According to a study from MIT, over 80% of shoppers will check prices online before shopping in-store, and a third of those will check prices from a mobile device while in-store. The study also found that $1.1 trillion store sales were directly influenced by their web presence. What does this mean for retail businesses? It means that creating an omni-channel experience for your customers is more important than ever.
What is Omni-Channel Retail?
Omni-channel is an approach to marketing and retail that utilizes multiple communication channels to reach customers. The key is that all platforms need to be aware of the other, and create a seamless experience. The customer is the focus, and they need to be able to switch between channels quickly and efficiently, getting the same information and experience wherever they go. Unlike multi-channel marketing approaches, each channel in an omni-channel approach intuitively knows how a customer interacted with another channel, which is used to help guide and continue the customer experience.
As new technologies emerge and more consumers demand it, it is becoming increasingly important for retailers to extend the brick-and-mortar experience to their online channels. Having a presence online and offline has practically become a requirement for some shoppers to even consider buying or using your product. In fact, Forrester Research projects that online retail sales are expected to outpace brick-and-mortar sales by 2017, reaching an estimated $370 billion annually.
More consumers are demanding an omni-channel shopping experience, from buying a product to returning it. Forbes reports that 98% of people believe that purchase, delivery and returns should be easily available across multiple channels. This new shift towards omni-channel shopping is not only in-demand though — it’s increasing profits and retaining customers for the retailers that embrace it. According to a report by IDC Retail Insights, retailers utilizing multiple channels in their marketing and retail saw between a 15 and 35 percent increase in average transaction size, along with a 5 to 10 percent increase in loyalty customers’ profitability.
However, fulfilling that demand requires retailers to adopt data-driven, omni-channel marketing and retail practices. How can retailers create an effective omni-channel experience?
1. Build Your Presence
First, brands need to build their presence on both online and offline channels. Businesses can do this by using data insights to create an omni-channel marketing strategy. In their strategy, retailers should identify who their target audiences are, how to reach them, and what messages will garner the most responses.
Retailers should think about how one channel or message will affect another, and make sure to keep the experience the same across the different channels. If you include email marketing in your campaign, with which other channels will that message interact? For example, a clothing store is throwing a spring sale and launches a giveaway or sweepstakes on social media to promote it. Through that campaign, they can gather email addresses of potential or current customers when they enter the giveaway. Then, they can send an email message to select recipients’ right before the sale ends to reinforce the social media campaign, driving them either in the door of a brick-and-mortar store, or to make a purchase online.
2. Utilize the Power of Data
If you already have the basic data for your target audiences, it is important to use data appending and data hygiene services to make sure that it is accurate, robust (with multiple communication points) and up-to-date. DataMentors provides a number of data services that can help retailers increase their number of contacts and clean up their pre-existing lists. This is especially useful for omni-channel marketing campaigns. For instance, if you only have the phone number for a customer, how will you include them in a campaign that uses multiple channels? Data appending services can take one piece of contact information and use it to identify other contact information needed to drive your campaigns.
3. Track, Analyze and Improve Results
An essential part of any marketing campaign is tracking the performance and measuring results to help you improve its effectiveness. There are more tools and data at retailers’ disposal in order to track their campaigns. However, it is still necessary to analyze data points to identify what worked well and what did not. Using these insights, retailers can analyze which channels are most effective, which offer the best customer experience, which channels could be improved, and how they influence another and adjust their omni-channel campaigns accordingly.
Retail businesses can’t afford to not embrace omni-channel approaches. As mobile and other technologies continue to change the shopping landscape, retailers need to adjust their efforts. Omni-channel retail can help deliver a seamless, intuitive shopping experience, which can increase customer satisfaction, profitability and loyalty.
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