“If you don’t have a strategy against one of your biggest assets — your data — then you probably won’t be in business in 50 years,” asserted Corey Bergstrom, Senior Director, Direct Marketing/Marketing Research and Analysis for Cabela’s, Inc. Confident in the 50-year-old company’s marketing strategy, Bergstrom explained Cabela’s approach to data analysis to peers during a presentation at the recent Teradata Partners Conference in San Diego.
The session, titled “Illuminating the Path to Purchase,” featured Bergstrom and Dr. Jeff Tanner, Associate Dean at Baylor University. The two companies partnered to conduct research on the effect of incorporating e-Commerce clickstream data into Cabela’s existing Teradata data warehouse model.
The results proved valuable to the outdoor retailer’s go-forward data strategy. According to Tanner, the clickstream data will help the multi-channel retailer predict future purchases. The research found:
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- 1 in 3 shoppers browse a category before making a purchase
- The more frequently a shopper browses, the more likely he is to purchase
- Conversion rates and order size increase as browsing time lengthens
With this data in hand, Cabela’s then used the information to formulate and test different types of campaigns for different product categories. And, although the results varied depending upon the type of campaign and the specific product category, Bergstrom and his team found potential in the strategy. An email campaign directed toward purchasers of camping products showed a 20% boost in purchasing across all channels, he explained.
Cementing The Future Of Clickstream Data Integration
Acknowledging that the integration of clickstream data shows great potential for an increase in revenue and profits, Cabela’s plans to further explore the strategy. Next steps include: using overall shopper history to test different weighting of test model components; and testing different modeling techniques to determine shopper test subjects.
“We know there is potential there, so we plan to test, test, test,” noted Bergstrom. Even when a test does not deliver a positive outcome, Bergstrom considers it valuable.
For the future, Cabela’s is working on creating more useful actionable insights from the clickstream data. “We’re capturing insights from the data but now we need to deliver on those insights,” he noted. “We need to be more dynamic. We’re not there yet.”
CVS, Saks Fifth Avenue Share Data Strategies During Teradata Event
Also during the annual Teradata Partners conference, a number of other U.S. and globally-based retailers shared their insights into data analysis for their own organizations:
- CVS/Caremark explained the successful ExtraCare loyalty program
- Saks Fifth Avenue discussed the department store retailer’s implementation of Teradata Demand Chain Management
Also during the event, Teradata announced that Hallmark Cards, Inc., has expanded its data warehouse environment with new enterprise data warehouse platforms including the latest Aprimo Relationship Manager (ARM) application from Aprimo, a Teradata company. “We in the marketing team were ready to start doing more automated multi-step campaigns and the new Teradata-Aprimo software now provides us with that valuable capability,” said DeAnna Blair, Marketing Project Leader, Hallmark Cards. “We operate in a complex, consumer-centric business which requires a more agile data warehouse with excellent performance economics. Teradata has proven its worth in handling extreme analytic requirements in a mixed-query workload environment.”
