By Matthew Tilley,
MaxPoint
The future of retail is becoming increasingly hard to
predict. It is clear that online, mobile and offline channels are converging,
but aside from a few first movers, who, how and when convergence will happen to
any particular retailer remains a mystery.
As retail competitors and consumer expectations escalate, one
question remains essential: “How can I make it as easy as possible for people to
buy from me?”
The answer lies at the heart of retail merchandising,
regardless of channels – but finding it hasn’t been easy. Today’s retailers
have more information and tools than ever to understand their customers, but more
data hasn’t made merchandising simpler. This is due primarily to the fact that many
retailers still keep their online and offline data siloed. This practice no
longer makes sense. Shoppers have blurred the lines between channels, so their path-to-purchase
data should also converge.
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Of course, retail data convergence isn’t automatic or easy.
But it does present exciting opportunities for breaking down barriers to
understanding the path to purchase:
Barriers to in-store
purchases
A key challenge for brick-and-mortar retailers is that they
simply can’t track their customer’s behaviors at the level of their e-Commerce counterparts.
E-Commerce marketers have deep insight into visitor experiences: from real-time
pathing through products to understanding what converts and what gets
abandoned.
Imagine the power of having the same data about in-store behaviors.
For example, if a retailer could highlight areas in the store with high traffic
and low conversion, they might add more associates to boost sales. Understanding
the volume and speed to purchase of low consideration items might prompt faster
checkout strategies to avoid frustrating customers who just won’t wait.
Brick-and-mortar retailers can have these insights, if they acquire
the ability to sense and respond to in-store visitors with the same depth as they
have with their web site visitors.
Barriers between
channels
Most consumers see a retailer as a single entity, regardless
of which buying channel they use. With this one-brand view comes an expectation
of a seamless, great shopping experience, whether they buy online, pick up in-store
or walk the aisles. For example, when a trusted retailer sends a coupon via
email or to a mobile device, the customer expects to be able to use it anywhere,
in particular at their neighborhood store. The customer doesn’t care about
online vs. in-store promotion – and why should they?
If customers aren’t differentiating between dotcom and brick-and-mortar,
neither should retailers. In fact, such distinctions only cause friction. Converging
data across channels enables more seamless marketing to improve the customer
experience.
Barriers in messaging
It’s no secret that the more a retailer knows and acts on deep
knowledge about their customers, the more likely the customer is to be
delighted and to keep coming back.
This fact drives smart retailers to gather and analyze data
on their shoppers to create marketing profiles and personas. But keeping that
data separated between channels only gives a partial view of the customer. In the
converged world, there must also be a converged view of the customer across
channels.
Matching data about what a customer does online to what they
reveal about themselves in the store presents insights into their trip mission
and the mindset they bring to each purchase. These insights can inform
strategies and messaging, such as where to position in-store pickup or what
out-of-store marketing to deliver. A full view of each customer puts the
retailer in position to make the right moves towards a seamless and enjoyable
buyer’s journey.
Getting to this barrier-free future is only possible with
data — and not just more data, but expertly converged online and offline
insights that reveal customer behavior and sales performance across channels. Of
course, the challenge and effort of ingesting, mapping and assessing these vast
data sets is significant. But so is the payoff: the ability to deliver amazing
experiences that make it as easy as possible for customers to buy and keep coming
back.
As Senior Director of Marketing, Matthew Tilley leads
customer and partner marketing at MaxPoint,
a marketing technology company that generates hyperlocal intelligence to
optimize brand and retail performance. Before joining MaxPoint, he led the
marketing of promotion settlement and consulting services at Inmar, one of the
leading digital and paper coupon process in the U.S. There, he was recognized
as one of the coupon industry’s leading voices on consumer promotion response.
He also spent time working in the agency world serving clients in a variety of
industries, including banking, apparel and healthcare. Tilley graduated from
Bob Jones University with a B.A. in Public Relations Journalism and from Wake
Forest University with a M.B.A.
