• by Jess Nelson , October 14, 2015

Harte Hanks today debuted Total Customer Discovery, a new B2C product that leverages consumer behavior and data to optimize sales, engagement, and email marketing ROI.

Harte Hanks is a San Antonio-based brand marketing platform that leverages data to profile customers. By identifying and consolidating data, marketers can create stronger email marketing ROI, sending more relevant messages and  targeting customers in the form of communication they most prefer.

Today’s product release aggregates customer behavior and preferences across multiple devices and channels, both offline and online. Total Customer Discovery is a “holistic solution to transform a customer from an anonymous entity to a known persona, tracking behavior across multiple Web sites, devices and online/offline channels,” states Sean Iannuzzi, head of technology for customer engagement at Harte Hanks.

This omnichannel approach allows marketers to tailor their email marketing campaigns with personalized content, based on consumer interaction and behavior. Personalized content is key to increasing email marketing ROI, especially when compared to generic messages.

Total Customer Discovery has four key features that can be leveraged together or separately.

The customer profile feature tracks a customer’s digital footprint, giving visibility into the customer lifecycle. Harte Hanks says  it’s important for brands to talk to customers as individuals. Understanding how people interact across the customer journey is key to providing relevant messaging at the right time.

This could be an incredibly useful tool considering most retailers only see 10% of a shopper’s purchase journey, according to a recent study by Maybe*.

The identification feature allows brands and marketers to see how a customer is interacting with their marketing across multiple devices. Marketers can then target customers with the channel of communication that they are most likely to engage with.

Additional features of Total Customer Discovery include the ability to append data across social networks and the ability to retarget customers online by leveraging offline data. By matching online and offline behavior, Harte Hanks believes marketers can craft better messaging for offline customers once they decide to go online.

Harte Hanks uses discovery, analytics and content development to create a better customer experience. 

Customer care should not be forgotten in today’s digital marketing world, as customer experience is still the top reason a customer will refer a service or recommend a company, according to Amdocs and IE Market Research.