To summarise the story so far:
- Brands should collect customer data at every touchpoint and store it in a CDP
- Transaction data can be used to determine CLV
- CLV can then be used to segment customers and identify the Best Customers
- All the other data (behavioural, demographic) about customers can be used to build the Customer Genome
By looking at the Customer Genomes of the Best Customers as determined by their CLV, it now becomes possible to identify the Best Customer Genome (BCG) – those attributes and actions common to the most valuable customers of a brand. (As far as I can tell, this is a new idea.)
The BCG is important because a small fraction of the customers account for a disproportionate share of revenues and profits of a brand. Knowing how these customers are different lets us replicate their attributes in acquisition and behaviour in the onboarding process to ensure that brands can manufacture more Best Customers.
BCG is not a static set of attributes. Like in the real world, there is continuous evolution. In this case, it is AI-ML that can help with this process. The models keep learning about what makes a Best Customer by looking for patterns in various types of data made available through CDP, and thus keep improving on the definition of the BCG.
These twin ideas of CLV and BCG lay the foundation for Velvet Rope Marketing as can be seen in the graphic below:
CLV and BCG are the anchors for doing VRM right, which in turn is the key to growing profits. A martech platform integrated with adtech is the best friend of the Chief Profitability Officer to help in executing the four key jobs we had identified earlier:
- Identify Best Customers
- Give them the Velvet Rope Experience
- Acquire more like them
- Help them become Best Customers faster
This is the essence of Velvet Rope Marketing: using data to create a differentiated experience for the Best Customers to ensure maximum wallet share via smart cross-sell and upsell, and churn elimination.
The idea sounds surprisingly simple, and yet very few companies actually do it right. In the post-Covid future, CxOs who can get VRM right can look forward to a profitable future.
Tomorrow: Becoming Chief Profitability Officer (Part 6)
