- Sep 30, 2017
- 3 min
- Blog
Resources How To
How to respond to digital behaviour in-store and in-store behaviour online
Challenge We don’t need to tell you that the number of possible ways for a retailer to connect with their customers has mushroomed into a broader array of channels and devices than has ever been seen before. What’s more, in the case of retailers with both a physical store and an online presence, an additional challenge is to coordinate both of these interaction sets in a way that’s seamless for the customer but also maximises revenue.
Why you shouldn't rely on your ESP or Ecommerce Platform alone to identify website visitors
The sooner you can identify an individual and respond to their behaviours in a relevant and consistent way across all channels, the greater revenue and customer loyalty you will enjoy. However, using vertical solutions such as your ESP or Ecommerce Platform will normally have a number of limitations. Firstly, most Ecommerce solutions can only identify a customer that has provided contact details when purchasing or setting up an account, and is currently logged in.
Example abandoned basket strategy
A study by Econsultancy stated that despite the fact a basket reminder strategy can recover as much as 25% of abandoned revenue, a surprisingly high number of retailers (59%) don’t do this at all. And if they are executed in an omnichannel way (rather than purely as an email exercise) abandoned basket strategies can deliver even more impressive results. Here’s a strategy that worked well for a retailer: A man browses a selection of coats on their phone way home to work, adds one to his basket then fails to complete the purchase.
3 steps to personalised customer journeys
If you can tick these three things off your list, you’re well on the way to achieving fully personalised customer journeys for each and every customer. 1 - Understand each individual Have they bought from you before, or do they just browse your site? How frequently do they browse/buy? Which items do they view most? Which touchpoints do they use to intereact with you? Which channels are they most responsive to?
How to identify anonymous browsers
If you know how each customer interacts with your brand across all touchpoints, then you can personalise accordingly. One of the first steps to this understanding is to encourage anonymous browsers to volunteer their email address, often on a newsletter sign up form. Once you have an email address you can build a bigger picture of an individual. When a person clicks on a link within an email you can link their previously anonymous web browsing behaviour to their identity.
Personalised customer journeys - how to get them right
In our multichannel world, a customer will interact with a brand many times, across multiple touchpoints (inc online, offline and in-store), before they buy. Each journey will happen over a series of hours, days or even weeks. A customer may research a product on their mobile, pop into a store to try it on, view it on their laptop during their lunch hour, speak to customer services about it, browse product reviews on their tablet on the train on the way home from work and ask for friends’ opinions on social media; before buying on their laptop the next day.
Move your personalisation on to the next stage…
AO.com’s John Roberts’ speech at Retail Week’s Tech and Ecommerce Conference echoed the sentiments of the many retailers that we work with, and talk to, each day. Personalisation is crucial to business success. And, yes, it needs to be undertaken in an intelligent way. Retailers ‘get’ that personalisation isn’t just about ‘Dear <Name>’. They’ve moved on from manual segmentation. They know that ‘people who bought this also bought this’ is essentially communicating with a segment that in reality may or may not have the same characteristics.
Ellis Brigham 'Personalisation - striking the right balance between cool and creepy'
You may have read Zak Hood of Ellis Brigham’s comments about their personalisation journey with Persomi in Retail Week. Read on to hear the full interview and tips and advice about personalisation and how to ensure that your approach is ‘cool’ rather than ‘creepy’ How do you ensure that consumers are happy to share the relevant data to enable personalisation and is this a big challenge? Customers don’t need to share data for us to be able to deliver personalised content, they just need to accept that we use cookies on our website to improve the overall browsing experience when they visit us online.
Personalisation: What's Stopping You?
Is personalisation on your ‘to do’ list? The retailers we speak to cite the following as the key barriers to getting personalisation up and running. “I know personalisation’s crucial - but I’ve got no time to tackle it right now”. “Lack of budget”. “I’m still figuring out how to personalise across all touchpoints- we use a variety of systems for communicating with our customers”. We’ve listened, and created Persomi in response to this: Swift set up: Our existing clients have been staggered at how little they have had to do in terms of set up.
