Using Receipts Collected in Promos to Validate a Purchase?

Here’s Why That’s Not Good Enough.

In the past 6 months I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing with and learning from some of the leading CPG/FMCG companies out there. They make the products we eat and drink every day, and the main topic has been the mandate for the creation and enrichment of zero- and first-party data lakes. In simpler words, creating their own data sources to understand shopper behavior and sell more.

For those new to this blog series, here´s a brief explanation of the terms:

• Zero- and first-party data is data collected by you directly from the consumer and it can contain information collected from surveys, profiles, loyalty programs, etc.
• Second- and third-party data is data collected by others like partners, data companies or aggregators. This data is then curated and sold to you.

Source: https://www.daasity.com/post/zero-party-data

Why is zero & first party data so important for manufacturers?

Let’s put it this way – If you had a racing team and you had to trust somebody to tell you how the motorcycle is performing, who would you trust?

1. The rider
2. The engineers
3. The owner of the track who is watching the race from a comfy suite
4. The spectator who is watching the race on his TV

Definitely all of them can provide insight, but I can guess your choice would be 1) and/or 2) as they will definitely have less bias, be more accurate, and disclose 100% of data they collected. So in the CPG/FMCG world the 1) is the consumer, the 2) is the manufacturer insights team, the 3) is the retailer and the 4) is the data companies out there.

That said, let’s jump back on track to the main question above: Why is this so important for manufacturers? Manufacturers have trusted retailers or second and third party data providers for a long time, but the acceleration of the D2C (Direct to Consumer) channels growth, delivered courtesy of the pandemic, has taught them that being closer to the consumer is key to being successful in this race. And being closer to the consumer means learning exactly who they are and where, when, what and how they buy. On top of these the deletion of cookies in browsers like Safari and Firefox (Google Chrome in 2023) has spiced things up, making it even harder to collect consumer data.

90% of companies surveyed lack this key capability

Nowadays, modern technology enables manufacturers to see further along the track to make smarter and faster decisions and let go of biased and generic data which is only useful to a certain extent. Companies can now generate their own data sources executing receipt collection campaigns, loyalty programs, and more, to build consumer insights in real time. These proprietary insights are 100% related to their brand, products, and shoppers, giving them the ability to shift faster, turn tighter, and jump further than their competitors, giving them better chances of leading the race.

Fun fact: 90% of the CPG/FMCG companies that I spoke with have active receipt collection campaigns but they are only using the receipts to validate a purchase. All the other data like competitor data, cross-basket data, other category data, store insights, payment method, etc is being overlooked and not being used at all.

Where to start?

Let’s say today you are launching a receipt collection campaign. Your marketing team or agency is now collecting receipts every day from participating campaign members. They are willingly giving you the receipt in exchange for participating in a raffle or earning loyalty points.

Step 1: Grab those receipts and throw them into the Veryfi OCR API in real time and while they are coming in. You´ll get the extracted data in 3 seconds.

Step 2: Grab the extracted data and throw it into a database.

Step 3: Apply BI and analytics engines available in the market to discover a whole new world of data at your disposal.

Veryfi will give your DTC channels and marketing campaigns the resources needed to learn about your customer purchasing habits including data from your competitors that will eventually come on those receipts. Veryfi leverages consumer goods companies to learn directly from their consumers and build stronger relationships. When you upgrade to Veryfi you have a head start on the grid, accelerating your time to insight and racing forward with time to value.