development

The insights you gain when using a segmentation can also help you plan for the future. If you are attracting an older demographic and your customer database is dominated by segments such as Low Income Elderly and the Road to Retirement, you may need to review your proposition and develop products that are more suited to a younger audience, in order to expand your customer base.

Nationwide Building Society built a bespoke segmentation combining customer data, Fresco and market research allowing them to understand their individual members at a glance, and offer them the right products, services and advice to help them with their banking needs.

This new toolset helped Nationwide to better understand its customers’ needs, and develop compelling, targeted products, services and marketing messages, resulting in Nationwide winning significant new business among younger members.

3. Understanding the market

As well as understanding your individual customers, it’s also important that you have an overall understanding of the market in which you operate. Having a view of the UK population will help you to understand what share of the market you have and how your share is made up compared to the market as a whole.

Money Advice Service needed to understand the total UK market to ensure its advice services were reaching the right people, at the right time. To deliver accurate messaging, it was essential to Money Advice Service that they understood the different requirements of consumers and how to group them into addressable segments.

Fresco was used as a building block and mapped to research they had conducted, and the resulting segments have been used to help with targeting. This segmentation is used to build their engagement strategy and ensure support is focussed on the right customers, and that they’re targeting the core customer groups through appropriate channels.

4. Branch performance

The same philosophy can be used to understand local area analysis and branch performance. Understanding the population in the catchment area of each of your branches helps when making decisions about whether the branches are serving the local population with the correct branch format in a more digital world.

Fresco’s segmentation allows you to answer fundamental questions that will help determine whether your branches are in the right areas and serving the needs of your customers. For example, do they need the same size of premises? Should they be on the high street and open more convenient hours? Should they be providing financial advice for a younger audience or assisting in the transition to digital channels for an aging population?

With Fresco you can start to understand the needs of your customers and ensure your branches are operating in a way that suits the customers in the area, as opposed to every branch simply working in the same way.

5. Understand your audiences’ digital behaviours

By combining segmentations with digital consumer insight data from the likes of Hitwise, you can align your digital marketing tactics with the behaviours of your target audience.

When cross-referencing online behaviours with Fresco segments you can gain a better understanding of exactly what your audience are searching for and dispel any preconceptions of who would be behind certain search terms.

For example, it’s easy to assume that young professionals would be the primary group searching ‘first time buyers’, but Hitwise found it can also be Asset Rich Greys, as it is likely parents may be helping their children get on the property ladder. Knowing what your audience are searching for will allow you to feed these common search terms into your PPC and content tactics to ensure you’re attracting your target audience.

Similarly, understanding your target market’s online journey will help you to know where to make yourself most visible. If Asset Rich Grey’s are visiting aggregator sites, you need to be sure that your brand is present across these sites with the right messaging, to enable you to reach that target market.

To find out more about how you can leverage off the shelf segmentations in your marketing and improve on your customer experience, contact us.