Consumers have a plethora of opportunities and choices available at their fingertips when shopping online. Retailers have made it easier to make spontaneous purchases with advancements such as one-click buying and social shops. The quick purchase environment makes it more difficult than ever for retailers to maintain customer loyalty, but there are three things that retail marketers can do to ensure that your customers don’t lose sight of your brand while getting swept up in today’s digital shopping storm.
1. Know who your customers are
The first step in establishing customer loyalty is being able to properly identify who your customers are. This has become harder than ever due to all the channels consumers have today. Consumers can surf online through multiple devices or do things the old-fashioned way and go to your store. Each of these options creates a new data point and digital footprint. Individually these data points can create more confusion, but each gives us an opportunity to better understand our customer. If brands can link the collection of touchpoints and accurately identify people, they can make the right marketing decisions and have a more meaningful conversation the next time a consumer browses the Internet or shops in store. Check out our video about Experian’s Customer Data Engine to learn more.
2. Create personalized experiences
Customers have come to expect seamless and personalized experiences from the brands they interact with. By understanding your customers’ needs and delivering what they want, you are not only helping to bring in additional revenue but you are building a relationship and keeping the customer shopping with you. For example, if a home furnishing store was able to identify that a customer was renovating their dining room they could start promoting new options for a dining room table or an accompanying hutch. Retailers need to enrich the data they already hold in customer records by using external data to help clarify your target’s demographics or firmographics, attitudes and needs, behaviors and lifestyles, and any other preferences. Once you know everything you can about your consumer and can use that info to personalize, you then need a quick way to message to them. This can be done with custom landing pages on your website, direct mail, email marketing, addressable TV or digital display on advertising networks and social media platforms. By using data and insights to help brands interact with people in more meaningful ways, retailers can provide a more personalized and relevant experience, helping to establish loyalty. Check out our video about Experian’s Data Mixology to learn more.
3. Close the gap between sales and marketing
With your customers researching and transacting in any number of locations or channels on multiple devices, it has become harder to measure the impact your marketing campaign has on the final sale. Retail marketers need to be able to measure marketing effectiveness based on awareness, acquisition, retention and loyalty. Closed-loop measurement allows you to link purchase data with campaign exposure data. Meaning you can actually determine the online and offline sales effectiveness of your addressable campaigns. Check out our video about Experian’s OmniImpact to learn more.
Customer loyalty is up against today’s digital shopping storm. However, innovative organizations are focusing on using data and analytics to help employees understand consumers better. Providing relevant information to them in a timely manner makes their interactions with current and future customers more effective and more likely to return to the website. Being able to effectively identify your customers, using data to provide more personalized experiences, and measuring the success of your campaigns can help make sure customers keep coming back.
To learn more about Experian’s retail solutions, visit our website or contact us at experianmarketingsolutions@experian.com to learn more!