What is Best Next Offer?

Best Next Offer is a type of predictive analytics that helps marketers better understand customer spending habits and guides marketing efforts, in order to determine which product or service to offer to a customer at each stage of their journey. It involves using transactional data, like purchase history and behavioural customer data to decide on an analysis-led recommendation. This kind of tailored marketing increases customer engagement and improves the chances of conversion. 

What are the advantages of Best Next Offers?

Here are some of the main advantages you can expect when using Best Next Offer.

Supercharge sales 

By leveraging personalised customer data you can make offers that are far more likely to resonate with your audience. Not only this, but through this predictive analysis you can also identify opportunities for both cross and upselling, which has the potential to increase both sales and revenue.

Best Next Offer analytics can also help you boost your sales by making use of good timing. Notifying customers of offers, discounts, or complementary purchases at precisely the right time can create a sense of urgency and pressure that can supercharge your sales activity.

Encourage customer loyalty

Not only is Best Next Offer a great way to attract potential customers, it’s a way of solidifying the customer relationships that have already been established. For subscription products or products that call for repeat purchases, you will have lots of opportunities to create and foster loyalty between you and your customers. You can also incorporate Best Next Offer strategies into your loyalty schemes.

Boost engagement 

Best Next Offer analytics will help you to identify the products or services that align with your customers’ needs. This level of personalisation is very compelling and creates more opportunities for customer engagement. If a customer feels that a recommendation has been made specifically for them, with their unique needs taken into consideration, they are more likely to interact with your suggestion.

How do you implement your Best Next Offer solution?

What your Best Next Offer model looks like depends on the nature of your business, but here is an outline for how to get started:

Set your goals

Despite the many advantages of Best Next Offer analytics, you may want to consider focusing on specific goals you want your offer to achieve. These goals should be aligned with your overall business strategy, and be easily measurable. For example, suppose you’re looking to encourage customer retention and loyalty. In that case, you may want to consider whether or not Best Next Offer will have a  noticeable impact on repeat purchase frequency. 

Setting specific goals allows you to customise your Best Next Offer solution to achieve a clear purpose. This may influence the way in which your offer is communicated  (personalised emails, in-store offers, etc). You will need to take into consideration the thoughts and behaviours of your customers, and the way in which you are most likely to reach them. Armed with both your business goals and your customer preferences, you will be able to narrow down the best way in which to present them with an offer they can’t refuse.

Track your customers’ journey

You cannot create a Best Next Offer model without first gathering all of your data. Look at the ways in which customers interact with the touchpoints in their journey, and analyse transaction history, website interactions, and email engagement, among many others. You should also engage in thorough customer segmentation, to truly understand your customers’ needs, and what factors influence their decision-making. 

While gathering customer data is a broad and never-ending task, you may want to choose specific parameters in order to aid your research. For example, looking at the behaviours of a specific demographic, for a set amount of time after interacting with a touchpoint. If a customer makes a series of purchases during the run up to their birthday, you may not want to apply these preferences to their behaviour during the rest of their year. However, you may want to remember this information and apply it to the same time next year.

Extract valuable insights

Explore data to uncover valuable insights to inform what your offer should be. Look for any correlations or trends you can capitalise on. For example, a book retailer might identify and keep track of customers’ author preferences, and offer any titles by the same author that they have not yet purchased.

Bear in mind that any communications that appear to be exploiting personal data may be frowned upon, e.g. anything relating to private health concerns or money issues. Similarly, making offers that go against already-established customer preferences may not be well-received, even if the objective data suggests otherwise.

Take action at the right time

Send your chosen offer in your preferred method of communication. Timing this well is incredibly important, especially if it will be going to personal devices in the forms of text, emails, or phone calls.

Here are some times when you should avoid making offer:

• Immediately following a purchase
• During negative life events
• At an unsociable time of day
• Past its expiration date, if the offer is time-sensitive

Similarly, bombarding your customer with frequent offers is also an example of poor timing. You may think that in doing so you’re covering your bases and hitting any and all available peak times, but you will simply end up frustrating your customers, who may then look elsewhere.

Continue to analyse and improve

Once you have created and sent out your campaign, monitor its performance. The preferences and behaviours of your customers evolve over time. For example, you might not find much success in offering a new suncream in the winter months, despite how many holidays your customers went on between June and September. 

If your original goals don’t show any sign of being met, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. Similarly, if your offer is a huge success, you need to be able to understand why it is so effective. A/B testing different variations of your offer could help to narrow down successful elements. Or, if you’re looking for more qualitative data you could explicitly seek feedback from clients in the form of reviews. 

What do you need to think about when using Best Next Offer?

Creating and implementing can tread a fine line between personalisation and privacy. Here are some things to keep in mind when using this strategy:

• Be transparent. Be explicitly clear about your data policies and maintain GDPR compliance at all times. If customers feel that they are being lied to or taken advantage of they will find your business untrustworthy - and no one needs that bad press.
• Be considerate. Do not let your offers veer into being overtly manipulative or misleading. By being ethical you will be rewarded in long-term customer relationships, which are more beneficial than short-term wins.
• Be analytical. No matter how successful your offer is, if you learn nothing from the process and gather no data, it will have been a waste of time. A well-received campaign is not down to luck or serendipitous timing, but the result of informed decision making and logical evaluation.