The grass always seems greener when landing a new customer, acquiring a new account, meeting a new person. The thrill of that pursuit, the idea that we are tapping into the universe of unknown people & conquering is hard to resist for many of us. However, the low-hanging fruit left on the tree is Retention Marketing, to existing customers.
Conventional wisdom has established that Retention Marketing to existing customers produces a much higher return at a lower cost, than acquiring new customers in the great beyond. In fact an Adobe Loyal Shoppers report suggests that Retention Marketing is 2.5x more efficient than Acquisition Marketing, with 8% of your website visitors (existing customers) powering 41% of your revenues! 
Knowing that another key trend in retailing is 1:1 Mass Personalization, the key challenge for retailers is "How do I achieve such personalization in marketing to my existing customers, at scale?" In a day and age when machine learning and data science can be applied to detect individual patterns for the millions of your customers, the important step to utilizing such technology is to unify the view of the customer across many data silos. This Experian survey suggests that the top 3 challenges to achieve this view according to retailers are:
- Inability to link different technologies
- Poor data quality
- Lack of relevant technologies
Utilizing the appropriate Predictive Marketing software platform, with the proper rigor in data integration between eCommerce platforms & Marketing Clouds/ESPs, online retailers can overcome these challenges, and leverage the power of technology to both delight their customers with personalized experiences, and grow their lifetime value & revenues. Watch this 90-second video (below) to see one example of how Windsor Circle approaches this challenge. Happy low-hanging fruit grabbing!
90-Second Predictive Marketing Overview for Magento Merchants
How have you leveraged Predictive Marketing with Magento data?