Bridging The Gap Between Retail Marketing And Lasting Customer Experiences

By Mike Shanker, QuickPivot

Today, consumers interact with brands differently. According to Gallup, American consumers are vigilant in making sure they get the best value. They typically research, compare, seek out recommendations and ask questions before making a decision. Purchasing a product is more of an emotional act for customers than ever before. With ever-expanding channels at their fingertips, they choose the time and place to research and buy. Consumers continuously change their shopping habits. They have no tolerance for brands that do not deliver what they want, when they want it, wherever they are. Accenture surveyed 15,000 adult consumers on their retail shopping habits, with 49% reporting the best thing retailers can do to improve their shopping experience is better integration of shopping channels, while 89% say more choice of those channels is crucial.

To be a successful marketer, your goal is to increase sales. To meet this objective, you need to find ways to increase consumer purchase frequency and average order value. The primary challenge is a data challenge. You have complex data, organizational silos, multiple vendors, and no consolidated, real-time view of the results of outbound and inbound campaigns. According to NetProspex, 98% of companies plan to increase their use of data-driven marketing over the coming year. However, they also report that 84% of marketing databases are barely functional, missing crucial targeting elements like location or phone number. 

Coupling the data problem with the multiple channels consumers now use makes it difficult, if not impossible, to promote singular, omnichannel relationships and keep the attention of the modern consumer. In order to win, you need a competitive edge. 

You need to be “always on” — monitoring the present, understanding the past, and adding context and value to each customer interaction. You need to treat customers and prospects as individuals at every stage. You need to communicate with them on their preferred channels, in ways that are timely and driven by both interest and convenience. You need the ability to be aware of, engage, and pivot to consumers’ needs, offering them what they want, when they want it, wherever they are.

By leveraging real time data and insights, you can manage omnichannel customer experiences. With contextualized content, you have the agility and flexibility to design perfectly timed and tailored messages. If you adapt and evolve, you can market at the speed of the customer and win — and so will you brand.

The future of successful retail hinges upon retailers being able to climb the following ladder:

1. Retailers need to run effective omnichannel campaigns on a regular basis across email, display, SEM, SEO, social and mobile — and orchestrate these campaigns in an integrated way to achieve reasonable ROI on their marketing efforts. This is foundational — the first step toward embracing the customer at the customer’s own terms and speed.
2. Retailers need the tools and analytics to determine their optimal channel mix. These tools need to be able to answer key budget and channel distribution questions such as: Should I be spending more on display vs. Google AdWords? Should I use email only around these kinds of promotions? What should I spend in each channel? What’s my optimal channel mix for this customer or segment?
3. Retailers then need to understand how customer behaviors differ by channel. The questions retail marketers need to answer at this stage: What kind of behaviors and patterns do I see in the channel mix, e.g., are professional, college educated women ages 21-35 using a tablet and accessing the mobile versions of our web site? If that is the case, how do they get access to promotions? Are they opening our emails? If asked to opt into text-message, do they do it? Do they allow us to cookie them?
4. Finally, retailers need the ability to align merchandise by channel: Now that they have identified segments with mobile devices, for example, coming from these places, what segments most frequently purchase online vs. what segments prefer to shop in our stores? When do they purchase? Are the purchase influenced by season, holiday, day of the week?

To bridge the gap between traditional push-based marketing toward lasting customer experiences that delight, retail marketers need to address the first foundational step in the four-step retail marketing evolution ladder:

• Listen for key customer actions and context across digital, social, mobile and physical locations;
• Segment and target in real time using sophisticated database analytics (structured and unstructured data); and
• Engage customers in real time via targeted, personalized and meaningful communications and offers that increase customer stickiness, brand affiliation and loyalty, and sales.

Mike Shanker is the CEO and co-founder of QuickPivot, the leader in real-time cross-channel marketing automation solutions and services for B2B and B2C enterprises. An expert in marketing data, customer relationship management, and operations, Mike has over 25 years of leadership experience in software and services companies. Mike has provided executive leadership and increased business value at Interleaf, Comtex Systems, Broadway and Seymour, and Oracle.