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Solving The Mobility Marketing Riddle

0aaJay Sunny Bajaj DMIInnovations in e-Commerce continue, some created by clever marketers and some by consumers themselves. Individuals have taken to researching products, comparing prices and accessing coupons inside the store, instead of on a computer at home. A recent Mobile In-Store Experience Rankings report found that 39% of U.S. shoppers use branded apps regularly or every time they shop, and 41% use third-party shopping apps with the same frequency.  

This shift in consumer behavior presents many opportunities for retailers — if they know how to use the data they gather to optimize the mobile customer experience. However, the report revealed that a significant gap remains between consumer expectations and the reality of mobile in-store experiences. Out of a possible high score of 240 points, this year’s highest score was 131 points.

To shrink that gap and create superior experiences for consumers, retailers must overcome five primary challenges.

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#1: Superior Customer Experiences

Approximately 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience, according to a recent survey by the Demand Management Institute (DMI). Nearly 78% of millennials surveyed indicated they’d purchase more from retail stores that offer great mobile in-store shopping tools, and more than 80% of high-income shoppers ($100K income) believe such tools would improve the overall in-store shopping experience. This means that a strong way to attract customers is by offering them information that is highly relevant. So, how do you do this?

  1. Collect and consolidate your marketing data. Unless you have a real understanding of your customer buying habits, it will be difficult to personalize the experience. Arrange the customer data based on customer segments derived from the data, which will in turn optimize your marketing and promotional impact. Build a strategy of pairing offers and marketing messages based on the consolidated data from your CRM, e-Commerce platform, loyalty programs and marketing systems.

  1. Then, create a native application or mobile web site to use as your customer interaction interface, and make it location-aware for in-store relevance. Consider developing a mobile cross-sell or up-sell strategy to drive incremental sales.

  1. Finally, to inspire adoption, actively promote the availability of the mobile web site or native app in-store. The end result will be a better shopping experience for consumers and higher revenue for you.

#2: Creating a Mobile Marketing Strategy

There are many mobile marketing technologies and digital sales channels to choose from. That said, when building a mobile marketing strategy, start with the basics — your business model, your brand and your customer.

Your Business Model

Make it your goal to align your mobile marketing strategy with your business model. Consider differentiators like loyalty-based, promotional and large product assortment-based retailers. Also, make sure this momentum can be sustained by staff after the technology launch.

Your Brand

Brand image may be eroded if the mobile marketing strategy doesn’t take the uniqueness of the retailers’ brand into account. Just as a poor in-store or online experience can erode a brand, mobile marketing implemented incorrectly can quickly do the same. All mobile marketing initiatives should be tailored to the customer base and be in line with all brand values and standards.

Your Customer

As you build a mobile marketing strategy, it is critical to understand and segment your customer base because of the personalized nature of smartphones themselves and because of the way they are used by consumers. Retailers should look closely at customer buying habits, frequency of shopping and distribution of shopping across channels. You need to understand how comfortable your customers are to receive marketing messages on their mobile devices. Strategies must be put in place to help consumers adopt and leverage the mobile technology. Also, policies and privacy should be clearly spelled out to the consumer so they know what they are opting in for.

#3: Integrated Marketing & Offers

When it comes to mobile, a channel-specific approach to marketing leads to inconsistency of not only the shopping experience but also of the brand experience in general. Having consistent offers and promotions across your marketing materials, digital properties and in-store operations requires collaboration and cooperation with a number of departments. For this reason, centralized marketing and merchandising efforts have become critical for omnichannel success.

Brick-and-mortar stores remain incredibly important, even with the growing emphasis on ecommerce. Advance details from TimeTrade’s upcoming State of Retail 2017 bear this out. More than 80% of its 2,000 respondents plan to shop as much or more in stores this year than they did last year. However, almost half of respondents said they only “sometimes” or “never” have a personalized in-store shopping experience.

This is most likely because a significant number of purchases and shopping trips occur anonymously. So, an investment must be made to track consumer preferences inside the store. Adding mobile marketing technology is a crucial cross-channel initiative that should be considered with any omnichannel re-organization.

#4: Maximizing Shelf Space

Retailers are thinking about ways to digitize the valuable commodity of shelf space by using native apps on a consumer’s phone as the delivery vehicle. Since most competing products are grouped together in stores, this provides an opportunity for consumer brands to steal sales while the consumer is in the aisle making product comparisons. Retailers can charge the brands for this privilege (most likely a percentage of the sale). There are several ways to approach digital shelf space:

Wi-Fi

Using the store’s available wireless network, Wi-Fi allows you to triangulate a consumer’s location in the store. If the store already has Wi-Fi, this can be a less expensive implementation than using beacons. Offers can be sent to consumers when they open the app in the aisle. The drawback is that the technology today is only accurate up to 10 feet. As this technology is perfected, it should be the most prevalent marketing vehicle.

Beacons

Retailers can place beacons throughout the store to detect where a consumer is via their mobile phone’s Bluetooth. When a consumer walks by a beacon, promotions, coupons and cross-sells can be delivered through notifications on the consumer’s mobile device. It is a very effective marketing medium, but it is costly to purchase and maintain the beacons. It also requires the build-out and maintenance of a mobile app for the delivery vehicle of promotions and coupons.

Product Scanning

A native app and the consumer’s mobile phone camera can enable product scanning. When a barcode is scanned using the camera to acquire more product information, a competing product can be displayed, offering a discount or some other promotion. This is the most accurate way of telling what products a customer is looking at and where they are in the store. It is a relatively inexpensive implementation and offers lower maintenance costs since there are no hardware requirements. The drawback is that the consumer must scan the product – an extra step that will limit the number of people a retailer can target in the store with offers.

#5: Acting Fast to Capitalize on Mobile Technology in the Store

Traffic numbers continue to rise for retailers that have implemented mobile web sites and apps. The Demandware Shopping Index found that, in Q2 2016, 49% of all traffic to retail sites in the U.S. came from smartphones. For those that haven’t, mobile offers an untapped vehicle for personalizing offers and marketing messages both online and in-store. Technologies such as GPS, beacons and notifications are now being used successfully inside the store to deliver marketing messages aimed at creating awareness and informing the consumer on discounts that will ultimately encourage a purchase.

To inspire a visit, retailers can use GPS technologies to target customers with marketing messages and offers as they approach a store. Beacon and Wi-Fi technology can be used to pinpoint where a consumer is in the store to provide offers when the product is within arm’s reach. Retailers are now developing native apps that offer convenience for delivering and storing coupons (physical coupons can be entered using the camera to scan QR or barcodes). Finally, retailers that have accumulated big data using physical loyalty programs can use native apps to leverage this information to make personalized offers based on previous in-store purchases.

A Customer-Centric Strategy

The thought of all the elements required to design and implement a mobility strategy can make retailers want to stick their heads in the sand. But mobility isn’t going away, so retailers must adopt or perish. The best practices listed above will help you with developing a comprehensive mobile strategy that puts the customer first from the beginning. A plan that gathers and uses data wisely to meet customers’ and prospects’ expectations in customized ways will enable retailers to realize their goals and remain relevant.


 

Jay Sunny Bajaj is DMI’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer. He was raised in the technology industry, where both of his parents independently built successful IT services businesses. He leveraged his deep understanding of the industry to found DMI in 2002. Under Bajaj’s leadership, DMI has received numerous accolades for its growth, innovation and outstanding client service. He was honored twice as a Smart100 CEO, an exclusive group of top-performing and highly respected CEOs in the Washington, D.C. region. Prior to founding DMI, he worked at e-business pioneers AppNet and CommerceOne.

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