Use pay-as-you-go systems to develop relationships

I read your article on “How to retain customers and build brand loyalty” (MW 9 September) with great interest. While using transactional data and web-based metrics is a good start in helping brands to build and maintain relationships, it is still only pecking around the edges of the wealth of customer data available from visitors’ interactions with the online channel. It does not have to cost a fortune in resources and hardware to capture this gold dust.

By using a cloud-based, pay-as-you-go service, it’s possible to automatically capture users’ behaviour and build a view of the individual customer based on their real-time and historic activities. You don’t have to wait until they register or purchase to understand what they like, which destinations they are thinking of for a holiday or which outrageously expensive shoes they dream of owning.

Using this knowledge you can respond to your customers as individuals, which should make them loyal to your brand.

In an online world the customer is king. They decide whether to receive information from you or not, they can shut you out completely and if you really annoy them they can damage your brand with bad publicity and with devastating speed and effect.

Malcolm Duckett, CEO, Magiq