O N E T O U G H Q U E S T I O N : R E TA I L
12 WAYS TO BRING OMNICHANNEL WITHIN REACH
HOW MARKETING ORGANIZATIONS CAN BECOME INTEGRATED ENOUGH TO DELIVER A TRULY OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
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Nirvana for most retail marketers is delivering a true omnichannel customer experience. But doing so is usually a difficult and expensive endeavor that involves linking disparate systems and data and often crosses over into other customer-facing disciplines. That doesn’t mean marketers should stop trying to get there. Indeed, there are steps marketers can take to keep moving forward; for example, by connecting customer data, leveraging data from each channel to inform decisions regarding other channels, and ensuring that communications and pricing are consistent across channels. What other actions can marketers take toward delivering a true omnichannel customer experience? We asked industry insiders to provide their advice. Here are their recommendations. — Ginger Conlon, editor-in-chief
TABLE OF CONTENTS
9 Seiya Vogt, Director of demand generation, Bitly
12 Frank Grillo, CMO, Harte Hanks
8 Tara Sporrer, VP of marketing, Moxie Guy Yehiav, CEO, Profitect
5 Justin Honaman, SVP, digital solutions, Moxie USA
6 Adam Miller, VP, retail industry strategy, Epsilon, Ian Richard, VP CRM, ALDO
10 Bob Barr, MD, global B2B commerce lead, Accenture Interactive, Alex Lirtsman, cofounding partner, Ready Set Rocket
7 Mike Sands, CEO, Signal
11 Bill Nagel, Cofounder and chief marketing strategist, Netsertive
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JUSTIN HONAMAN
SVP, digital solutions, Moxie USA (a Publicis Groupe Company) @Jhonaman @moxieusa
The vision in an omnichannel strategy is to engage shoppers in an intelligent, relevant, timely, and seamless way across all channels. It’s delivering the right message to the right place at the right time to meet the demands of the shopper. Here are several critical success factors to omnichannel execution success. • Create clear, consistent, and compelling content: Because it can take more than five impressions for an individual to recognize a brand or specific marketing message, follow the three “Cs” for marketing messages. Communications must be clear (not confusing in words or phrases), compelling (interesting and topical to the receiver), and consistent (regardless of channel, offers and content are consistent). • “Channel” messaging: Some shoppers shop online; some only shop the physical store. Some shoppers only shop at outlet stores. Some shoppers buy products through a third-party retailer or online outlet. Effective integrated marketing campaigns span retail touchpoints and deliver a customized, yet brand-consistent message and offers to shoppers. • Analytics-driven campaigns: Customer insights and analytics are changing the way brand marketers think about integrated marketing. As is typical in retail, organizational silos limit coordination of retail-based integrated marketing campaigns. These walls must come down across silos to enable omni channel communication and interaction. • Dynamic segmentation: A valid customer segmentation for an omnichannel strategy should satisfy four requirements: offer a distinctive and compelling solution to the shopper segment’s functional, financial, emotional, and self-expressive needs; drive purchase and usage behavior for the segment in trial, loyalty, preference, wallet share, upsell, cross-sell; lend itself to continuous improvement through test-and-learn programs; be sustainable and repeatable. Since customers don’t distinguish between channels, retailers will have to support seamless integration among and between each of them (for example, Web, mobile, email). The industry is evolving quickly in its data analytics capabilities and customer experiences. The ongoing challenge for retailers will be how to best analyze all this rich data and derive from it valuable insights about what consumers want and need.
ADAM MILLER VP, retail industry strategy, Epsilon @EpsilonMktg
There are more mobile devices than toothbrushes in the world and soon it’s expected there will be an average of three mobile devices per every person on the planet — that’s hyper- connectivity at its best. With so much authority in consumers’ hands (or now on their wrists), customers have all the power and control in the shopping equation. Retailers need to embrace the mobile-powered consumer and engineer everything about their brand to keep pace with this evolving breed of consumers. Consumers leverage mobile resources to discover and research products; order and pay; share purchases with social networks; rate products and services; engage with brands; and, ultimately, determine which brands they want to engage with. Retailers have numerous opportunities and new avenues to connect with consumers via mobile media, including email, online, apps, text messages, video, and geo-location. To create a true omnichannel experience, retailers need to leverage data to know their customers as individuals and develop targeted campaigns with these data-driven insights while providing mobile-adaptive or mobile-optimized marketing communications. Retailers should make their customers’ shopping experiences feel effortless and leverage all facets of mobile to accomplish this.
IAN RICHARD VP, CRM, ALDO @ALDO_Shoes
If a brand really wants to deliver a truly omnichannel experience for its consumers, there needs to be commitment and vision behind building the framework and seeing it through to fruition. The word “omnichannel” and the essence of what that entails need to be a priority in the minds of all key stakeholders for it to work. The process of becoming truly omnichannel can be rigorous and costly; however, with commitment and a strong sense of direction, it’s a powerful momentum builder for brands. Once the commitment is there, marketers can start by leveraging the data they already have. Regardless of how much data is available, marketers can glean tremendous insights from something as simple as looking at online transactions. Take Aldo, for example: This year alone we have significantly increased our email revenue stream by looking at basic targeting through email engagement metrics and purchase history. For larger retailers, brands can benefit from having strong external partnerships that can help manage and analyze data. One of our partners, ICF Olson, helps us with everything from data infrastructure and modeling to segmentation and CRM best practices. No matter how large or small your business is, leveraging the data you already have is an essential first step if your goal is to deliver a true omnichannel customer experience.
MIKE SANDS CEO, Signal @signal
Have you ever purchased something in a store and then had an ad for that very product follow you around the Web for days? Or have you ever had a customerservice issue with a company and been marketed to by that same business before the issue was resolved? Brand experiences like these are frustrating, annoying, and turn off consumers. Instead, people want tailored experiences that allow them to seamlessly traverse the offline and online worlds. Customer recognition and real-time engagement across channels are two of the biggest challenges marketers face today. So where can they begin? To reach the right audience at the right time with the right message, marketers need a real-time, peoplebased marketing strategy. This approach enables marketers to reach real people, not just cookies or devices, with messaging that’s relevant to what they’re doing in the moment. The first step in creating a people-based marketing strategy is to gather first-party data across channels and devices, such as email, the Web, mobile apps, and CRM and POS systems. Marketers can then merge all that data to create holistic customer profiles that offer a single 360-degree view of a customer’s identity, behaviors, and preferences. Identity is critical for a successful omnichannel campaign because it’s the engine for delivering consistent marketing messages exactly where, when, and how specific customers want them. Timely, relevant, and personalized experiences at every touchpoint are what will keep customers loyal and coming back. People-based marketing, driven by first-party data and cross-channel identity resolution, is a crucial piece for solving the omnichannel puzzle.
TARA SPORRER VP of marketing, Moxie @Tara Sporrer @Go_Moxie
By delivering a consistently pleasurable experience to consumers both online and offline, brands will be able to create a true omnichannel experience. Consumers are highly mobile and use a range of devices (for instance, smartphones, tablets) to make purchasing decisions. And although e-commerce sales have continued to grow, they haven’t grown as quickly as predicted or hoped. Online conversion rates remain low — 3% on a PC and 1% on a mobile device — and can’t compare to the 10 to 30% in-store conversion rates that brick-and-mortar businesses enjoy. When consumers connect with businesses online on any device, their experience is similar to walking into an empty physical store: No one is available to help them. This is a pervasive problem and a reason e-commerce hasn’t grown as fast and can’t compare to brick-and-mortar businesses. To deliver a true omnichannel experience, brands should better anticipate and address online customers’ needs. By moving from a reactive retailer-centric model to a proactive customer-centric model, anticipating customers’ needs and offering immediate assistance on product pages at the point of sale, online retailers will see an increase in conversion rates and fewer problems after the sale.
GUY YEHIAV CEO, Profitect @GuyYehiav @Profitect
The one action that marketers can take toward delivering a true omnichannel experience is to take a step back and understand omnichannel is not the end goal; it’s about moving beyond just omnichannel and providing a customer-centric experience for the best results. Marketers realize that the experience the customer has is important, but they often miss the mark when it comes to understanding what will drive success. In today’s evolving retail industry, for example, there is noticeably less impulse buying and more online purchasing. For marketers, this translates to less foot traffic, less immediate gratification for consumers, and more of an emphasis on searching for the best price. This means that marketers should work to align efforts across all channels, placing the needs of the customer first. What retailers and marketers need to learn and adapt to is the ability to facilitate an action or take a next step based on specific customer attributes. So, if a customer is looking for a particular product, marketers should understand the implications of that decision and offer the ability to purchase an accessory for that product to entice an impulse buy. It’s time for marketers to combine loyalty and personalization to reach their customers in the right way with context, not just in the right channel. Understanding how consumers would like to be reached and what messages are relevant to their individual journey allows the experience to move beyond channels, putting customer insights front and center.
SEIYA VOGT
Director of demand generation, Bitly @SeiyaVogt @bitly
Understanding each step of your conversion funnel and getting analytics right will define success in an omnichannel campaign. The truth is there’s too much data, too many channels, and too little time in today’s digital world to spend time piecing together each channel one by one. The key to success is figuring out which channels across mobile and desktop provide the conversions you need for your business to grow. Luckily, the technology that provides a single view of multichannel marketing efforts does exist. Find out which service best suits your needs, as they range from overviews of clicks from specific links to minute details about each customer that comes into your funnel. Always track your links’ success by adding UTM codes or using link management platforms, and understand what channel sends you the most traffic. Set up reports in Google Analytics or other tools to get a step-by-step breakdown of channel performance and optimize your conversion funnel. Make sure that you’re contacting each new customer in a unique way based on the channel they converted from. Mobile SMS conversions might want instant reactions, while those coming from content marketing may appreciate a less sales-like approach. Use data to figure out what strategies to use on what channels. That way you’ll spend more time building meaningful customer experiences and less time fumbling to report on performance metrics from an ever-increasing number of channels. Whether an email campaign leads customers to make a purchase at a point-of-sale system in a store or they tweet at a brand and then convert on a website, make sure that you can deliver a seamless experience. It’s what customers expect, and it all starts with carefully planned analytics on the conversion funnel.
BOB BARR MD, global B2B commerce lead, Accenture Interactive @AccentureSocial
The more progressive B2B companies are determined to develop and operationalize a seamless omnichannel experience (for example, start in one channel, continue in a second, conclude in a third). However, achieving this is significant and quite complex, particularly when attempting this atop legacy systems and applications that weren’t originally designed for such an endeavor. Indeed, often these firms get stuck early on addressing the core table stakes omnichannel challenge of gathering and sharing customer demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data across channels (e.g., call center, field sales rep, kiosk, mobile, Web), according to research from Accenture. Although B2B buyers (32%) are crossing online and offline channels, and research further suggests that customers who engage with a B2B firm in more than one channel are more valuable, the challenge of sharing data across channels is not easy and can take years to accomplish. So, while pursuing this base of data sharing (and if this effort is not already under way, begin it as soon as possible), the one action marketers could take shorter term to achieve their omnichannel goals is to invest in mobile content and commerce. The rise of mobile as the channel of choice — especially among millennials, who are arriving to the workforce as individual and family consumers — largely means that focusing on this channel requires connecting with these B2B or B2C customers where and when they want to connect, whether shopping, buying, or servicing what they’ve bought. And while each channel has its place, an omnichannel experience (when achieved) will seamlessly integrate across these channels — assisted by investing in mobile. Paraphrasing hockey star Wayne Gretzky, don’t pass the puck to where your teammate is now, but rather, to where your teammate is going. In a partner relationship, B2B companies and their customers are like teammates, not exchanging cash for products, but rather value for solutions. Meet them via mobile devices while engineering the ultimate omnichannel customer experience. The good news is that 50% of B2B companies are already implementing mobile strategies. If you aren’t, then you should start now.
ALEX LIRTSMAN Cofounding partner, Ready Set Rocket @alirtsman @readysetrocket
Start with the opportunity assessment. It would be great to have all customer data, including all touchpoints (browse, purchase, email, in-store social, etc.) in one place to act on. This is harder to do than it seems because every platform wants to own its data, it’s most likely not portable, and not every system plays nicely with others, let alone can connect consumer data. The best place to start is in your own analytics implementation. Focus on passing all data from all platforms back to analytics and binding it to the user. Not only will that give you a cohesive view of the customer journey, but it will also provide the insights necessary to understand your customer, prioritize initiatives, and allocate your marketing spend. As RSR client Matthew Butlein, CEO of Freshpair.com, puts it, “You can’t build a relationship with customers if you don’t know who they are and how they interact with you. They end up having a disjointed or, worse yet, oneway conversation with you.”
BILL NAGEL
Cofounder and chief marketing strategist, Netsertive @Netsertive
The core of a strong omnichannel customer experience is consistency. While it sounds easy enough, it’s easier said than done. This is particularly true when looking at the complex relationship between brands and local partners. Achieving brand consistency when a product is sold through a buying group or local partner network adds a challenging barrier for achieving omnichannel success. Marketers, who want certain messages delivered at a local level, must spend copious amounts of time and money on maintaining relationships and ensuring brand compliance. This explains why brands pour an estimated $36 billion into marketing programs that help achieve brand consistency at the local level. While it’s an enormous investment, it’s crucial for marketers to achieve and retain brand integrity to be successful. My tip for marketers is simple: To achieve consistent brand integrity, regular brand-controlled audits are imperative. They provide time to reflect on the delivery of key messages on owned properties and how local partners are conveying messages to their local market. Brands must be bullish in their approach to both incentivizing and controlling external partners because they often have limited control over the dissemination of brand marketing assets and messages. In some ways it’s similar to the relationship parents have with their teenager: Parents have the challenge of trying to control and monitor a teen’s behavior on the Internet — a platform where actions are permanent, even damaging. This challenge is also being faced by brands: They want consistent messaging, pricing, and promotions among local networks. If executed poorly, the outcome can impact brand integrity and even local sales. To help achieve success, brand marketers have turned to technology. Both ad and marketing technologies have grown in popularity because they help marketers achieve a seamless omnichannel experience. In the case of a brand working with many local partners, a technology platform will streamline communication and provide guidelines to help local partners bring products to market. As brands look to identify the Swiss Army knife solution for their omnichannel customer experiences, the emphasis on consistency should be a top priority.
FRANK GRILLO CMO, Harte Hanks @hartehanks
Today’s marketing mix is complex. People interact with brands in many ways and across multiple devices. There is no one customer journey;there are many. A necessary step in optimizing the omnichannel customer experience is to begin to under stand each and every interaction a customer or prospect has with a brand across every device, channel, message, and conversation and start to make the most of each of those moments. The journey begins and ends with data and it’s more than just aggregating every data point possible. Who cares about data acquisition if we don’t make better decisions once that data is received? Consider a short-term tactical marketing decision: If a customer received a mail drop 10 days ago and just researched a particular product of yours on her laptop, what comes next? Should you wait and see what she does, send an email, or text a price feature? These short-term tactical decisions can have a great impact on performance and the customer experience. Short-term tactical decisions about customer journeys are greatly informed by the persona concept. They capture preferences and tendencies for customers as they move through their journeys. So, if the buyer’s persona is to be a highly independent shopper who responds negatively to all forms of unsolicited electronic contact, then the best option is to wait and see what happens next. But if prior purchase behavior tells you this customer only buys when products are on sale, then maybe they have a price-buyer persona and the next step should be to email them a discount offer. The challenge is to instantaneously understand and strengthen current and future customer experiences as customers move from one touchpoint to the next. These moments are opportunities to create a positive experience that builds a brand and motivates action by the customer. The marketing imperative is clear:Retailers must define, execute,and optimize their customer journeys by developing actionable insights from big data and create smarter customer interactions at every point along the customer journey. The result is establishing the necessary foundation to deliver a true omnichannel customer experience, one interaction at a time.
