You already know a lot about your customers. The trouble is, it’s scattered across your ecommerce platform, your email tool, and your support inbox. Each one knows part of the story, but none of them knows the whole customer.
A single customer view (SCV) brings it all together in one profile. That means you can send messages that match where each customer is today.
We’ll cover what an SCV is, why it’s worth having, and how Dotdigital’s SCV helps you put your customer data to work
What is single customer view?
A single customer view (SCV) is one profile for each customer that combines all the data you hold on them, from purchases and browsing to email engagement and support conversations. It gives you a clear picture of who each customer is, what they’re interested in, and how they like to shop.
What goes into a single customer view
A typical SCV pulls together:
- Contact details and subscription preferences
- Purchase and order history
- Website browsing behavior
- Email and SMS engagement, like opens and clicks
- Customer service interactions
- Loyalty program status
What makes a single customer view useful
Bringing your data together is the first step. To be useful in your campaigns, your SCV also needs to be:
- Up to date: Data flows in as customers interact with you, so your messages reflect their latest actions
- Clean: Duplicate and outdated records are merged or removed, so each customer has one accurate profile
- Easy to access: Your marketing team can use the data in segments and campaigns without waiting on analysts or engineers
Out-of-date data is where things can go wrong. If a customer buys a product from your website yesterday and you email them a discount on that same product today, they’re likely to feel they paid too much.
With an accurate, up-to-date SCV, you can send messages that match where each customer is right now. Customers who feel understood are more likely to come back, and that’s what builds loyalty and customer lifetime value over time.
What are the benefits of SCV?
Once your data is in one place, it changes how you plan, build, and measure your campaigns. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
More relevant campaigns
You can segment and personalize using everything a customer has done, from browsing and purchases to support conversations.
Better-timed messages
You can exclude recent buyers from promotions and avoid sending upbeat offers to someone with an open complaint.
Faster decisions
You don’t need to pull exports from several tools before you build a segment or answer a question about your customers.
Smarter use of discounts
You can target offers at the customers most likely to act, rather than discounting across your whole list.
Stronger loyalty over time
When customers get messages that reflect their history with you, they have more reason to stay.
How does Dotdigital’s SCV support you?
Dotdigital’s SCV gives you a full view of each customer in one place, and we’ve kept adding to it since launch so you can do more with your data right from the customer view. Here’s what you can do with it.
See every customer’s activity in one place
View real-time engagement and sales data alongside each customer’s subscription status and preferences. It’s easier to spot what’s worked before and use that to plan your next campaign.
Plan seasonal campaigns with last year’s data
Look back at how customers engaged with past campaigns. Before a big seasonal push, you can see what each customer did last year and use it to shape what you send this time around.
Recommend products customers are likely to want
Use purchase data to suggest what each customer might want next. Say someone buys a tent. You can show them the sleeping bags and camping stoves other tent buyers went on to purchase.
Find more people like your best customers
Build lookalike segments, which are groups of people who share traits with your best customers. That way, you can focus your messages on the people most likely to respond.
Check how well a product fits each customer
Affinity scores show, as a percentage, how likely a product is to suit an individual customer. You’ll see the score when you preview a product recommendation for that customer.
Build your SCV on a secure, responsible platform
Dotdigital is certified to ISO 27001 for information security, ISO 27701 for privacy, and ISO 14001 for environmental management. You can find out more in our trust center.
If you’re ready to bring your customer data together, Get started to see how Dotdigital’s SCV works for your business.
