By Kathy Menis, Signal
With the end of August approaching, many people are in back-to-school mode: parents, students, teachers and retailers. As a marketer and a mom of two school-aged children, I have noticed that brands wasted no time getting in front of this audience early and often. Apparel retailers, office supply stores and big box brands have all launched marketing campaigns to win over millions of parents like me, who eMarketer predicts will collectively spend a whopping $828.81 billion getting their kids ready for the classroom this season.
In this critical and increasingly competitive season, retailers can achieve success by focusing on delivering one key thing to shoppers: relevance.
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What does relevance really mean? For back-to-school shoppers, relevance is shopping experiences that make life easier while they are trying to squeeze a few last drops out of their summer holidays and check off everything on their school supply lists. Below, this concept is broken down into three key components. Read on for lessons on relevance that will help retailers increase conversions during the back-to-school season, and earn long-time customer loyalty well beyond September.
1. Relevance means providing seamless browsing and buying experiences.
Back-to-school shoppers aren’t going to exclusively use one device or channel to research and make purchases. In fact, a study found that 70% of back-to-school shoppers rank price as the first or second-most significant factor affecting back-to-school purchase decisions. This means parents will be doing a lot of comparison shopping online and in stores to find the best deals. According to a recent study by Rubicon, mobile apps are becoming an especially popular way to do so, with 66% of back-to-school shoppers reporting that they use mobile apps to compare prices, and 64% using them to find out about sales promotions.
Simple and convenient shopping experiences that are seamless across every touch point will be most effective in engaging back-to-school shoppers looking for the best deals. This means making it easy for parents to browse and buy as they please. For example, 54.2% of consumers plan to use buy online/pick up in-store services this back-to-school season. A parent shopping for a mini-fridge for their college student’s dorm might prefer to pick up their purchase at the location closest to the school, rather than shipping it to the general mailroom or having to haul it in the car. Collecting first-party data and tying it back to the customer at the individual level will give retailers the ability to recognize shoppers as they move across channels to avoid disjointed experiences.
2. Relevance means keeping it personal no matter how back-to-school needs evolve.
Retailers realize that each customer is unique and expects offers and messages that are tailored to their individual interests, needs and preferences. In fact, a recent study found that personalization is a top goal for 7 in 10 marketers. And during the back-to-school season when shoppers may be searching for a variety of items ranging from crayons for their kindergarteners to laptops for their college students, personalization is incredibly important.
Retailers can power personalized, data-driven experiences with cross-channel customer profiles. The profiles should be created with people-based, authenticated identifiers — not just cookies that can expire or be deleted — to provide the most accurate, persistent view of customers that can be continuously updated as new engagements occur. With this single customer view, retailers have the information they need to serve personalized content throughout the duration of the relationship.
Consider, for instance, a parent who might have purchased a superhero-themed backpack for their middle school son last year. Now that son is entering high school, and an updated version is out of the question for this teenager who prefers more mature designs. Persistent profiles give retailers the advantage of knowing their customers better and better over time — knowledge that will increase their chances of making the sale over a competitor.
3. Relevance means zeroing in on real-time needs and filtering out unnecessary ads.
As buyers move throughout their back-to-school shopping journeys, their needs and expectations change. While the vast majority — 77% — of them start back-to-school shopping anywhere from two weeks to a month before the school season begins, there’s also a spike in retail activity into September and October, after the beginning of the school year when parents and students might realize the need for additional items. So a customer journey that might have started with initial research in July turns to making purchases in August and fulfilling last-minute items after school is in session.
Retailers need to recognize how consumers’ lives change over days, months and years to deliver messages and offers that are right on time, rather than inundating them with frequent and irrelevant ads. Imagine how frustrated a back-to-school shopper would be to receive a coupon in the mail for the very same pair of new gym shoes that she just purchased for her daughter online. The best way to deliver real-time relevance is by leveraging streaming data about who the customer is, what they need right now, and how they’re interacting with the brand through any channel. Retailers who can harness those live intent signals and connect them to persistent customer profiles to deliver meaningful ads and messaging will be more likely to make back-to-school sales.
Relevance and high-quality data go hand-in-hand. First-party engagement data enables retailers to create holistic customer profiles that are continuously updated and always actionable. This is the key to creating personalized experiences that honor context at the right moments in our complex, cross-device environment. Engaging with consumers on a one-to-one level across channels and devices is the secret to driving loyalty and strong sales during back-to-school and beyond.
Kathy Menis is an expert in technology marketing, with 20 years of experience creating and leading strategic, results-driven marketing programs. As SVP of Marketing at Signal, she oversees all marketing initiatives, including the company’s brand, product marketing, and go-to-market strategy. Menis joined Signal from Experian Marketing Services. In her role as Director of Product Marketing, she supported Experian’s Targeting division, which delivers comprehensive data, linkage and audience activation services to help advertisers optimize their omnichannel marketing. She has an M.B.A. in Marketing from Roosevelt University and a B.A. in Communications from DePaul University.
