Retail marketers are still struggling to control their digital channels and promotional technologies, with 49% needing to contact their organization’s IT department at least once a week to carry out their role effectively, according to a survey from Episerver.
A relatively small group, 15%, need to work with their IT department on marketing-related tasks on a daily basis. One in five respondents say that working with other departments is holding back their ability to drive change.
Episerver recommends that retailers struggling with these internal relationships should:
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Focus on usability rather than features in the next platform selection, so that marketers and merchandisers can drive digital experience, such as landing page creation and campaign optimization, without relying on IT; and
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Move to a cloud platform (if they haven’t already) to generate automatic updates, so marketers can keep up with new developments in their platforms as and when they are released, without long waiting times.
Mobile Becomes Near-Unanimous Marketing Priority
Marketers recognize that they must adopt mobile as part of their retail strategy, with 96% now incorporating mobile into their approach and 77% agreeing that mobile has become an “important touch point” for their brands.
And they’re carrying out these strategies more effectively, with only 20% of retail brands still relying on mobile redirects rather than responsive designs. More than half (56%) of marketers are incorporating responsive sites into their campaigns. In fact, the survey anticipates that there will be near-complete adoption of responsive design within the next 12 months.
There’s less confidence when it comes to creating an omnichannel experience for consumers. Despite having an abundance of data to analyze, nearly half (46%) of marketers think that they can’t create an omnichannel approach because of a lack of insights into customer journeys. The survey noted that these brands can leverage machine learning algorithms to combine data and context, serving up content and product recommendations automatically to increase conversion.
The report, titled: Beyond Mobile: The State of Digital Commerce 2017, includes original research from 1,200 UK consumers, 100 professional marketers and 100 brands across five retail sectors.
