Creating a consistent brand experience is key to successful marketing campaigns for multichannel retailers. However, personalization is playing a more vital role in piquing shopper interest and driving purchases, leading to increased focus on product recommendations, as well as tailored offers and marketing based on customer data.
Oreck, a midmarket manufacturer of vacuum cleaners and other cleaning appliances, successfully leveraged customer data to shorten lead-to-close cycles, improve browsing and buying experiences and decrease shopping cart abandonment. Moreover, monthly ROI was as high as 184% compared to the baseline, according to a company statement.
By partnering with Knotice, a provider of data management, analytics and digital messaging solutions, Oreck eliminated channel-centric silos from email, search, integrated display, and its web site. Additionally, the manufacturer was able to pinpoint the impact of utilizing multiple channels to display compelling calls-to-action and offers relevant to specific customers.
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In fact, company research indicated that the likelihood of conversion for consumers who accessed three brand messages via email, display and paid search was 32%, versus the 4% probability for consumers seeing three brand messages on only one channel.
Together, Oreck and Knotice integrated all of the brand’s pre-existing customer information to develop profiles, which offered in-depth insight on order history, detailed behaviors on its web site and responses to email marketing messages. Additionally, “unknown profiles” were developed based on anonymous behaviors from visitors who did not complete a purchase.
All information was stored in Knotice’s universal profile management system, Concentri, to track trends and analyze paths-to-purchase across channels, as well as response to specific marketing messages. This thorough analysis played a major role in Oreck’s transition to personalized retailing and integrated marketing, according to Tarik Dekkar, Head of Digital Marketing and CRM for Oreck.
“It is through analysis and constant testing that we are able to decide which segments to personalize as well as the optimal type of personalized content,” Dekkar told Retail TouchPoints. “When a customer sees or interacts with a marketing message, that impression is passed on to us. By reading what the customer saw or clicked on, we are able to customize the experience accordingly.”
Aggregating and analyzing data across digital touch points enables Oreck to retarget customers off-site via email, search and display ads effectively. Once shoppers visit the web site, they are more likely to browse inventory via targeted offers and messaging displayed on specific site content zones. These strategies increase likelihood that consumers complete a purchase by accelerating the customer lifecycle.
“The more channels we can incorporate into the customer purchase path, the greater the likelihood that shoppers will convert,” Dekkar said. “If consumers come in using paid search but do not purchase, we then use display retargeting to bring them back to the site by incenting them based on where they left the site, what product they viewed and what paid search term segment initially encouraged them to view the site. The display banner — or email, if we have that information — is targeted to that experience to close the sale.”
Email plays a vital role in Oreck’s customer engagement strategy, according to Dekkar. However, prior to partnering with Knotice, “deploying emails was lengthy and inefficient,” he said. Now the merchant can “deploy more emails, better target recipients and easily segment within the tool.” To further maximize the brand’s cross-channel success, Oreck and Knotice will be honing in on mobile email design and messaging. As of May 2012, mobile emails account for more than 20% of total opens, Dekkar reported.
“We constantly are evolving our approach to marketing and growing our relationship with Knotice,” Dekkar said. “In the near future, we’ll focus on cross-channel campaigns that will integrate mobile into our marketing mix. We want to understand whether a mobile user behaves any differently in response to our targeting. For example, we can determine if they require more or less touch points, as well as the most efficient way to optimize their experience.”
A Retailer’s Achilles Heel
Although data collection and analysis played a key role in the success of Oreck’s cross-channel initiatives, developing and maintaining an efficient data strategy remains as “the Achilles heel” for retailers, according to Brian Deagan, CEO and Co-founder of Knotice.
“If you don’t have the data, and you don’t have the measurement capability, then chances are you’re not going to be successful in the long term,” Deagan said. “Without these elements, you can’t do [cross-channel marketing] nearly as effectively.”
Though the influx of data available across channels — from social media, to mobile, to in-store transactions — has provided retailers with an abundance of customer information, many retailers still are challenged to implement solutions or strategies that centralize data in a single repository, and offer the ability to measure information.
“The measurement in itself is going to drive a lot of the optimization and messaging best practices,” Deagan said. “Having that measurement, or analytics insight, is going to help retailers determine the best practices for their organizations. Having that measurement, or analytical insight, provides a firm qualitative backdrop that will help retailers determine the best practices for their organizations.”
