Nine must-have data capture forms for customer-centric retailers

If you're reading this then you already know the importance of zero-party data as part of your marketing strategy, but what are the best ways to capture it? Here are nine forms we think everyone needs in their toolkit.

From lead-gen to insight and satisfaction, and even compliance, we’ve compiled a list of data-capture forms we think every marketer needs to know. Keep in mind, there's no single activity that will tick all the boxes, so we suggest you use as many of these in conjunction to always be capturing and enriching customer profiles.

Lead-gen and acquisition

1. Competition or sweepstake entry - targeting lookalikes of your high-value customers in paid social is one of the best ways to capture new, potential high-value leads. The best way to capture their details is with a sweepstakes entry. Keep it short and sweet - we want to make it as quick and easy as possible for someone to enter - but at the same time capturing enough data to be able to segment and personalize your comms to these new leads from day one.

Key fields include:

• Email address
• First name - so your welcome email is personalized 
• Gender - to help inform messaging and product recommendations
• Persona - a simple question to start to place customers into a persona segment. For example, for a fitness brand you may ask, Favorite type of workout?
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‍2. Newsletter signup - Similar to the sweepstakes entry, the goal is to capture potential new customers into your database and then convert them with relevant content. Key fields are: email address and first name.

Pro tip: Lexer’s Inferred Gender attribute can automatically infer the gender of your customers based on their first name, so even if you don’t capture gender as part of the signup you can still start to segment and personalize. 
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3. In-store signup - Google found that omnichannel marketing drives 80% higher rates of incremental store visits, so turning store visitors into omnichannel customers is huge. Capturing customer details at checkout is the goal but what about those who may not transact? Well, a really simple and effective way to capture these people is to have an in-store signup on an iPad. This could be an adaptation of the online sweepstakes that allows people in-store to easily provide their details.

Pro tip: Make each form unique to that store so you can segment customers by region or location to help enable local area marketing (LAM).

Customer insight and persona development

4. New member welcome survey - You've acquired a bunch of new people to your brand, well done! Now, let's understand who they are so you can deliver the ultimate customer experience from day one. A welcome survey is a great way to gain insight to help enable personalization. This should be set up to be automatically triggered within the first few days of acquiring the new prospect, the sooner the better! Incentivizing this survey with a coupon or discount can also help convert to a first order.  

‍5. Customer survey - Similar to the welcome survey but for existing customers, get in the habit of routinely capturing updates from your customers when it comes to their interests, preferences, and expectations to help fuel future marketing strategy. This data unified with a customer’s full transaction history is super valuable when evaluating feedback. And rewarding customers for their time also creates another opportunity for you to drive that next sale too! 

Key areas to understand:

• Shopping experience
• Product expectations
• Repurchasing factors
• Overall satisfaction (NPS)
• Likelihood to purchase again
• Interests or hobbies that are relevant for your brand category

Client case study: Read how tactical apparel brand 5.11, gained new customer insights and also drove revenue with customer surveys powered by Lexer’s CDXP.

6. Fit survey - For apparel brands it all comes down to the fit, this can make or break if a customer buys from you again. To understand how your customers feel about something like fit, the best way is to simply ask. Premium outdoor apparel outfitter, Mountain Khakis, surveyed their customers to understand fit preferences with the results helping in the development of their new line of khaki pants. Questions included, preferred fit, body type and other brands they like to wear.

Customer satisfaction

7. Post purchase NPS - The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most widely-adopted tools for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. Proven to correlate with revenue growth, a NPS survey includes just one question: “On a scale of 0–10, how likely are you to recommend [brand] to a friend or colleague?”

Ideally set to automate 7-10 days after each purchase the NPS survey is one of the first forms you should deploy, and be a constant, always-on in your data-capture strategy. But NPS by itself only scratches the surface of genuine customer understanding. Augmenting NPS analysis with insights from other surveys and a customer’s transaction history will help you learn much more about your customers - this is where a CDXP like Lexer excels. 

‍8. Return survey - While no one likes to receive returns they can provide key insight into factors impacting customer retention and satisfaction. A triggered return survey targeted at a segment of customers who have recently made a return can provide invaluable insight into reasons that can then be turned into positive experiences to help grow customer lifetime value. 

Key areas to understand:

• Delivery experience
• Product expectations
• Product quality
• Product size, color, or fit

Governance and compliance

9. Right to be removed - As GDPR and CCPA privacy regulations evolve and consumers become more aware of their data footprint, the need for robust, scalable data compliance tools is a must. One such tool is a “right to be removed/forgotten” request form. This allows individuals to request the personal data that a brand holds on them to be erased, such as name, email, phone number, and address. To help manage and streamline these types of requests we suggest you deploy a secure CDP form where the customer can identify themselves and request their data be erased.

Creating customer forms: best practice

To learn more best practices around building forms and surveys check out the Lexer Learn best practice guide. Use this guide as a checklist as you get started with the Lexer Form Builder. We also have our handy Form Builder guide too. 

Know your customer, grow your business 

Lexer is the CDXP of choice for over 150 leading brands and retailers, such as Sur La Table, Martha Stewart, Cotton On, True Religion and more. We put the power of your customer data directly into your hands, ensuring you have the insights necessary to grow your business. Our intuitive tools enable retail, marketing, and service teams to create data-driven engagement strategies that positively impact every stage of the customer lifecycle.

Interested in learning more about how Lexer can help you improve customer engagement and retention? Book a demo with one of our retail experts.