The last time we took a deep dive into PIM, we talked about having strong data governance principles and practices set in place to ensure high quality throughout the lifecycle of your data. Once you have a PIM and data governance established, a recommended next step is to start realizing the value of your PIM by diving into the insights that can be gained by looking deeper into…
- Base and SKU-level Product data
- Customer Purchasing Behavior
- Product Relationships
- Maximizing Marketing Campaigns
Let’s examine what these insights look like and what type of strategic analytics advantages a PIM can unlock for your business.
WHAT CAN A PIM UNLOCK IN TERMS OF ANALYTICS AND INSIGHTS?
NEW INSIGHTS
Customers are becoming increasingly difficult to please. People are very accustomed to getting exactly what they want instantly. With shopping behavior rapidly changing, using data-driven merchandising through PIM can help you stay ahead of the game.
Through combining web usage analytics and product information analytics to create insights, you are able to discover…
Complimentary Product Purchasing Behavior – Noticing what products people typically pair together or correlations between products can help inform you of the trends your customers are following and allow you to recommend or boost certain products accordingly. Information at this level can also help you make data-driven decisions that lead to new, high-performing bundles and kits.
– Example: Customers who buy product X typically also buy product Y, so you make sure product Y is recommended every time someone clicks on product X.
Attribute Driven Merchandising – How well particular attributes, trending words, and general trends help promote particular products. This will allow you to better manage the specific criteria you set for your products via attribute-driven merchandising which will, in turn, help you create and launch campaigns quickly and efficiently.
– Example: Color, price, material, shape, etc.
Adaptive (Predictive) Merchandising – Using keywords or attributes to monitor trends and make merchandising decisions accordingly. Adaptive merchandising will help you identify and optimize key attributes for customer segments and allow you to organize the attributes in order to quickly adapt to changing customer demands.
Availability Analysis – Availability analysis with Made To Stock (MTS) vs Made To Order (MTO) products. There are key factors that determine whether an item is MTS or MTO, the time it takes to produce an item for a customer, and the time that a customer expects the item to be made available. Through understanding which products are in higher demand, you can determine if any MTO products should become MTS. Being able to strategize and forecast MTS products will reduce costs associated with custom production of a product.
INCREASING MARKETING CAMPAIGN EFFECTIVENESS
A PIM can help you manage large amounts of product data very easily, making data easier to leverage during marketing campaigns. Through data-driven analytics, you can use the information at hand to increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. By complementing the PIM with an analytics tool that incorporates web usage and product data will help you evaluate how your omnichannel (and multi-channel) marketing efforts are going, as well as determining which channels have the highest success rates, which will then assist with aligning products with the right channels for the right campaign.
Not only will this help in terms of omnichannel (and multi-channel) marketing efforts, but it will also help you determine what flagship products to target. The more customer and product information that’s at hand, the easier it will be to understand how to align your product catalogs with consumer trends and keep up with what your customers are interested in at the given moment. With complete product data housed in a PIM and an effective analytics program, you can monitor campaigns and then quickly swap products or add additional available attributes on the fly based on the trends you are seeing.
Keep an eye out for part two where we take a look at how proper catalog completeness plays into customer lifetime value (CLV), B2B decision making, and omnichannel product management.
