Customer data is driving the next generation of omnichannel marketing strategies. What you can do to stay ahead of your competition.

Every time you interact with your customers, you have the opportunity to aggregate invaluable information. That data can inform your marketing strategies if you leverage it and turn it into actionable insights.

McKinsey predicts that data-activated marketing can boost total sales by 15 to 20 percent (and even more for digital sales) while significantly improving the ROI on marketing budget across all channels.

These strategies are based on a customer’s real-time needs, interests, and behaviors.

We’re not talking about the same old “Hi [ FIRST NAME ]” kind of personalization.

The way companies used to segment their audience is too isolated and simplistic, failing to take into account the complex manner in which consumers interact with brands across all channels, and at various stages of their customer journeys.   

With the information available to today’s businesses, it’s not the lack of data that plagues marketers.

Instead, they have access to more data than they know how to utilize effectively.

Thankfully, new technologies are emerging to help brands leverage the vast amount of customer data to deliver personalized messages across all customer touch points, creating an exceptional customer experience.

Personalized Marketing Campaigns

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Here’s how you can activate customer data by implementing personalized marketing campaigns across all channels:

1. Create Single Customer View

A 360-degree customer profile is the foundation of any successful omnichannel personalized marketing campaign.

By using an omnichannel marketing software, you can consolidate all customer data and collect signals from ongoing interactions to aid in the creation of targeted messages and offers.

2. Make Decisions Based On Signals

When customers interact with your brand at different touch points, they leave behind “signals” that can inform your next personalized marketing message.

These “signals” could be cart abandonment, Facebook “check in” at a store, entering an area within your “geo fence,” or returning to your website shortly after a purchase.

3. Deliver Real-Time Personalized Experiences and Offers

By combining signals from a customer’s real-time interaction with your brand and the customer’s history, habits, and preferences, you can deliver the most relevant content or offer in the right place at the right time.

Utilize a centralized platform to implement your personalized marketing campaign so you can deliver consistent messaging across all channels.

This will ensure that all content is working synergistically to move your customers seamlessly along the buyer’s journey.

4. Send Personalized Email

Consumers are fed up with getting one-size-fits-all content and promotions that have nothing to do with their interests, preferences, or habits.

Email is one of the best ways to tailor unique messages. Having them sent at the appropriate frequency positions your brand as relevant and valuable.

It’s an easy way to reach mobile users, a transactional medium perfect for coupons, and allows you to track metrics to understand what works so you can refine your campaigns.

5. Offer Individualized Content On Website

When your customers log onto your website, you can leverage their behavioral data (such as browsing history and interactions with your brand) to deliver relevant and valuable content such as useful articles, localized information, product recommendations or special offers.

Personalized Marketing Campaigns

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Your customer data is a treasure trove of information and it’s the next frontier in personalized marketing.

With the help of today’s technology, you can now tap into that knowledge to help maximize engagement and increase ROI.

Explore our library of resource to see how you can get more leads and generate more sales with omnichannel marketing.

Even though Amazon’s recent acquisition of Whole Foods has brought omnichannel grocery retail to our attention, Walmart has been profiting from the synergy of its well established online and offline grocery retail channels for quite some time.

The company is well positioned to take advantage of the consumer trend in omnichannel retail, in which consumers expect a seamless and consistent user experience across all channels and interactions, including physical stores, web, social media, mobile, call center, and others.

Walmart’s infrastructure allows it to coordinate activities and consolidate data across channels to achieve synergy and efficiency while analytics on its large customer database provide further insights into consumer preferences and behaviors.

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Instead of solely focusing on providing delivery service like many eGrocers do, Walmart offers a mix of online and in-store experiences that include drive-through and buy-online-pick-up-in-store to satisfy the various reasons that consumers choose to shop for grocery online.

In Q1 2017, Walmart’s grocery business surged a staggering 63 percent and added 0.8 percentage points to its first-quarter same-store sales gain. Now the company is on track to scaling this offering to more stores.

What’s Walmart doing right in its omnichannel grocery retail strategy? Turns out, quite a bit:

1. Brand Promise of “Everyday Low Price”

A study by Hartman Group found that 35% of consumers order groceries online for better pricing.

Walmart leverages its brand promise of “everyday low price,” which is very appealing to many shoppers.onmichannel groceryImage source

Not only does this pricing strategy increase Walmart’s competitiveness in both mainstream and online Grocery markets, but it also helps attract customers used to shopping for food at brick-and-mortar discount or dollar stores.

2. Free Two-Day Shipping

In the same study by Hartman Group, 43% of participants indicated free shipping as a major reason they buy groceries online.

Walmart’s free two-day shipping makes having groceries delivered to their doorsteps a no-brainer for the many customers who want to avoid traveling to a store, dealing with a crowd, and spending time on shopping.

3. In-Store Pick Up Of Online Orders

For customers who like instant gratification but want to avoid the crowd, save time from having to look for items in the store, and enjoy the convenience of utilizing their personalized re-order lists, Walmart offers a service that allows shoppers to place their orders online, choose a time slot, and have the order loaded directly into their cars at their local Walmart.

In addition, the company has recently implemented geo-fencing technology that links up a customer’s mobile device to the local store so the order, which was placed online, will be waiting for the customer at the parking lot.

This omnichannel customer experience is made possible by Walmart’s many physical locations, as well as its robust e-commerce platform and personalization strategy that link their offline operation to the online shopping experience.

4. Employee Delivery

For many online grocery retailers, the “last mile” delivery is often the most costly and creates the biggest logistic challenges.

Walmart is testing a program that pays participating employees to deliver online orders on their way home from work. If successful, this program can potentially increase the efficiency and reduce the cost associated with the “last mile” while delivering an even more seamless online-offline shopping experience to consumers.

The Key To Successful Omnichannel Retail

Successful execution of an omnichannel customer experience is dependent upon a seamless integration of online and offline channels.

Many of these interactions hinge upon the creation of a personalized experience based on each customer’s preferences, behaviors, and interactions with the brand, and it has become imperative that retailers design customer-centric interactions that span online and offline channels.

Omnichannel personalized marketing is no longer just “nice to have” in today’s marketplace, especially with customer experience becoming a key brand differentiator.

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Consumers are now interacting with brands across multiple channels. Not only do they expect relevant content but they also want the ability to “pick up where they left off” when they switch from one channel to another.

Many retailers consider implementing omnichannel personalization as one of the key strategies to generate growth and increase revenue through providing a customer-centric brand experience. In fact, many retailers see an increase in revenue and new customer conversion rate when they start offering personalized customer experience.

A study by Invesp has shown that personalization has been proven to improve customer loyalty and increase conversion:

  • 53% of online shoppers consider customization valuable.
  • 45% of shoppers prefer to shop on sites offering personalized recommendations.
  • Personalized ads have a conversion rate 10 times higher than “one-size-fits-all” ads.

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However, there are many moving pieces to ensure the successful implementation of such strategy, including the collection, integration, and synthesis of a large amount of customer data and the ability to turn it into actionable insights.

Thankfully, there are many tools you can use to help gather customer data and apply them to improve customer experience. Here are a few helpful features to look for:

Customer Data Management (CDM)

Information on your customers’ behaviors and preferences will help you cultivate relationships and increase retention rate. Data collection is the first step to implementing a personalization strategy.

To see CDM in action, look no further than online retail giant Amazon.com. Customer information is collected and utilized for making recommendations that leads to increase in sales, as well as improving customer relationships with more personal services.

To get the most out of your customer data, you should:

  • Decide on the critical data to collect so you don’t end up having to parse through irrelevant information
  • Clean up your data to avoid duplication
  • Funnel all information into one centralized database to construct 360° customer profiles
  • Avoid siloed internal practice and encourage collaboration between departments
  • Make the information and customer profiles easily accessible to sales personnel in the field.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

After you have constructed 360° Customer Profiles that aggregate your customers’ unique preferences, brand interactions, and habits, it’s time to take that information to the next level.

You can leverage the analytics capabilities of your software to make data-backed business decisions based on the level of brand interaction and projected lifetime value of each of your individual customers.

To leverage the power of CRM, follow these best practices:

  • Create targeted content for specific customer segment to help your brand stay relevant and top of mind. For example, P&G developed the Being Girl microsite to share relevant content with a specific customer segment
  • Use geo-location to target customers who are in the vicinity of a physical store
  • Learn customer habits and preferences to create offers and deliver services that are timely, customized, and relevant
  • Implement Omnichannel marketing and customer care to deliver a seamless customer experience across all touch points

Automated Personalization

You can also leverage the information about your customers to create personalized campaigns and communications that help you deliver the most relevant information to specific customer segments in a timely manner.

This will not only allow you to nurture customer relationships and improve retention rate but also entice new customers to engage with your business by sending out highly relevant offers at the critical moments of their customer journey.

These are some of the ways you can leverage automated personalization to increase sales:

  • Segment and target high-quality leads that are likely to convert
  • Implement personalized lead nurturing campaigns to deliver the most relevant content and offers
  • Increase customer lifetime value by improving customer satisfaction and loyalty with relevant offers
  • Leverage your social media presence to deliver a seamless experience that moves customer along their purchasing path

The Best Marketing Speaks To What Makes Your Customers Tick

The effectiveness of one-size-fits-all marketing messages is plummeting as consumers are becoming increasingly savvy and expect for customized content and offers from brands.

As a marketer, you need to deliver a personalized customer experience across all channels and make sure your copy, content, and offer are highly relevant while appearing in front of your audience in the right place at the right time to get the highest ROI on your marketing budget.

Leverage big data for your omnichannel marketing strategies

Big data is everywhere, but do you know what to do with it?

Marketers are tapping into customer data to generate insights that have never been available before.

If you aren’t leveraging this gold mine of information, you’re missing out on a vast opportunity to surprise and delight your prospects and customers.

The problem for most marketers isn’t the lack of such data.

In fact, you’re probably sitting on a large amount of information gathered from various customer touch points—website, email, social media, call center, live chat, or in-store interactions.

All this information can be very overwhelming if you don’t have a plan to utilize it for your business.

What can you do with this data to advance your marketing and sales efforts?

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Optimize Pricing at Customer-Product Level

McKinsey has found that on average, a 1 percent price increase translates into an 8.7 percent rise in operating profits.

Yet up to 30 percent of all pricing decisions made by companies fail to deliver the best price.

The ability to analyze customer preferences and behaviors can help you fine-tune pricing of each product for individual customers to maximize profit.

Attain Greater Customer Responsiveness With Relationship-Driven Strategies

A Forrester study found that 36% of B2C marketers are actively using analytics and data mining to plan relationship-driven strategies.

These strategies have been found to increase customer acquisition, reduce customer churn, and improve existing products for more sales.

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You can leverage data and implement the insights with a robust customer relationship management (CRM) platform to build relationships with your customers. The key is to give them what they want when they want it to increase engagement, loyalty, and customer lifetime value.

Embed Intelligence Into Contextual Marketing

By bringing together evolving customer preferences and interactions across channels, marketers can now take contextual marketing to the next level.

When a customer enters a search term on your website or app, you can combine the search term with the customer’s purchasing history to improve the relevance of the search results and product recommendations.

Develop Customer-Centric Strategies

The use of customer data and single customer view  turns the focus from executing discrete campaigns to managing customer lifecycle.

Through improving customer experience across all touch points, companies are better positioned to cultivate long-term relationships that lead to greater customer loyalty and lifetime value.

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Optimize Go-To Market Plans Using Geoanalytics

Customer data can show you how demand differs across geographic regions.

Using this insight, you can align your sales and go-to-market strategies with territories that have the greatest sales potential to increase sales, improve supply chain efficiency, and reduce cost.

Identify VIP Buyers To Increase Sales

By analyzing average purchase amount, lifetime value, acquisition cost, and retention, you can identify your “VIP” customers that are of highest value to your business.

You can then focus your customer care efforts to nurture relationships with this segment with a personalized shopping experience and targeted content or offers to increase engagement and loyalty.

Deliver Consistent Omnichannel Customer Experience

The use of robust Customer Data Management (CDM) technologies is making it possible for businesses to orchestrate excellent omnichannel customer experiences across a selling network.

This allows you to effectively move prospects along the buyer’s journey to engage with and purchase from your brand.

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The technologies for tapping into the power of customer data are now available at your fingertips.

You can finally collect data, collate information, generate insights, and turn them into implementable strategies that will dramatically increase your marketing ROI.

Discover how NectarOm’s suite of tools can help you leverage customer data and take your marketing to the next level.

Imagine your customer got an email from your company with a coupon code for your online store. She decided to head over to the retail location a few miles away so she could get the product on the spot.

Unfortunately, when she arrived at the store, she was informed that the in-store system doesn’t have her information and she wasn’t able to redeem her discount.

Not only was she left unsatisfied with your brand but she’ll also be less likely to return to make a purchase. In addition, it’s very likely that she’d get sidetracked and never purchase the item.

This and similar scenarios aren’t uncommon these days when customers are interacting with brands via multiple touch points. They expect to move among them seamlessly – able to “pick up where they left off” on the previous channel.

For the past decade, retailers have been focusing on establishing a presence in a variety of channels, such as online, in-app, social media, phone, and in-store. However, such siloed customer experience is no longer sufficient.

Customers not only want to interact with a brand and make purchases on all channels but also have all their information accessible via all touch points so they don’t have to go back to square one when they switch channels.

Onmichannel customer experience integrates all customer interaction in one single database. This means customers can seamlessly move from channel to channel when interacting with a brand. By providing such a customer experience, you will be able to:

  • Move customers along their purchasing journey faster and increase your conversion rate
  • Nurture leads more effectively by augmenting the quality and relevance of your communications
  • Effectively provide customer support to increase customer satisfaction and reduce cost
  • Cultivate customer loyalty and increase retention rate

In order to create such an experience, businesses need to switch their fundamental approach to marketing. Instead of focusing on disparate strategy for each channel, you need to turn the attention to the customer.

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Customer Centric Marketing Starts With Single Customer View

The creation of a 360° profile of a customer is the foundational element of customer-centric marketing.

This profile is created by gathering information from multiple data sources and moving it into one centralized location so it can be further analyzed and utilized.

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The use of a single customer view allows you to:

  • Turn your focus on each individual customer to create targeted messaging and offering that will increase conversion and loyalty
  • Better predict customer behaviors and be more responsive to market trends and consumer demands
  • Make better decisions in choosing new promotional channels
  • Use marketing automation more effectively

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Going back to our frustrated customer at the beginning of this article, this means she would be able to get an email about a discount and apply it to any retail channel, including online and in-store. She would be able to apply the promotion at the retail location, get the item she wants, and, in turn, be more likely to purchase from the brand again.

Single customer view has been applied by many brands successfully to boost campaign ROI and increase sales. For instance, since implementing the strategy, Speciality Fashion Group’s most recent 200 EDM campaigns have delivered an ROI of 2,200%. Clarins have used a similar strategy to identify VIP and create a sense of exclusivity that makes a selected customer feel special and valued.

Overcoming the Challenges Of Implementing Single Customer View

It’s not always easy to implement single customer view. Consolidating all customer data from multiple channels is one of the biggest challenges faced when implementing omnichannel marketing strategies.

If you have been in business for a while, you know how challenging it is to integrate fragmented customer data collected from different touch points over time to get a complete cross-channel view.

The key to overcoming such data gaps is technology integration, which will give you the ability to collect a cohesive set of data for each individual customer and make it available for further analytics and utilization.

Instead of having to cobble together data from different sources, omnichannel marketers can now bring together all customer information to create a master customer profile with tools such as NectorOM’s suite of solutions to get the most out of their customer information with functions such as data management, customer relationship management, personalization automation, omnichannel hyper-personalization.

How can restaurants, which primarily offer an in-store service, extend the brand experience to digital media where customers are spending most of their time?

As your customers are inseparable from their smartphones and eCommerce has become an integral part of most people’s lives, what can restaurants do to drive brand awareness, cultivate customer relationships, and drive more sales?

To stay relevant, restaurants need to meet their customers where they’re at, using technology to bridge online with offline commerce by creating a personalized omnichannel customer experience.

In the casual dining segment, which saw a 4 percent drop in early 2017, TGI Fridays stood out with its many initiatives that aimed to increase sales through online channels.

Click here to download the TGI Fridays case study to learn how they increased their conversion rate by 35%. 

The restaurant chain is using mobile commerce to provide personalized service to guests online, just as they would in their physical locations.

Their strategy combines omnichannel personalization with mobile technology to bring together a seamless online and offline experience, turning the brand into both digital and in-store destinations:

Enhance Customer Experience Through Digital Channels

TGI Fridays is showing up in channels where their customers are already spending their time, delivering targeted messages in the right place at the right time.

Open Table

In February 2017, the company joined Open Table to allow consumers who use the app to look for dining options to make a reservation with just a few taps on their phones.

Twitter

TGI Fridays implemented a chatbot technology that allows guests to have one-on-one interactions, get information on nearby restaurant locations, place orders for takeouts, and more via Twitter.

FandangoNOW

The restaurant chain has partnered with FandangoNOW to offer a dinner and movie deal, a promotion through which consumers can get one free HD movie rental when they place an order online.

Create Deals And Promotions To Encourage Omnichannel Interactions

TGI Fridays also launched a series of promotions that encourage customers to interact with the brand both online and offline.

Some of these promotions include a $30 Valentine’s Day dinner deal in conjunction with their partnership with Open Table, Endless Appetizers and March Madness promotions to encourage customers to stick around (which help them cultivate customer relationships and brand loyalty), the Twitter promotion during Super Bowl, and takeout options that help customers recreate the restaurant or bar experience at home.

Use Omnichannel Personalization To Augment Customer Experience

To further enhance consumers’ experience with the brand, TGI Fridays introduced an omnichannel personalization strategy that turns disparate customer data collected from different channels into one master guest profile.

The information allows the brand to serve individual customers personalized offers most relevant to their preferences and locations via multiple channels. This approach encourages not only in-store consumption but also online orders.

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Using an onmichannel marketing and personalization platform, TGI Fridays is able to leverage customer data from digital, social, mobile, paid, traditional, and other sources to deliver personalized online, in-app, in-person, and take-home experiences.

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But TGI Fridays is not the only one! Restaurants everywhere are benefiting from integrating online and offline channels to augment their brand experience and increase their conversion rate while lowering cost.

Find out how to make omnichannel personalization work for your business.

Even though eGrocery is growing in popularity, 97% of groceries are still purchased in-store.

Still, digital channels allow consumers to research and gather information during the pre-shopping and planning stages. They also offer tremendous opportunities for grocery retailers to attract customers and increase loyalty.

To get the most out of these digital channels, grocery retailers need to become aware of customers’ expectations as they interact with brands.

Consumers are looking for relevance and personalization everywhere. They don’t have the patience for one-size-fits-all messages that don’t speak to their needs or their relationship with the brand.

The trends that are driving the grocery industry, which include the convergence of online and offline channels, the increase use of social media to connect with customers, the focus on customer experience over price, the empowerment of frontline employees, and the increasing availability of big data — all point to the need for providing a highly-personalized shopping experience.

Grocery retail chains, such as Walmart and Albertson, have been implementing personalization strategies to successfully generate growth and revenue.

In order to stay ahead of your competitors, you need to implement a hyper-personalization strategy that delivers personalized content and offers to your customers as part of a omnichannel marketing strategy.

Single Customer View – The Foundation of Omnichannel Marketing

Many grocery chains already have loyalty programs which allow them to collect a large amount of customer data.

The challenge is to integrate this information with other customer data collected from other channels and compile it all into a 360° customer profile that will allow retailers to deliver targeted messaging and relevant offers.

With this single customer view, technologies, such as machine learning, can be further utilized to analyze the data and apply the insights to inform marketing strategies.

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Hyper-Personalization Will Drive Grocery Retailing

Grocery retailers can augment the power of single customer view with hyper-personalization.

Hyper-personalization refers to the use of data to serve up customized content, products, or promotions based on the preferences and shopping behaviors of individual customers. It helps grocery retailers deliver the right message or offers to their customers in the right place, and at the right time.

With hyper-personalization, you can deliver a seamless shopping experience–whether a customer is shopping online or in-store, looking for a particular list of items or hunting for deals–to increase the relevance and timeliness of your marketing message and promotions.

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How Grocery Retailers Can Use Hyper-Personalization

Grocery retailers can now use omnichannel marketing software to tap into the power of hyper-personalization.

Here’s how to get the most out of your customer data:

1. Create Nimble Personalized Campaigns Backed By Analytics

Replace large-scale, one-size-fits-all marketing campaigns with more frequent small-scale ones to deliver a personal touch. You can analyze customer data to optimize the timing of the messages, offers, and product recommendations for each customer segment.

2. Leverage Real-Time Data

Shorter campaigns allow retailers to react faster to real-time information gathered from customers’ responses to the content and promotions.

By using omnichannel marketing software to gather customer information in real-time, you can personalize customers’ experiences to involve multiple platforms and digital channels. For example, you can use customers’ real-time location and response to pricing to determine the best promotion and offer.

3. Target Advertising Message And Track Results

With the help of omnichannel marketing and personalization software, we may be able to retire the famous saying by John Wanamaker, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

You can now tailor marketing messages to mirror the key elements in the acquisition funnel and create advertising messages that speak to individual customers to move them toward purchasing.

In turn, the effectiveness of these offers and messages can be measured so you can determine what’s working for your audience and make improvements to increase sales for your grocery business and increase ROI.

To fully utilize your customer data and deliver a hyper-personalized customer experience, you need an omnichannel marketing software that brings all the pieces together in one centralized location.

Doing so will help you design a 360-degree customer experience and meet customer expectation so you can tap into the opportunity offered by digital channels to collect and collate relevant data, enhance customer relationships, and increase sales.

Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods in June 2017 sent a shockwave through the grocery industry. What does it really mean for retailers in the grocery business?

The merger highlights the symbiotic relationship between online and physical stores. Consumers no longer consider them as two distinct experiences but two sides of the same coin that work together to provide a seamless service.

For most grocery retailers doing business at a physical location, the idea of adding an online component can be intimidating.

However, omnichannel retailing has become an essential strategy if you want to stay relevant and competitive in the market.

There’s no question that online shopping is rapidly gaining market share – 51% of Americans prefer to shop online while eCommerce is growing by 23% year-over-year.

Not to mention, consumers are demanding a seamless shopping experience between brick-and-mortar stores and digital channels so they can shop whenever they want, get the best price possible, and have the merchandise delivered to their doorsteps when they want it.

In a recent study of 46,000 shoppers published by Harvard Business Review, 73% of them use multiple channels during their shopping journey. In addition, these customers tend to be more loyal and spend more.

Within the context of the grocery industry, a survey conducted by Unata, 31% of US consumers are likely to shop for groceries online and 80% who have done so will do it again. Meanwhile, 68% who have shopped online are likely to switch to a grocer that provides a better digital experience.

Omnichannel Personalization

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Even though online grocery retail is gaining market share, there are some inherent challenge in the business model. eGrocers often face the challenge of missing out on attracting customers with a tactile, personal experience. They also need to address the “last mile” of distribution while staying profitable.

The convergence of online ordering and offline shopping is emerging as the solution, as Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods demonstrates.

This merger has solidified omnichannel retail as the strategy for grocery retailers who want to stay competitive and profitable.

Omnichannel retailing is a tantalizing opportunity for many grocery retailers, reinforced by the technology now available to create a seamless and personal customer experience without breaking the bank.

For instance, the logistics of same-day delivery is now economically feasible while the technology to deliver an omnichannel personalized shopping experience is available to retailers at an affordable cost.

An omnichannel strategy meets your customers’ demand for having the personal experience of shopping in a physical store while enjoying the convenience of managing their orders online and getting groceries delivered to their doorsteps when they need them.

To stay competitive and relevant, grocery retailers need to cater to their omnichannel customers. Here are a few key strategies to keep in mind:

  • Offer Multiple Touch points: Omnichannel customers like using a variety of touchpoints in different locations and combinations. Every component – whether it’s a smartphone app, an in-store interactive catalog, or the retailer’s eCommerce website – has to deliver a coherent and seamless customer experience.

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  • Encourage Customers to Use More Channels: The Harvard Business Review study revealed that omnichannel customers are more valuable. They spent an average of 4% more in-store and 10% more online when compared to single-channel customers. In addition, customers who use 4 or more channels spent an average of 9% more in-store compared to those who use only one channel.
  • Build Loyalty With Personalization: Online channel allows retailers to gain valuable insights into individual shopper’s preferences, habits, and personalities. To make the most out of this goldmine of data, use a Customer Data Management platform. This will allow you to construct 360° customer profiles based on real-time interactions across all channels so you can deliver the most timely and relevant services, information, and product recommendations to your customers to build relationships and increase sales.

As a grocery retailer in this digital era, you’re competing not only with local grocery stores but also national chain retailers.Implementing an omnichannel personalization strategy not only helps you better serve your customers and increase sales but also contributes to better inventory management, improved demand sensing, and streamlined customer support so you can stay competitive and profitable.

When it comes to a brand’s relationship with its audience, it’s all about customer personalization. Customer personalization allows companies to better relate to their customer’s needs and give them a deeper connection to a company. Customer personalization bridges the gap between online experiences and in-person interactions with customers.

Consumers are looking for more ways to connect with a brand, and companies are looking for more ways to increase revenue and track marketing efforts. This makes 2017 the year to focus on personalization. Here are a few customer personalization trends guiding the online experience in 2017:

 

Enhancing Online Brand Experience

Online shopping is by no means a new concept, but brands are currently working to better connect with consumers online. Common ways to personalize, and therefore enhance, the online brand experience include dynamic content and personalized recommendations. By tracking what consumers look for on a site, companies can personalize the way their site interacts with each customer. This gives everyone a unique experience and encourages them to come back.

One prime example of a personalized online consumer experience is Amazon. Each time a shopper looks at one product, they are then showed similar products, things people have bought, and more. This is all done with the intent of guiding a customer to make a more informed decision.

 

Optimized Messaging with Customer Data

The average person spends just a few seconds on a page before they decide whether or not to stay. This short attention span makes the content you show them that much more crucial. It’s in those few milliseconds that personalization can make a huge impact.

To do this, companies need to gather the right information about each person who visits their site, so they can better target their efforts to catch that person’s eye. There are multiple methods companies can use to gather data to help with customer personalization. This includes proprietary scoring, targeting algorithms, and more. These processes can help track a person’s every interaction with your brand other similar online brands to provide a personalized experience. Even if someone is a new user to a site, companies with the proper algorithms in place can look at their personal history to improve the content it shows.

Companies such as NectarOM simplify the data collection process to help companies better target messaging and in turn see higher customer engagement that increases overall sales.

 

Geo-Targeting Marketing

We as a culture are constantly sharing information online, and brands need to take advantage of it. More and more people are becoming comfortable sharing their location online. This allows companies to target content based on a person’s location. Geo-targeted marketing – also referred to as proximity marketing – allows companies to combine online and offline for an improved, cohesive customer experience.

Proximity marketing allows a company to feed the customer their message at a time when they are most likely to take action, based on their location. Proximity marketing uses technology such as chips in products, enabled location services on a smartphone, and in-store WiFi to better reach its customers.

Personalization is imperative for any company that wants to reach its customers online. People aren’t looking for a company that just shows them what they have to offer. Instead, people want to buy from brands that pay attention to them and provide them with custom-tailored content. When it comes to personalization across all channels, companies like NectarOM make simpler to reach customers and increase revenue.

THE RESTAURANT ECOSYSTEM HAS CHANGED AROUND YOU

Customers interact with your brand long after they walk through the door or finish their last bite at your restaurant. Now customers experience your brand in more ways than ever – online, in-app, in-person and at home. The question is how do you capitalize on all those interactions to increase sales?

Easy powerful personalization makes it easy for restaurants to build, operate and scale their omnichannel personalization capability.

Click HERE to learn more