Shopping for the holidays is itself becoming a holiday tradition; it conjures up images of eager bargain hunters queueing in frigid weather overnight, excited crowds pouring over tables stacked with doorbuster deals, and the occasional skirmish over a last item. And yet, this time-honored tradition is quickly disappearing: in the UK, for example, 77% of Black Friday shopping happened online, not in-store. I don’t need a year’s worth of e-commerce insights to tell you that, across the globe, shoppers will be choosing online over in-store more than ever.
Last week we talked about how retailers need to do three things to meet the challenge of a month’s worth of Cyber Monday deal hunters this year: from making sure you’re collecting all of the right data, getting consent to use that data, and filtering through the noise to find the e-commerce insights that will help you deliver a better customer experience.
Let’s assume you can do that. Today we’re going to talk about four ways retailers who are still ramping up their e-commerce game to match the in-store holiday shopping experience can truly delight online customers.
The holiday shopping season is a make-or-break time for retailers every year. On average, nearly 1 out of every 5 dollars a retailer makes comes during the holiday shopping season in November and December. With so many retailers’ revenue stretched thin, optimizing the customer experience online to make up for the loss of the in-store experience. Because, really, most customers don’t want to risk going out if they don’t have to.
Here are a few ways to make sure customers can be delighted while still enjoying getting their shopping done on the last Friday of November from the safety of their couch.
1. Turn Abandoned Carts into an Asset
Shopping for in-store deals can drive people to buy out of fear: the fear that they may lose out on an awesome deal if they don’t buy here and now. With the ease of comparison shopping online, it’s all too easy for customers to ignore that compelling price point while they bargain hunt.
Abandoned cart campaigns are tricky though when you consider the omnichannel nature of today’s shopping experience. If you can’t unify in-store purchase data with online CX data, your abandoned cart campaign might be making redundant offers, which helps no one in the holiday shopping season.
With a Customer Data Platform that can ingest data from web, mobile, and point-of-sale (in-store) systems, it allows you to identify customers who have abandoned carts online—and triggering the relevant ads or emails—while also suppressing cart abandoners who later make purchases in-store.
One large, e-commerce retailer saw a 450% increase in revenue from browse abandon after using CDP for segmentation over an ESP. That extra level of contextual data driving real-time engagement and follow up makes a huge difference, and can help you recover potentially lost revenue this holiday season.
2. Segment Audiences for Success
With a Customer Data Platform, one of the most powerful things you can do is create audiences that are rich with contextual e-commerce insights. When you have all of your customer experience data in a CDP, you can spin up more audiences (and more quickly) to drive campaigns in your various CX touchpoints. One large clothing retailer was able to create 87 different web experiences using intelligent audience creation and personalization.
Audiences aren’t just for personalizing the website, though. Odds are you’ve got a good sense of what your best customers are like. With a CDP like Tealium AudienceStream, you can create lookalike audiences modeled on high-value VIPs from past holiday shopping seasons. With this first-party data approach, you can create personalized advertising campaigns with a greater chance of attracting the big spenders that drive holiday revenue.
3. Provide a Human Experience through Data
In-store shopping during the holidays can be stressful, but it is nice to be able to talk to a real person when you need to ask questions about an item or get customer support. While automating a lot of the e-commerce customer experience makes e-commerce possible, don’t silo it from the people who will ultimately help customers if there’s a problem.
Many normal in-store shoppers may be pushed online this year, especially at-risk elderly populations. This may lead to inexperienced online shoppers having bad experiences. With a CDP, you can tie the online experience and the call center experience. Monitoring behavior for frustration signals can help you provide better and faster support to customers who may call in. This will lower the likelihood that they’ll abandon your site altogether to find a new retailer to shop at.
4. Create Personalized Discount Codes
E-commerce retail gives companies a chance to personalize the shopping experience in a way that in-store shopping could never match. Since the holiday shopping season is driven by the search for extreme deals, some shoppers may come away with items they bought but didn’t really want because it seemed like too good of a deal (this is how I have multiple GPS navigation units sitting in a drawer, in fact).
With e-commerce insights at the ready in real time with a CDP like AudienceStream, retailers can tailor deals to the items individual customers actually want with coupon codes for specific items that, for example, may show up in their search history repeatedly. For many retailers, the fear of discount or coupon codes is that they will spread across the internet and create a bad experience for customers who may have orders turned away.
To limit coupon codes from going wild on the internet, the one e-commerce team uses their CDP to tie these codes to individual profiles. They deploy the code through their Email Service Provider by grouping audiences together; for example, the code can be triggered for customer profiles that have just abandoned their cart. Now, the customer can come back to complete the purchase without the code running wild.
Delivering personalized experiences with e-commerce insights will be critical for retailers to make the most of this holiday shopping season.
Customer Data Platforms are a powerful tool for retailers looking to provide personalized, delightful customer experiences. They help companies connect the data so they can connect to their customers.
Roman Originals, a UK retailer specializing in affordable women’s clothing and designer ladies fashion, has seen a trajectory of year-over-year growth between 25-50%, and “Tealium is one of the cornerstones of ensuring that that doesn’t slow down.” That’s due in large part to their ability to drive more conversions using the insights gained through Tealium.
Learn more about how a Customer Data Platform can help deliver a better e-commerce holiday season performance when you sign up for a personalized demo.
