Hi All,

I hope that everyone has kicked off 2021 with refreshed view on how to tackle those business objectives in some….interesting times.

As you may have noticed from our previous posts, we have recently launched UnifiedCustomer, our retail CDP solution built for retail marketers and powered by our leading edge technology partners RedPoint Global. We’ve spoken in detail about how our platform can get your customer relationships in shape across touch-points, to keep those customer growth targets on track.

What we haven’t done, is talk too much about us, Marketsoft. That’s because we genuinely prefer to prioritise our efforts towards customer outcomes and how we can help you realise your customer engagement, sales and marketing objectives. With that being said, some of you may be wondering who we are. Well wait no more, I’ll fill you in a little. 

For those who haven’t come across Marketsoft in your travels, we’re a data services business that’s been working with customers across the majority of industry verticals for over 30 years! We predominantly skew towards the marketing side when it comes to the people and teams we deal with, however, we usually find ourselves sitting somewhere between Marketing and IT. We’re often interpreting between teams, covering most data related aspects that will deliver solutions that meet the requirements coming from both the Marketing and IT sides of an organisation. 

So over our 30+ years, you could say that we’ve grown as a business, and our services have matured too. Back in the late 80’s, our customers called for our “old school” data services, where we’d prepare direct marketing campaign files, and we might even apply some simple address hygiene and de-duplication services. How things have changed! 

Now, our customers, technology, and our team have certainly evolved over the decades, to a point where we’re now called upon to develop and guide our customers through their data strategy road maps, from getting their data house in order, to growing their customer base by integrating our data science insights. We now have global market leading technology and a truckload of experience within our team that pull it all together. Our customers hail from many sectors including Financial Services, Government, Not For Profit, and of course, Retail, among many others.

We’re all back in the office now and ready to chat with you about how we can support your organisation this year. I’m looking forward to speaking with you soon.

As we move into 2021, picking up from where we left what was 2020, we can now begin to jump into all those projects that have backed up on our innovation road maps.

You may recall that we had launched our new retail CDP solution, specifically developed for our local AU/NZ market back in October 2020. We called our solution UnifiedCustomer, and proud to have launched it together with our global tech partners, RedPoint Global. Since the official launch, we shared further details with you  over the proceeding weeks and if you’d like to refresh where we’re up to, you can find each blog installment here.

Ok, now that we’re all up to date with what UnifiedCustomer is and how it can be of value to your organisation, like any solution, it now comes down to the inevitable questions, “how much will this cost me?” and “how long will it take to implement?”. I’m happy to report that while UnifiedCustomer has the power and functionality of an enterprise CDP, pricing and speed of delivery were two of the major elements that we focused on, to truly make it a viable contender for local retail marketers.

We understand that one of the main road blocks to implementing a powerful solution like this has been cost. Unlike in the US and other larger markets, retailers in our market just don’t have the funding, or the customer volumes to justify major investments. You’ll be happy to hear that you can access UnifiedCustomer with a simple, scalable, and flexible subscription pricing model Pricing | Pay-as-you-go pricing that puts the control in your hands (unifiedcustomer.com.au). You can keep your investment in check, and plan ahead knowing that there’s No Set Up Costs, No Surcharges, and No Consumption fees.

UnifiedCustomer has been developed to provide Rapid Delivery and Rapid Results. It’s delivered “as a service”, under an implementation framework proven to deliver results within weeks, not months!

We’re looking forward to hearing from you and exploring how we can support you and your team – you can get in contact with us below!

We’ve now been talking about UnifiedCustomer, our local CDP solution specifically developed for our AU and NZ market, for over a month now, and based on our marketing efforts, I hope that you’re getting a fair idea of the value it could bring to your business.  

With RedPoint Global’s technology support, and our 30+ years of local data services experience at Marketsoft, we’re now more than ready to have that introduction meeting with you, and plan how UnifiedCustomer can help your business as we dive headfirst into 2021, with organised customer information and a marketing comms plan developed based on a unified customer view across all of your customer touchpoints. 

Considering it is still 2020 and your areas of focus may have pulled your attention in all directions, I thought I’d provide a very brief summary of why we feel UnifiedCustomer will hold its value for your retail business. 

By now, you may have a fair idea of how Unified Customer came to be, and a general feel for how it works. To keep this simple and to summarise what has been covered since we began talking about this publicly, I’ve pulled together the following points that might get you thinking about how UnifiedCustomer might be of value for your business:

– As the name suggests, UnifiedCustomer will, in fact, Unify your customer data. From your online and offline, platforms and touchpoints, to finally give you that Single Customer View!

– You can now personalise your marketing communications, across channels, and engage customers with Real-Time Decisioning 

– You’ll be able to tap into our data models and templates, with the confidence that they’ve been built based on our 30+ years of local industry experience  

Sounds simple enough right? However, any retail marketer who has been charged with the task of bringing customer data together, then producing insights that will determine business decisions, and marketing strategies, will agree that “simple” would not be the adjective they’d choose to describe the task at hand! That’s why we’ve invested the effort for you, with the resulting solution being UnifiedCustomer. 

We’ll cover more around the speedy implementation process, and the palatable subscription pricing model in our next installment. Until then, we wish you a fantastic Xmas break and a refreshingly happy new year. 

Should you be super keen to find out more before we head off for the break, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me using the form below!

Listening carefully to our local retail marketing friends, we clearly heard and understood, as they shared their challenges surrounding the consolidation or their customer’s interactions, and how they would like to enhance their Customer’s Experience across all of their touch-points.

Across the board, retail marketers know that CX is absolutely key when it comes to solidifying customer engagement and ultimately, building a financially healthy and long term relationship between retailers and their customers. Great CX can make the difference you’re looking for and drive the outcomes your organisation’s demands.

We introduced our, UnifiedCustomer solution recently, together with our tech partners RedPoint Global.  Vin DelGuercio, RedPoint’s esteemed Solutions Director, co-presented a webinar that introduced UnifiedCustomer to our local market, and delved into how our new solution can Drive Big Outcomes while Removing the Roadblocks for Retail Marketers. To hear all about it from the man himself, please check out the following snippet from our webinar, where Vin plays a starring role and clarifies why UnifiedCustomer could be the perfect solution for you and your organisation, right here in our APAC region. 

Observant retailers around the globe realise that Customer Experience is the final frontier for them to differentiate themselves from their competitors. We all know that customers are mighty hard (and expensive) to acquire and keeping them coming back to purchase again over time is an art form in itself. Let’s be frank, customer’s expectations and demands from their relationships with retailers are often much higher than their retailer can deliver.  Just like Violet Beauregarde from Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, customers want their Oompa Loompa, and they want it now! Quite simply, customers will be lost if they’re not getting the experience that they expect, and will be heading to the competitor next door, or clicking on the next option in their Google search before you have a chance to diffuse their gripe and entice them back… 

We have spoken with a number of retailers in our local market, trying to determine what capabilities they would love to see in solutions that will help them achieve their Customer Experience goals. Based on the feedback they shared with us, it seems that they definitely know what they want, and the ideal solution they’d like sounds very similar to an enterprise Customer Data Platform (CDP) solution. But in reality, the size of our local population and the proportionate size of our retailers, the enterprise size solutions are just too far out of reach. They retailers we spoke to all shared a number of common blockers that are preventing them from implementing a solution. From restrictive large set up and licensing costs, to drawn out implementation times. We’ve heard you loud and clear and we believe that we now have an option! 

Our team at Marketsoft have taken all the feedback received, and we’ve combined that with our 30 years of data services experience in our local market. We called on our close partners at RedPoint Global, and together, we believe that we’ve developed an ideal CDP solution option for our local retailers. Powered by RedPoint, supported and managed by Marketsoft in Australia, together we’ve built a solution specifically for our local retail marketers, while removing most of the blockers! We’ve named this solution, UnifiedCustomer, and we’re excited to launch it into market and we’re ready to meet with you to explore what’s under the bonnet, and how your business could benefit by adding it to your tool kit.

Working closely within the local retail sector, we’ve observed numerous pain points being experienced by retailers over the past few years. Being a data services company, in our case, we’re listening out for and focusing on our retail friend’s data specific pain points. It’s interesting to note that it doesn’t matter where you look, data always seem to pop us as part of the cause, and as such, with some smart intervention, data can also be the solution!

Of course, this year has been out of the ordinary, to say the least, with the best-laid plans that had been signed off for 2020, now in tatters and businesses changing tack and heading into a direction that will keep them afloat (while tightly crossing fingers for luck!).

There has been a commonality to the pain points within our local retail sector, and even though they were already exponentially becoming more important over recent years, many of those pain points have been exacerbated in the past year due to the pandemic. This has forced many retail marketers to take action now, just to survive this tumultuous period and hopefully beyond. Action needs to be taken now, whether it was part of their original plan or not.

We’ve captured some of these challenges and observations that have been shared by our friends battling on the retail front line, as well as from our perspective looking in. We found that there were seven fairly common pain points that stood out and I’m happy to share them below. I wonder if any of these sound familiar to you?

1. A fairly obvious point, but worth locking in, is the fact that due to diminishing foot traffic, there’s been a decline in natural offline acquisition, hence now there’s increased pressure on search and media spend just to acquire customers.

2. Following on from this and given the high cost of acquisition, capitalisation through driving second purchase – conversion – has also become a major focus for most local retailers.

3. With offline transactions down, retailers are keen to replicate in-store experiences online, particularly as retailers drive in-store customers to digital.

4. The global regression in travel and tourist traffic is particularly effecting our premium and luxury retailers.

5. Conversion rates are in focus as every marketing dollar is scrutinised more than ever.

6. By necessity, traditional offline focused retailers are trying to navigate a new digital world, as Brands are being compared to competitors now more than ever; and

7. A point that we’ve heard loud and clear is that there’s a very strong dependency on data capture – both in-store and online – as the value of customer data is recognised in the mission of driving Customer Lifetime Value

Savvy retailers realise that Customer Experience is the final frontier for them to differentiate themselves, and we all know that customers will be lost if they’re not getting the experience that they expect.

We’re looking forward to speaking with you soon about any challenges that you’ve been experiencing and how we can help. We encourage you to browse around our webstite for more details or get in touch with me directly using the details below.