You Had Me at Hello: Retail Strategies to Improve Customer Loyalty

1 YOU HAD ME AT HELLO

YOU HAD ME AT HELLO Gaining, growing and maintaining customer loyalty in the new world of personalization and social technology


YOU HAD ME AT HELLO Gaining, growing and maintaining customer loyalty in the new world of personalization and social technology

TABLE OF CONTENTSABOUT MARKETBRIDGE ................................................................................................................ 3

INTRODUCTION: 3 Shifts Driving the Future of Retail .............................................................. 4

PART 1: Be Relevant at Every Interaction ................................................................................... 7

PART 2: Connect with their Interests ......................................................................................... 10

PART 3: Democratize the Customer Experience ....................................................................... 13

CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................ 17

ABOUT THE AUTHOR ................................................................................................................... 18


ABOUT MARKETBRIDGE

MarketBridge is a leading technology enabled services firm, providing digital marketing, sales enablement, and customer analytics solutions for Fortune 1000 and emerging growth companies. We help companies improve sales productivity by increasing digital customer engagement and building robust customer analytics engines that focus marketing investments and sales activity on the right customers, with the right messaging and solutions, through the right marketing and sales channels.

Our unique RevenueEngines™ and SMART™ Analytics solutions deliver data-driven digital customer engagement by connecting marketing and sales to increase pipeline volume, velocity, close rates and customer loyalty. Our solutions are powered by best-of-breed technologies including social, marketing automation, CRM and business intelligence, all of which dramatically improve revenue performance, cost efficiency and customer experience.

Corporate Website:www.market-bridge.com

MarketBridge Community:www.the-digital-bridge.com

Phone:1-888-GO-TO-MKT

Corporate Headquarters:4350 East-West Hwy, 6th Floor Bethesda, MD 20814

San Francisco, CA49 Stevenson St., Suite 660San Francisco, CA 94105

New York, NY79 Madison Ave, 3rd FloorNew York, NY 10016

http://www.market-bridge.com

http://www.the-digital-bridge.com


INTRODUCTIONEvery 20 to 30 years, retail goes through a seismic change that transforms the way we engage and service our customers. There was the shift away from one-on-one, highly consultative sales of the 1950s and early 60s to the world of big-box and multi-category retailing in the 70s and 80s, followed by the radical shift to e-tailing that emerged with Amazon and eBay in the early 1990’s.

Today we’re witnessing retail’s next transformation: where the power of data, social media, and omni-channel delivery are rightfully empowering our shoppers to demand personalized, customer-centric experiences in return for purchasing products and continued loyalty. This new reality is being driven by three paradigm shifts.


Our customers are smarter and more empowered than ever before.

Gone are the days where shoppers relied purely on marketing and the word of in-store associates to make decisions. Now recommendations from friends on Facebook, trends on Twitter and Pinterest, video reviews and other interest-based content guide their decisions.

Google recently studied the entire path buyers take when making a purchase and found that shoppers typically conduct 6 searches before finding the product that best matches their needs, and consume 12 sources of information before making a purchasing decision. Even more interesting? 50% of shoppers are now using their mobile phones to guide in-store purchases. And that number is as high as 70% for the increasingly powerful millennial customer.

The customer experience transcends online vs. offline.

We’ve become accustomed to thinking of offline and online as separate worlds. Many top retailers still have one marketing team for dot-com activities and another for in-store, with different strategies for both. But customers now live and shop in a world where they don’t want to choose between online and offline. They want it all—a seamless experience where they can engage, research and purchase when, where and how they want.

This symbiotic relationship between online and offline purchasing behavior is causing noticeable reverse trends. Formerly online-only retailers like Warby Parker Eyewear and Bonobos, who once declared brick-and-mortar to be dead, now have physical flagship stores in New York. This year a Google Shopper Research study estimated that over $2 trillion of offline retail spend is influenced by experiences online. In other words, what happens online does not stay online. Your customers continue to exist outside of boundaries convenient to your business. It’s up to you to go to them.

Customer expectations are higher than ever.

With new technology, a connected world and a rush to convenience, customers demand and deserve more. Our customers want us to know them. To understand what is important to them. To know their pain and present a solution. Businesses that embrace the dynamics of the empowered customer and leverage technology to solve consumer friction points will be the winners. Those that don’t will join the ranks of Blockbuster and other dying retailers.

3 Shifts Driving the Future of Retail

1 2 3


3 Shifts Driving the Future of Retail

So how do you build mindshare and loyalty from customers who expect more than ever before?

At MarketBridge, we work with some of the biggest names in retail to improve sales associate productivity and marketing effectiveness by combining the best digital engagement programs with the latest data analytic modeling. Read on to learn the three core principles adhered to by organizations that are adapting most successfully to the new world order in retail—and driving customer loyalty along the way.


PART 1Be Relevant at Every Interaction

It’s 2014. By now we’re supposed to be living in the world of the Jetsons and hovercrafts and face-recognizing virtual store associates à la Tom Cruise in Minority Report. And let’s face it. We are starting to walk around with computers on our faces. So how is it possible that retailers are still doing the same old thing to attract attention, mindshare and loyalty?

Last year, 5.6 million tons of direct mail advertising ended up in landfills – 44% of which was unopened. Similar figures exist for email marketing. What passes as “new” is often just old content being pushed through a new medium. Taking an old-school coupon and using it as an app just won’t cut it anymore.

Solution: Use the power of your data to define the customer segments that actually matter. This means going beyond Geo, Store, and Category analysis, and instead looking at granular groupings that cut across multiple variables to give you actual personas to target. These groupings could include things like product usage or shopping preferences.


PART 1: Be Relevant at Every Interaction

We recently helped a large office supply store develop new buyer persons by defining attitudinal dimensions through focus groups and other qualitative studies. This gave depth to the buyer personas we developed and a perspective on why customers were actually making a purchase. We developed persona-based messaging and incorporated it into all marketing and engagement tactics for the rest of the year. Our client saw a 2% annual revenue lift from deploying the new segmentation strategy and a 167% increase in lead volume when using the tailored segmentation messaging.


PART 1: Be Relevant at Every Interaction

Walgreens is another great example of an established retailer getting it right—solving for pain points in every customer engagement. When Walgreens invested in its mobile app, the company made the conscious decision to think outside the box. They looked at their data to see what it was about their buying process that gave customers the most problems. What are they upset about? What are the big friction points? And then Walgreens build an app to solve these problems.

It turns out none of us enjoy standing in a long, slow-moving line after work to refill prescriptions. The Walgreens mobile app allows customers to seamlessly fill their prescriptions, anywhere, anytime. To date the Walgreens app has 15 million downloads.

One of the biggest winners? Starbucks! They built the #1 consumer app. The retail giant realized that while customers were standing in line to order their Caramel Macchiatos and Decaf Vanilla Lattes, they were fiddling with their phones. Almost without fail, every customer moves up to the register with phone already in hand. So Starbucks built an app that lets you pay with your phone—no need to put the phone away, get out your wallet, get your card, swipe and pay. While this may seem a small convenience for many of us, for millennial customers it’s a bigger deal. These apps are changing consumer behavior on a grander scale, and altering expectations for every retailer.

To grow customer loyalty with today’s new consumer, don’t

waste a single interaction. Use data and technology to solve their

unique pain points every time you engage with them.

15 MILLION DOWNLOADS!! #1 CONSUMER APP!


PART 2Connect with their Interests

Retailers exist to service their customers. And sometimes that means going beyond ‘the sell’. Today’s customers are asking us to understand who they are and what they are interested in, in order to deliver them what they want.

Solution: We’ve found that programs focused on connecting with customer interests, and on what really inspires those customers, ultimately drive results and long-term loyalty. PERSONA-BASED MESSAGING!

Contact!Name!Email!

Demographic!Age!Gender!Address!

Reach!Impressions!Traffic Sources!

Site Activity!Page Views!Visits & Unique Visits!Repeat Visits!Visit Duration!Bounce Rate!Device Usage!Browser Usage!Click Paths!

Outbound clicks!Email!Opens!Clicks!Client Usage!Site Activity!

Conversion!Cost Per Lead!Sales!

Interactivity!Comments!Shares!


PART 2: Connect with their Interests

We recently worked with a Fortune 100 healthcare company who wanted to engage with Baby Boomers on a topic no one really wants to discuss—health care. So we helped our client develop a community of over 700,000 members that connects their target audience to free content and tools around the topic of health and wellbeing. By doing this, they have seen a huge lift in customer engagement, lower cost of acquisition, and most importantly a higher conversation rate from these members to a sale. In fact, because they have an established relationship with the company, members of the online community are four times more likely to buy than net-new prospects.


PART 2: Connect with their Interests

Here’s another success story. We worked with a Fortune 100 credit card company to beef up their social media channels, get their followers more engaged and grow their volume of followers. We closely monitored what their key segments were talking about outside of the corporate website—our “metal detector” approach to uncover trends and signals. We found an abnormal leap among target customers whenever a specific topic came up: paying for college. When we delved deeper, we found a few key influencers for this demographic around the topic of paying for college— and we partnered with them.

These partners started Tweeting for us on their own sites, which were now part of the master site. The chart above tells the tale. If you really want consumer mindshare, speak to their interests, not your brand.

When you offer content and creative that is topic-specific and tailored to a particular audience at a certain point in the customer journey, you provide a convincing incentive to engage with your business. You not only stay top-of-mind for prospective customers but you also remain a trusted advisor for current customers.


PART 3Democratize the Customer Experience

Your customers should define the customer experience on their terms. And consumers generally tell us what they want, but too often retailers tune out their feedback.

According to Accenture’s Seamless Retail study, not surprisingly, about 9 out of 10 shoppers said they want retailers to let them shop on their own terms, ultimately in an omni-channel manner. That same data rings some alarm bells. For example, 3 out of 4 respondents said they want consistent pricing across channels, yet only 16% of retailers deliver on that expectation.

There may be valid internal reasons for a bifurcated experience—for example, economic realities related to pricing differ across platforms—but in a world of increasingly empowered customers, with greater expectations than ever, it’s on us to shield them from that complexity.

Solution: Empower your customer-facing assets to deliver an experience that wins. For most retailers, that means looking to your store associates. They are your brand stewards at the final mile of consideration and purchase for many customers, and your associates should be equipped to not just sell product, but to be your experience and brand ambassadors.


PART 3: Democratize the Customer Experience

We’ve worked with several retailers to enable their sales associates to have better, more targeted conversations about loyalty programs and credit offerings. This loyalty spin on associate enablement builds stronger relationships with customers, and ultimately increases program membership that really impacts the bottom-line.

Crate & Barrel is a good example of a major retailer who has leveraged data and technology to democratize the customer experience and allow their customers to shop where and how they want seamlessly. Whether customers are shopping through their site while sitting at home, at work or using their mobile app, their browsing history and cart are saved from channel to channel.


Even more interesting was an online program Crate & Barrel launched a few years ago that was highlighted in a Wharton School of Business case study. The company piloted a buy online, pick up in-store promotion. The results led to some counter-intuitive insight. Online sales decreased 7% and cart abandonment increased 1%. On the face of things, not a successful pilot program. But in-store sales increased 6%, which showed Crate & Barrel that, with certain products, customers want an experiential interaction. They want to touch, see and feel certain products. They want to talk to the product experts—store associates. In the end, Crate & Barrel developed a relationship with customers that says: We're okay with you shopping with us wherever and however you want and we promise to make the experience simple and consistent.

Another way to democratize your customer’s experience is to enable your sales associates to build brand loyalty and delight the customer—whether at your brick-and-mortar site or out in the field. Your sales associates are your brand ambassadors. Enable them by teaching them not just how your loyalty program works, but why it’s important to establish lasting customer loyalty and even change customer behavior.



If we go back to the major shifts in retail, we see the move from a highly personalized one-on-one experience in the 50s and 60s to big box stores in the 70s and 80s, to e-tailing in the 90s. The Internet has upset the balance and today’s customers want it all. Accustomed to a personalized online experience, savvy shoppers increasingly expect that retailers will deliver the same level of personalization in-store. Retailers ignore this trend at their own risk.

The most effective way to personalize the customer experience is through clienteling. Clienteling is the set of business processes retailers use to increase customer lifetime value through delivery of a personalized shopping experience. Fortunately, the tools needed to create a personalized in-store experience now exist, and they are increasingly affordable. Technology is replacing note pads and address books as a means of storing key client information. Today’s clienteling software can deliver rich data to an associate’s fingertips, allowing him or her to provide a personalized experience that will improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue.


Click here to read more about clienteling and our five key steps to clienteling success.

http://the-digital-bridge.com/customer-nurturing/bchipman/2014-07-14/get-personal-5-steps-clienteling-success/


CONCLUSIONAs you use these three core principles to build loyalty among customers who know more and expert more than ever before, we’d like to leave you with a few parting tips.

Tip #1: Always focus on the customer experience.

How much do you focus on your role in the customer’s experience versus focusing on the sale? Make yourself or someone at your organization the Chief Experience Officer. In the new world of retail, we can’t afford to think about marketing and sales separately, but about a complete customer journey.

Tip #2: There is no silver bullet.

Be willing to experiment. Find a new way of talking to your customers. What are the five things you’ll be willing to test this year? Give yourself a little room to try and fail. Be willing to take risks and be open to change. Be the next Starbucks.

Tip #3: Look for new organizational heroes.

This is the new age of retail. That means your organizational heroes of today won’t be the same for tomorrow. Maybe it’s your Data Scientist or the IT Director willing to try new programs or the 22-year-old Social Media Coordinator. Whoever they are, your new organizational heroes will be the ones who set you up to succeed by embracing seismic change.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rebecca Johns // VP and Head of Retail & Consumer Solutions

Becky Johns leads the Retail and Consumer Solutions Practice and works with clients to improve marketing and sales productivity by developing and executing integrated data-driven marketing and sales strategies. At MarketBridge her experience centers primarily on building brand loyalty through customer acquisition, engagement and retention programs and developing online and social media communities. In addition, she has expertise in enabling sales associates through innovative training and sales readiness programs. In her 8 years with MarketBridge, she has managed accounts and initiatives across the Retail, Financial Services, Healthcare, Telecomm and High Tech industries.

Prior to MarketBridge, Becky’s background in marketing and advertising includes both client and agency positions working in both B2B and B2C engagements.

Most recently, Becky led her teams to win back-to-back Gold Stevie Awards for the 2012 & 2013 Sales Training Program of the Year for their work enabling sales associates for a large retailer, as well as the 2012 & 2013 Brand Experience of the Year by the American Business Awards for their work building online communities for a large health insurance provider. Becky’s list of client experience includes MasterCard, Expedia, Saks Fifth Avenue, Humana, Guitar Center, Neiman Marcus, Capital One, Microsoft, Symantec, SAP and Neustar.