Personalisation has been the mot du jour of the retail industry for years. But how many brands are truly nailing the tactic? Personalised shopping experiences have dramatically changed the way consumers want to engage with retailers, but many brands are only just scratching the surface, or are creating personalised experiences through one particular channel, but not through another.
The multichannel consumer has arrived. In addition to websites, people can now connect with retailers through smartphones, tablets, emails, social networks, physical stores and contact centres. As a result, multichannel shopping has become the new normal. However, consumers now expect highly individualised and seamless experiences at every phase of the shopping journey. Consumers don’t live in one channel, and they don’t expect retailers to do so either. Therefore everything – from the messaging, to the look and the feel and, of course, the shopping experience itself– needs to be interconnected and consistent. Enter omnichannel personalisation – the concept of creating a seamlessly connected, single customer experience across multichannel touchpoints. Through omnichannel personalisation, retailers can speak to shoppers on an individual basis, with the right content, at the right time, regardless of the channel being used to interact with the brand. With the right technology at the helm, retailers can also achieve this personalisation nirvana at scale.
Personalisation spans a broad spectrum and means different things to different people. To make things more complicated, every shopper is different. However, whether they are a first-time visitor or a loyal returning customer, the need to deliver a relevant personalised shopping experience is the same.
According to Gartner Research, by 2018 organisations that have fully invested in all types of online personalisation will outsell companies that have not by more than 30%. This means retailers need to look at new ways to provide shoppers with highly individualised experiences to encourage purchase and drive sales. Here are just a few of the ways retailers can master omnichannel personalisation.
Don’t neglect email
Once upon a time, before the advent of social media and mobile, email was the killer outbound channel for retailers. In many ways, it still is, but it is now just one of many ways to entice, persuade and woo shoppers.
On an average day, how many emails from brands land in consumers’ inboxes? How many of those emails are actually opened? Email inboxes are a breeding ground for spam, meaningless junk mail and a whole host of brand emails fighting for attention. Some retailers continue to send emails as part of a batch and blast, mass-marketing campaign. These emails are the first to be deleted. Instead, think about an email that reads: ‘Dan, this belt will go perfectly with your new jeans.’ Knowing that Dan has recently bought a pair of jeans from its website, the retailer is now providing him with a call to action; something to consider. This is true email personalisation – in-the-moment recommendations and content, personalised on the point of open, based on each individual’s previous purchase and browsing history.
Data in, personalisation out
If a brand is a car, and personalisation is the engine, then data is the fuel that powers the engine. The more information you know about each shopper, the more individualised experiences can be.
True personalisation focuses on the individual shopper’s in-the-moment interests and layers in available historical information to create the most relevant experience.
By ingesting information on real-time shopper behaviour and combining it with previous history, contextual data (i.e. location, time of day, weather), social media interests, point of sale data from in-store interactions and product reviews, retailers can assume the role of a trusted online personal shopper, attuned to the needs and desires of each shopper.
Real-time profiling for long term success
Many retailers can capture shopper behavioural data in real time, but they’re not processing it in the actual moment and at the individual level. Therefore, the retailer is unable to deliver any targeting or personalisation in real time.
Retailers should partner with a provider who can support real-time profiling which instantly collects behavioural and contextual traits to create shopper profiles that boost the experience towards the individual’s in-the-moment needs. The data can be used to better predict shopper intent – what will the shopper want or need next? Is there an opportunity for an upsell or cross-sell? Real-time profiling is particularly effective for tackling cart abandonment. By remarketing abandoners with real-time, personalised content and promotions, retailers can quickly recover a potentially lost sale. A last-minute nudge can shift the balance in favour of the retailer over an eager competitor waiting in the wings.
By Meyar Sheik, CEO and co-founder of Certona
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