Omnichannel is everything, and those who understand that, win. For the past few years, the winners of the holiday shopping season have been retail giants Best Buy and Macy’s. That’s because these retailers have understood for years a truth that many are just waking up to: customers now expect the brands they know and respect to be on, always. But, what exactly does that mean? They expect to find the products they see online to be available in the store, and vice versa. They expect to be able to buy that 52” Smart TV from their smartphone at 2:00PM and have it delivered by dinnertime.
Let this be a lesson to the wise: Without omnichannel, there can be no retail digital marketing success.
The cold truth is that consumers don’t actually need to set foot in store anymore. With options like Amazon delivering low-priced, brand-name items to their doorstep, why would they bother to pull on their snow boots, warm up the car, and drive to crowded store?
Architect and retail maven Peter Marino wonders if the era of retail browsing is over altogether. “It used to be very much part of my weekend: the social experience of going to a store like Barneys, seeing what was new, maybe eating at the restaurant. It was part of the recreation. And then maybe you bought something, maybe you didn’t, depending, but I feel that’s changed now,” according to Style. He goes to add that, “part of that, I think, is that everything’s online, so I don’t need to go to the store just to see what’s new.”
That shift to online may mean that fewer purchases are made in-store, according to Marino, but it doesn’t diminish the importance of a consistent experience from store to site. “…The attitude of luxury brands, which I think is so clever, is for all four out of the four people who go into the store, you have to make it an aspirational experience…And you leave with a positive attitude toward the brand. Now, you don’t really get that online. You don’t go like, ‘Wow.’”
However, that doesn’t mean that achieving the same in-store experience online is impossible or unachievable; retailers like Sephora and J. Crew have done a commendable job creating memorable experiences online as well as in-store. Sephora puts data to work to create personalized experiences customers love, from their loyalty program emails to their just-for-you dynamic homepage messaging and collections. J. Crew makes the experience of shopping online nearly identical to the in-store appearance with the use of great photography and curated outfits. As these retailers demonstrate, the amazing experience customers have in the store should be replicated across channels, from the online store to the mobile site, to every interaction consumers have with your retail brand.
Programmatic technology can facilitate those rich brand experiences. Retailers can reach their customers and prospective customers in a targeted way with messaging that’s updated in real-time, across a myriad of channels. Videos, in-app banners, Facebook Newsfeed ads can, and should, all be used to drive brand awareness and ultimately conversion. By activating customer data, retailers can ensure messages are persuasive and relevant to the recipient; by leveraging rich media, retailers can deliver digital brand experiences that mirror the in-store experience.
Of course, as the digital marketing technology advances, so must the marketing strategies that employ the technologies in question. A successful omnichannel strategy cannot be executed with a disparate set of point solutions. To create a 360-degree view of the customer and a smooth experience across channels, marketers must have the right tools to activate data against media at relevant points along the path to purchase. Gartner cites the need for a Digital Marketing Hub, which “seeks to answer marketer’s call for a coordination of complex, fragmented and expanding marketing activities around a common view of the customer.” Does your retail business have a hub, or marketing operating system, in place to engage customers across channels?
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