Lots’ method of building an identity roadmap //

Big Lots, a national retailer faces many challenges due to changing customer expectations and the evolving identity landscape. They created a roadmap to connect customer data and align their organizational teams to deliver relevant customer experiences.

Amy Nelson, vice president of customer loyalty, customer relationship management and analytics at Big Lots, spoke at The MarTech conference. She stated that “Creating and delivering great customer experiences starts with being able to identify your customers at every touch point.”

Overcoming identity problems

Nelson stated that the pace of technology and privacy regulations change and the lag in some organizational structures’ evolution to place the customer at center and eliminate channel silos make it more difficult to remain relevant.

Apple’s announcement of phasing-out third-party cookies and Google’s intelligent tracking protection fundamentally change brands’ ability to identify customers online. State legislation such as the California Consumer Privacy Act or Europe’s General Data Protection Act can also pose identity problems.

Big Lots faced more problems when Apple introduced mail privacy protection in 2021.

Nelson stated, “We had to quickly pivot to find another way of identifying customers to continue delivering relevant experiences.” “And with the constantly changing landscape, teams and their tech stacks must be agile, innovative, and quick to react to these kinds of changes,” Nelson said.

Get deeper: Apple privacy protections affecting revenue have caused some companies to find ways to get around them

Experience is driven by data

Brands must be able to understand the data that is tied to their customer experience in order for them maintain relevant customer experiences.

Nelson stated that brands have put the customer experience at their forefront and identity must also be associated with it. Nelson said that functional areas should not be limited to the appearance of the experience, but also what data can be used to create the next step in the experience.

She said, “Identity must have clear ownership within the organization and this includes IT and business.” This works well, I have seen it work, when IT is responsible for data collection and compliance rules and the business teams are responsible for creating an integrated identity for analytics, predictive modelling, activation.

Get deeper: Identity resolution. How can platforms adapt to privacy changes?

Assembling data technology teams

Big Lots established a customer data platform to help them create customer experiences that are successful. This was several years ago. After centralized customer data, Big Lots launched their current analytics environment.

Big Lots has partnered with Merkle, a customer experience technology company, to complete their stack.

Nelson said, “We also created an analytics and data science group and a customer marketing department.” “Then we set up a customer-level, test-to-learn pod. This is an agile, cross-functional pod team that has provided great value to the company and our customers.”

She said, “We are continuing to build our marketing technology stock to enable me to deliver personalized messages to scale, but we are making progress with what tools we do have.”

Your strategic roadmap should keep customers first

Nelson stated that a single customer identity is crucial when there are multiple systems or teams.

Creating optimal customer experiences across multiple channels requires many teams and some may not be familiar with the data.

An organization-wide assessment is crucial. Throughout the entire process, remember to keep the customer experience in mind.

Nelson said, “Build a roadmap that lays down the goals for customers.” Remember to start with the customer, then work backwards toward technology. Team members change, leaders change, and then the [identity] landscape is changed. The roadmap should be created and maintained throughout the business.

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The first MarTech article titled “Hypertext0_ Big Lots”: Building an Identity Roadmap .