So Much Customer Data, So Little Impact? Let’s Fix That

Executive Summary: 

Retailers are generating massive volumes of data through their loyalty programs - but most aren’t seeing the business impact they expected. Loyalty data often remains underused, under-leveraged or siloed within marketing teams, leaving value on the table.

The real opportunity lies in becoming a data forward retailer - one that places loyalty data at the center of decision-making, enabling personalized experiences, smarter category management, and even new revenue through supplier insight sharing.

This paper explores:

• Why most loyalty programs underperform despite strong data collection

• What it means to be ‘data forward’  - and why that’s a game changer

• Six key types of loyalty data every retailer already has (and how to use them)

• Common roadblocks, from data aggregation to analytics bottlenecks

• Three strategic options to unlock value: build, outsource, or deploy 11Ants

Whether you’re aiming to improve customer engagement, sharpen pricing and promotions, or monetize insights with suppliers, the path forward doesn’t require more dashboards or more analysts - it requires a smarter, faster approach.

11Ants is a proven SaaS platform that helps retailers move from data-rich to insight-rich in days, not months - empowering teams, enhancing loyalty, and turning data into dollars.

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Here’s the challenge:

You’re collecting mountains of data through your loyalty program: purchase history, preferences, engagement patterns, the list goes on - and yet, it’s not driving the performance or value you expected.

If you’ve ever thought:

• We’ve got the data, but we’re not doing enough with it

• It takes too long to get useful insights

• We keep building dashboards… but we’re not getting the answers we need

You’re not alone. But the good news? There’s a better way - and it’s not about adding more dashboards or hiring an army of analysts.

The Missed Opportunity Behind Most Loyalty Programs

Let’s be honest: a lot of loyalty programs are just clever ways to give discounts. Yes, customers swipe their cards or scan an app, but is the data actually being used to change the business? Often, the answer is no.

Retailers spend big on loyalty programs, but too many are still ‘data backward’ - collecting a lot but not using it to drive smarter decisions. A truly successful program should fuel your entire retail operation: marketing, merchandising, operations, even supplier engagement. That’s the power of becoming data forward.

“The important thing to remember about loyalty programs is that most are just a ‘me, too’ way of reducing profit margin. Once all the major players in a space offer one, it’s just a bribe for doing business with a particular restaurant, store, airline, or product consumable. In contrast, the best practice loyalty programs are the ones that offer a reward in exchange for ongoing customer information (shopping basket data, preferred services and routes) and then use that information to serve a customer better than a company that does not have that information.”  Managing Customer Relationships – A Strategic Framework - Don Peppers and Martha Rogers

What Does It Mean to Be Data Forward?

Being ‘data forward’ means putting customer data at the center of your retail loyalty initiative and using that to drive better decision-making. A data forward retail loyalty initiative is one which is absolutely optimizing and leveraging data in the strongest way possible with all the positive flow on effects to the business this delivers. It’s about going beyond reporting and into actionable insight—understanding not just what happened, but why, who it happened with and what to do next.

• Customer segments guide pricing, ranging, and promos

• Marketing is personalized and relevant

• Suppliers are better aligned - and willing to pay for insight

• Your loyalty program is a company-wide asset, not just a marketing tool

What You Can Achieve with a Data Forward Loyalty Program

• Market orientation: Truly understand your customers and act accordingly

• Customer spend growth: Increase frequency, basket size and profitability

• Smarter segmentation: Prioritize the customers who matter most

• Personalization at scale: Show customers you know them

• Data-driven decisions: Power category, pricing, and assortment plans

• Supplier monetization: Turn insights into a new revenue stream

• Cross-functional alignment: Make the whole business smarter

Customer Data: What You Actually Have (and How to Use It)

“Data without use is overhead and costly” Retail Analytics – The Secret Weapon - Emmett Cox 1

Here’s the data most programs collect - divided into six useful buckets:

1. Customer Identifiers – The golden thread linking transactions over time

2. Customer-Supplied Info – Name, email, birthday, preferences

3. 3rd Party Augmentation – Demographics, lifestyle overlays, etc.

4. Transaction Data – Every item, basket, promo, time, channel

5. Reference Tables – Product, store, customer attributes

6. Derived Insights – Frequency, loyalty, affinities, margins, risk, etc.

   
   

And the real value?  It comes from bringing all six together - cleaned, connected and accessible.

Why It’s So Hard to Make Loyalty Data Work

Let’s call it out - here’s what’s holding most retailers back:

• Still thinking product-first, not customer-first

• Over-aggregated data that loses detail

• Long waits for insights (“I’ll get back to you in 10 days”)

• Analysts are overwhelmed, or you don’t have enough of them

• Dashboards everywhere… but insight nowhere

• You’re choosing between speed or quality - when you need both

Your Three Options for Moving Forward

Option 1: Build Your Own

✔ Full contro

✖ Expensive, slow, resource-intensive

✖ Schema design is hard, fragile, and hard to scale

Option 2: Fully Outsource

✔ Fast setup, offloads internal work

✖ Costly and only viable for very large retailers

✖ You give up internal capability and a chunk of revenue

Option 3: Use 11Ants

✔ Enterprise-grade insight at a fraction of the cost

✔ Rapid deployment (think days, not months)

✔ No consultants required, no dashboards to build

✔ Self-service insight for all teams - analytics, marketing, ops, merch

“And then one day 11Ants came up; and we basically sit there with our jaws on the floor thinking, can I have this? Can I have this now? We'd never sort of realised there was the accessible capability to coherently merge all of our data and actually find something out about it, as opposed to simply regurgitate numbers and figures...until 11Ants came along. It's where do we find the money? Because we want this.” 11Ants Customer 

Why 11Ants Works

• Plug-and-play insight: Designed for loyalty data from day one

• Self-healing, zero aggregation: Changes in hierarchy? New data types? Handled.

• Mint more unicorns: You don’t need every analyst to be a data scientist

• Supplier-ready: Monetize insights from day one, not someday

• Real results: “Jobs that took 3 days now take 15 minutes” – 11Ants Customer

Quick Checklist: What you’ve just learned and can now do 

Use this list to turn your loyalty program into a business driver:

✔ Understand why your loyalty data might be underperforming

✔ Define what ‘data forward’ means for your business

✔ Audit your loyalty data across the six key types

✔ Recognize common pitfalls (aggregation, dashboards, bottlenecks)

✔ Explore your options: build, outsource, or deploy 11Ants

✔ Identify your stakeholders - marketing, analytics, operations, suppliers

✔ Build a business case with commercial impact

✔ Take action to unlock insights and revenue today

Final Thought

Your loyalty data is already rich - it just needs to be activated. You don’t have to build a new team, rip and replace systems, or sign up for a 12-month project plan. You just need the right approach.

And that’s where we come in.  Learn more or request a demo at www.11Ants.com

And there’s more… Read the full white paper on this topic and learn more.

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