E-Commerce retailers know that screening transactions for fraud is critical to preventing losses. What many overlook is that by screening all customer orders — not simply the ones that raise fraud flags — they can not only do a better job of stopping fraud, they can also better serve their best customers.
When your fraud screening program sorts reliable customers from fraudsters, you get useful and evolving datasets that you can use to pinpoint your good customers’ demographics. Rather than ignore your “positive” file, you can use it as a rich resource to increase the lifetime value of your reliable customers and find more like them.
With complete positive data, you can move beyond the more general data you have on people who have opted into your email list and social media channels, many of whom may not be proven customers. Your validated-order data will show you, among other things, exactly which payment methods your good customers use most often, what types of merchandise they prefer at different times of the year, which segment is the first to purchase newly stocked items, which segments shop right before holidays like Valentine’s Day and Father’s Day, and which segment buys most often for gift recipients.
There are more ways to segment the data, of course. In each case, you can use your data to fine-tune your email campaigns to reach proven gift buyers before holidays, send new-product launch day information to your “have to have it first” customers, and so on. Done properly, this approach should result in better conversion rates than campaigns based on less specific data.
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