#SaveTheWhales: How does saving the whales can bring any good to a retail business?

- Anand Katakwar

August 21, 2021

Whales are important for Earth and so are for retail business. But how can whales affect a retail business in any manner? Are we talking about a species or some sort of customers? Let’s find out.

Firstly, what are Whales?

The term ‘Save The Whales’ was introduced in the 1986 American Sci-Fi Movie ‘Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home’ for an essential part in the plot to save the planet earth from an alien probe. As per the story, an alien probe moves through space and sends out an indecipherable signal and disables the power of every ship it passes. As it closes in and takes up orbit around Earth, its signal disables the global power grid and generates planetary storms.

However, in such a catastrophic situation, no being or technology is capable of communicating the probe to intervene in the chaos. Although, the central figure of the movie, Mr. Spock determines that the probe’s signal is similar to the song of the extinct ‘Humpback Whales’. So, the only way is to save the whales in order to save the earth. But how could it be done when the whales were already extinct? Of course, time travel.

So, the team of saviors goes back in time when whales used to exist. They find them, fight off the troubles in getting them, prepare for their voyage home and finally save the earth by saving the whales. What a great way to save the earth, right? But how is it possible that saving the earth is similar to increasing the effectiveness of a retail business? Well, the answer is simple: Whales.

Who are the whales for a retail business?

Like in the movie, Whales are the only species that could communicate with the alien probe; similarly, whales of a retail business are the only group of customers who can affect the growth or decline of a business. So, who are the whales of a retail business? Well, whales are those customers who buy ‘BIG’. Whales are those customers of a retail business who contributes the biggest share of the revenue. Also, like the whales in the movie got extinct, the whales of a retail business also get defected. And it is as much necessary for the retail business like it was for the inhabitants of the earth to save the whales.

Like the probe’s signal can be answered by the Humpback Whales only, similarly, a retail business can thrive by attracting, retaining and keeping the whales of the business engaged in buying. There are other customers as well who bring consistent flow to the business, but the real boost to the retail business is given by the big buying whales. The whales uplift the retail business like no other type of customers, as they contribute to what the business is set for: Revenue and profits.

Now we know what whales are and why they are so important to the retail business, but does this mere knowledge can help us to save them? No. This is why we need to tackle this issue before the defection takes hold of all the whales. It’s obvious that the future may have bigger problems, but what if we can have the solutions now?

How to save the whales?

In the movie, the saviors of whales had an upper hand as Mr. Spock recognized that the solution was whales. But what if he had no idea that the whales are the solution? Or worse than this, what if he hadn’t known the time when the whales used to exist, where to find them, how to get them back and especially how to go back in time to find them? Well, take a sigh of relief as we won’t be going back in time to find out our defected whales, but we will surely look back at the gone time and save our whales now. But how? Let’s find out.

Although the relation between saving the real whales and retail whales is strong, yet the measures to save the retail whales are different. Mr. Spock knew that whales can bring the earth out of turmoil, while in the business, retailers first need to recognize the whales. It is not an easy task as whales get defected without any intimation and most of the retail businesses realize it long after they’ve lost them unrecognized. Just imagine how destructive it is for a business to not even know the customers who can make it a success.

The first challenge is to figure out which customers are the whales for the business, then only we can find a solution to save them. Without proper analytics in place, all customers seem the same to a business and their activity (their exclusive behavior) couldn’t be interpreted. Just like Star Trek had a genius named Mr. Spock, who figured out that whales are the ones to save, a retailer also needs a Mr. Spock. But as there are uncountable online stores, it’s obvious that all stores can’t have a Mr. Spock of their own, especially when nobody even has an idea that they’re under the threat of losing the earth (their business) by not paying heed to whales (big-buying customers).

Enalito: Spock of the Retail sphere

Relax, as retailers were busy setting up their store and filling up the inventory to reach sky-high sales, we were creating an adamant and super-genius Mr. Spock for them. However, in the business sphere like Star Trek Universe, we call it Enalito. It is an AI-powered, rich with Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Predictive Analytics tool to serve retailers with the 360-degree assistance to establish and run an eCommerce business like it was never done before. Alike Mr. Spock, Enalito is capable of traveling back in time to read the overall historical data of an online store to analyze and come up with the whales of the business.

We know, it’s relieving to know that there is something like Enalito to help through the chaos of losing the best customers. But relax, there’s more in Enalito than just recognizing and telling retailers about whales. Enalito tracks and analyzes the overall data of an online store and with its deep analytics; it dives deep into the customer behavior analysis and understands the trends. It reads how much money is contributed by each customer, how many times each customer has made a purchase and how soon or later the purchases were made. Enalito also keeps track of the customer interests and their sensitivity towards other important aspects like discounts and seasons.

Enalito doesn’t just run a one-time check to figure challenges but keeps a constant eye over the changing behavior of customers with respect to time. It segments the similarly behaving customers as per their transactions and monetary contribution. Once it is done, the product suite informs the retailer about which customers and how many of them are the whales, along with informing which ones are already defected and which ones are about to. With this feature of Enalito, retailers can easily find a solution to recognize and understand their customers.

Now we know how to recognize the whales of a business, but how can we save them? This is where Enalito aka Mr. Spock deserves applause as it not only saves the whales but also brings 35x effectiveness to a retail business. Enalito, through its deep analysis, figures out the whales of business and segments them together. It also creates the customer segments for those whales who are at risk of defection. This way, Enalito filters a whole bunch of customers (even if they’re in millions) to come up with those customers who are the big contributors and shouldn’t be lost.

Enalito is capable enough to track a million customers’ activity and provide in return a segment of customers that only contains the big buyers. Based on statistics, Enalito picks up the whales which are surprisingly the 35th part of the overall customers, which means it presents 35x more productive customers for the business than the rest. An online store basically sends general campaigns to all of its customers, which isn’t a beneficial but costly practice. So, what if Enalito recognizes your best customers, informs about their behavior and suggests an effective campaigning strategy for them? It brings 35 times (at least) effectiveness to the retail business. And what else? It helps to get the best ROI for each marketing dollar spent.

Enalito is the next-gen futuristic solution for retailers brought in the present time. It uplifts the business status by 35x through exclusively targeting those customers who have and who will contribute the most to its success. Whether it is Star Trek’s Voyage or Retailers’, to safely reach home it is necessary to recognize and retain the whales. Enalito does this flawlessly and with precision to not let a single whale remain unnoticed and campaigns to them in a perfectly alluring way to lead customers to utmost satisfaction and retailers to seamless profits.

We are the voyagers of the retail space! Our mission is to take your retail store to heights where no one has gone before!