1974 was the year of the coal miners’ strike, the year the second part of the God Father trilogy was released and the year that this country’s postcode system was finally completed with the recoding of Norwich. A huge task, which was carried out in stages over several years, that today we take for granted. But our addressing system is fundamental to the success of most, if not all, UK businesses. An address is the single most important indicator of risk in any digital transaction and for many retailers address accuracy is critical to their business.
In today’s digitally connected world, where consumers expect you to you deliver beyond their expectations, simply knowing their address is not enough. Location matters. From buying products online, insuring our car, requesting road side assistance or ordering a pizza to a unique location, we all have high expectations that the businesses that we are choosing to spend our money with accurately understand our unique circumstances. This accuracy goes beyond the physical location, successful brands are the ones who understand the type of building we might reside in, if it’s down a dusty track or in a busy congestion zone or perhaps we’re asking our favourite or most trusted brands to know our location where we are right now.
The retailers who will stand out and be successful are the ones who are using location data and technology to improve the experience which in turns increases revenue through better business efficiencies. In Internet Retailing’s latest report ‘Exploring The Value of Enhanced Location Data: Delivery and Customer Insight – Data Beyond The Letterbox’, the opportunities available to retailers when using location intelligence are explored with insight from three leading UK retailers – Bloom & Wild, Hush and Schuh.
In this whitepaper we hear how gifting retailer Bloom & Wild uses location data to ensure accurate delivery of their perishable products, and how real-time address verification technology has helped improve delivery success rates “We don’t have a figure of how address verification has improved delivery success rates as we have used it for such a long time, but we do know that for Royal Mail on-time delivery success rate is 93%, but we typically see 94 to 96%. We can’t attribute that entirely to address verification technology but have found it’s higher than normal” says Aron Gelbard, CEO and Founder of Bloom & Wild.
Location data can not only improve a retailers on-time delivery rates but can also enhance behavioral analytics and offers retailers the chance to improve their service to their customers. Liam Hewitt, Senior eCommerce Manager at Hush tells us “without location data we would struggle to understand our customers, their behavior and how to target them effectively”.
We learn how location data can not only enhance delivery capabilities but can also help retailers avoid unnecessary costs, provide opportunities within the sales and marketing funnels and ultimately increase profit. “Success can be measured by an improvement across many metrics, such as conversion, return rates and revenue uplift by geographic areas” explains Hewitt.
Schuh’s Head of eCommerce and Optimisation, Stuart McMillan believes that when it comes to the future of retail, the importance of location can only increase. “Location information becomes more and more important, particularly with regard to click and collect and other ‘local’ fulfilment options,” he says. “Location is key to the future of retail – location of the customer, location of the stock and location of stores or collection points.”
By studying how these three successful retailers are using location data, you can learn how you can use location data to go beyond the letter box to reduce costs, maximise sales and marketing, gain greater customer insight and drive ultimately profitability.
Matthew Furneaux, Global Commercial Director, Loqate, a GBG Solution
