Smarter retailing by businesses to target consumers without discounting too much in advertising messages

January 1 is always a highly optimistic day for all of us. A clean slate of a year in front of us, and hopefully perspective on the past year. Here's to a happy and prosperous New Year for us all.

Looking ahead to 2015 for marketing and advertising, one of the big trends to come will be the use of data to target advertising messages even more than we've seen in the recent past. This past holiday shopping season has several examples in it which I believe are big signs for the future.

The best example is Kohl's, at least in my household. It seems like we get Kohl's offers weekly through direct mail, in addition to their inserts in the daily newspaper. The direct mail often has the peal away sticker with a discount coupon. The longer you go between making purchases on your Kohl's credit card, the larger that discount sticker; topping out at 30% off I believe. While I don't have inside information on how Kohl's does their mailing and discount patterns, it seems obvious to me that they have tied in their marketing database with their credit card database, taking consumer spending habits and blending them with discount offers.

Kohl's is certainly not alone.

The Wall Street Journal's Shelly Banjo had a great article on how retailers are targeting offers to consumers to not only lure shoppers, but to also increase profit margins, average sale and more. The Wall Street Journal article is behind a paywall, but you can read it on Yahoo Finance.

Smart retailing will get more people in the store, but will also keep average sales higher since they are not offering deep discounts to consumers that are willing to pay full retail price. From the article:

A fifth of online shoppers are considered true “discount junkies,” people who make purchases only when plied with discounts, according to new data from AgilOne Inc., which works with 150 retailers to analyze customers’ purchases and predict their behavior. About 15% of shoppers generally pay full price for items and don’t bother searching for sales.

It is hard to predict what 2015 will have in store for us. I do believe retailing will continue to see difficulties, despite a solid retailing holiday season. As old-line retailers like Sears / K-Mart struggle to find black ink on their ledgers, smart retailing like described in this article might be a way to increase sales, traffic and profitability.