NEW YORK– Customer Analytics, Burlington, MA., an electronic customer relationship management vendor, announced an alliance with Datamark Technologies, North Brunswick, NJ, an e-commerce customer loyalty and pre-paid card programs provider, at the National Retail Federation conference here on Sunday.
CA will integrate their eRM Central suite – which enables financial services, retail and insurance companies to analyze customers current and potential value and to plan, execute, measure and refine activities that maximize each customer’s value – with Datamark’s E-Gift and Patron Plus Loyalty Programs.
Patron Plus allows merchants to capture, process, manage and report customer demographic and transaction data for its client. Demographic data is captured through a customer enrollment process creating a database of names and preferences to better target customers. E-Gift replaces paper gift certificates with a magnetic strip, smart card or thermal print medium, eliminating most of the administrative and accounting costs associated with paper gift certificate programs. The technology allows for the capture of customer transaction and demographic data and offers an activation/registration feature that can be used to protect the gift certificate from loss or theft.
According to both companies, the combined solution will allow click and mortar retailers to track a customer’s purchases and returns, analyze the information and provide critical profiling data to various decision points throughout the enterprise. The new application will also offer customers the ability to acquire gift cards online and redeem purchases and returns either online or at a retailer’s brick and mortar location.
“The strong analytical capabilities of eRM Central bring a new and important dimension to electronic loyalty and gift cards programs,” said Jack Kaplan, president of Datamark Technologies. “Together, we are the first to realize this vision. Today, our competitors are unable to offer their customers such a robust tracking analysis solution – and are therefore unable to tell who obtained the card, who is using it and why.”
Paul Gitter, director of customer development with Brooks Brothers Inc., New York, a current Datamark customer said “the key challenge facing retailers today is what to do with the channel-specific customer data once it resides within the retailer’s database…Giving retailers a firm understanding of how to apply the data throughout the customer’s shopping lifestage, will help us to deliver a more focused message during the sales and marketing process and will ultimately lead to incremental sales and share-of-wallet.”
