Gone are the days when retailers could rely on tried and trusted discounts and offers to quickly and easily gauge the needs and preferences of their customers who walked into their brick-and-mortar stores. Today, it is highly likely that a customer surfs for a product on an eCommerce website, walks into a store to touch, feel, and probably even try the product, and eventually ends up buying it via a mobile app, only to drop by a store to take physical delivery!
Such deeply complex customer journeys demand a scalable and integrated approach from retailers, and we’ll show you just how that can be achieved!
Customer Acquisition and Retention Is Becoming Increasingly Difficult
The challenges facing retailers in comprehending complex customer journeys are growing manifold. What was once a straightforward path is now a meandering journey with several twists and turns along the way. And there are several reasons for this.
Increasing competition, the rapid pace of technological innovation, and the growing demands of the average customer have made customer acquisition and retention a colossal task. Add to it the growing list of devices and channels customers are using to research, search for, and purchase products. Now, here’s where the problems begin. How do retailers:
- Track customer activity across different devices, channels, and touchpoints?
- Deliver contextual advertising that is tailored to customer behavior?
- Provide seamless and consistent omnichannel experiences?
- Keep customers engaged throughout the purchasing journey?
- Personalize and tailor services and offerings to fit different audience segments?
- Identify and resolve customer issues swiftly and efficiently?
- Monitor customer feedback and leverage it to identify areas of improvement?
- Measure, track, and optimize customer experience metrics?
- Ensure data-driven marketing while balancing personalization and privacy?
- Respond to customer queries effectively across the many communication channels?
The Only Way To Drive Conversions Is via an Integrated Approach
As customers zigzag through various touchpoints from discovery to final purchase, brands must have a structure in place to track these complex journeys and offer services and recommendations that are personalized to their unique requirements.
With studies showing that existing customers spend 31% more than new customers and are also likely to try on new products, taking an integrated approach is the only way retailers can drive conversions and ensure retention.
An integrated approach allows retailers to offer the same experiences to customers throughout their journeys and across channels. Such consistency can aid in improving loyalty while also increasing the chances of repeat purchases and long-term relationships.
Here are some tips to enable an integrated approach:
1. Understand Your Customers
The first step to driving conversions is to understand customer needs and preferences. Creating clear user personas based on demographics, behavior, transaction, and browsing history is important to map out the customer journey. Next, make sure to curate and scale content to fit different channels and enrich it continuously with added data layers.
2. Craft Consistent Omnichannel Experiences
Consistent omnichannel experiences are directly linked to conversions. Whether your customer is researching products on the web, comparing features on an eCommerce site, or walking into your store in a mall, you must offer an experience that is consistent (and relevant) throughout.
3. Track Customer Journeys
Deeply complex customer journeys need a robust mechanism in place to monitor and optimize the user experience. To do this, you must set up the right processes and systems to track multichannel user experiences and capture interactions across channels.
4. Have a Single View of Your Customers
Since conversions transcend several channels and devices, having a single view of customer needs, preferences, and behaviors can go a long way in driving more conversions. Make sure to remove organizational silos and unify data sources to craft a customer experience that is highly tailored and consistent.
5. Have an Omnichannel Support Strategy in Place
In today’s era, a customer support conversation might begin on Instagram, continue with text messages, and end with a phone call. With 96% of buyers considering customer service as the primary factor behind loyalty, crafting an omnichannel support strategy makes it easy for customers to reach out to you – regardless of what channel they’re using. Such a strategy can ensure that any assistance or advice you offer is consistent across call centers, website chat, SMS, messaging, email, and social media.
6. Invest in Programmatic Advertising
As customers get bombarded with marketing content from different brands, targeting audiences when they are ready to take action is becoming increasingly important. Investing in future-ready programmatic advertising technology is a great way to deliver timely and personalized messages and offers. Backed by data science, programmatic advertising also makes it easy to manage digital inventories and uncover new ways to generate additional revenue or create targeted campaigns.
The Bottom Line
As customer experience continues to be a key determinant of brand loyalty, it is time retailers took an integrated approach to customer acquisition and retention. Ensuring consistency across personalization, self-service, and real-time resolutions will go a long way in boosting loyalty and enhancing customer lifetime value.
At Aroscop, we combine advanced programmatic ad serving and RTB technologies with analytics, consumer insights, machine learning, and AI to help retailers succeed in today’s constantly evolving digital landscape. Contact us to learn how you can expand your market reach, unearth insights on customer needs, and drive better returns on your marketing spend.
