Your customers have taken matters into their own hands, literally and figuratively. With the help of portable devices, they research their products online, seek reviews from their friends on social media networks, scout the web for coupons, visit stores and browse using in-store mobile apps, decide to buy it online instead because of lucrative deals.
They also get to choose from various delivery options to purchase a product of their choice at the price of their choice. Unbelievably, this is the purchase journey of most of your customers with very little or almost no brand intervention or interaction.
So, how can brands acquire, engage and retain customers with such less window or space for involvement? The answer – by ensuring that you satisfy their expectations at each touch-point, at each stage of their purchase journey by following these best practices:
Superior and Enhanced Experience Across Devices
Your customers are channel-agnostic. They don’t care whether they find an offer while driving to work, or while browsing before going to sleep. What they do want is that the channel they choose to engage with delivers the most superior experience so they continue the engagement and keep coming back for more. The number of devices used by a shopper is on the rise (tablets, smartphones, PCs etc.) and retailers and brands have to be able to excel in managing experiences across each one of them.
Use data to understand if your customers are satisfied with their shopping experience and find out how you can improve it using surveys, point of sale data, by sending feedback mails, looking at your social media engagement etc. This intelligence will allow you to create a unified channel experience for your customers.
Personalized Offers Without Invading Customer Privacy
Brands have to strike that fine balance of leveraging customer data to improve their experiences while ensuring that they are not invading customers’ privacy. By employing predictive analytics to big data, retailers can use customer data to increase marketing and sales effectiveness. Customization can be in the form of digital coupons, mobile loyalty programs, exclusive branded content, and social media contests or promotions that together can be used to drive purchases.
At the same time, cyber-security is a pressing issue for online shoppers. 43% of people who refrain from shopping online because they are worried about the data security. Brands have to ensure that while they make efforts to personalize and provide the best offers to their customers based on their preferences and past-purchases; their data is protected and they are made to feel secure about their private information.
Earn Their Trust
There is an emerging trend in the retail industry where multi-channel buyers prefer to go to select retailers and search for what they want using different channels / devices as opposed to engaging with large number of retailers. 46% of multichannel shoppers frequented just one retailer, and 48% shopped with between 2 to 5 retailers. Just 5% said they used 6 to 10 retailers (Source: PwC).
86% of people shop at their favorite retailers because they trust them. Buyers have an emotional connection with brands; just like they do with their purchase decisions and this is what retailers must try to win – either by a promise of fair price, great quality, community good and more.
For instance, Costco delivers a great product set at a highly communicated 13% margin (tremendous value delivery), along with a consistent experience that is valued highly by customers. Despite a membership fee, their subscriber base only continues to grow annually.
A combination of trust, technical agility and personalization are starting points to winning your customers’ long-standing loyalty. To learn more about customer behavior and online shopping, stay tuned for our future posts at MarketStar.
