About three years ago, business for the sustainable fashion brand, Reformation, was booming. But their physical stores were so jam-packed with product that the customer experience was, in short, not good. Founder Yael Aflalo began to think about how to minimize the available merchandise, but at the same time have enough for the increased foot traffic. She settled on a model similar to Tesla showrooms that are conspicuously missing a parking lot of cars, or Apple stores with very limited inventory in the front of the store. Soon, Reformation stores only displayed one of each of the most popular items. However, all merchandise options are viewable on touchscreens.
“Around the store, there are touchscreen monitors that allow customers to scan through outfits. When they find one they like, they can click on the size and it will appear in the dressing room, as if by magic,” explains Fast Company. Behind the scenes, sales associates pull all of the garments selected by the shopper and organize them in a dedicated fitting room. On the touchscreen, customer options only include what is in inventory with near perfect accuracy. And in the background, Reformation is able to collect data about the outfits and sizes that are most popular and how long customers spend trying on clothes.
It’s a huge success — Reformation runs more efficiently, and the customer feedback is overwhelmingly positive as they are able to move seamlessly from touchscreen to dressing room. If there is a question, sales associates are trained to help shoppers effectively interact with the touchscreen and they also support the dressing room experience. Yael is already planning additional improvements, such as being able to send purchases directly to a customer’s home after an in-store touchscreen purchase, or having a dressing room ready with selections the customer made while shopping online from another location.
Creating Fluidity — and Fluid Experiences
Every retailer should focus on delivering a consistent and cohesive omnichannel experience. But more and more it’s becoming clear that sophisticated shoppers want more. They want fluidity between all touchpoints — whether digital or physical — and it’s raising the bar for omnichannel marketing.
Designing fluid experiences enables retailers to create and manage omnichannel experiences across all touchpoints — including in-store associate apps, social media platforms, physical signage, IoT devices, and smart screens. Content that is centrally managed and optimized, along with the ability to automatically edit and resize images and copy based on the channel are two technologies that help you create fluid experiences at scale.
Fluid experiences also help retailers maximize the unique capabilities of any platform without the added legwork. For example, a department store promoting its semiannual runway event may promote a new collection to its customers via email. The same campaign content could then automatically be positioned for Facebook, web content, or Twitter with just 140 characters, and provide detailed personal and relevant information about the promotion — including event timing, accessible locations, and specific offers.
Granted, the level of fluid experience varies by vertical. As I explained to the New York Times, “If it’s high-touch retail, you want to provide great experiences and entertainment. But if it’s grocers or big-box stores, the technology needs to make that experience more seamless and efficient.” What unifies these moments, however, is that they’re consistent across platforms and create powerful experiences that keep customers engaged in a delightful and personal way, and keep them coming back for more.
Personalizing experiences when there’s no single path-to-purchase — and when those paths involve both physical and digital touchpoints — requires leveraging data to deliver cohesive experiences at the highest level.
Do Personalization Right
With all the intelligence and technology available, it’s essential to match each piece of content to the right individual persona so the experience delivers value. And as a word of caution, no personalization is better than bad personalization — if you don’t leverage properly the data you have, you can deliver a flat-out terrible experience that alienates customers and prospects.
For example, there is a particular retailer that I love, but I’m ready to sever ties because even though they know I’m male, they consistently show me female-focused products, services, and content. For example, I’ve never given an indication that I want or need a slimming swimsuit, but I regularly receive “personalized” messages encouraging me to invest in one. When mistargeting mistakes like that happen, your customers will quickly move on to the next retailer — a retailer who will deliver a more relevant experience.
Additionally, if you deliver an experience that’s not personalized to the platform or device your customer is using, you’ll sink more than you swim. Desktop ads viewed on mobile devices lose 50 percent of their effectiveness — they’re just not the right experience for the small screen. And 50 percent of consumers under 50 take it a step further, saying they prefer ads personalized to their specific interests, traits, and preferences — and another 30 percent under 50 say even that’s not good enough.
Driven By the Customer — and YOU
Because experiences don’t happen only in the digital world, building fluid experiences crosses over into brick and mortar as well — as Reformation noted when creating a new model for their store. Now, when shoppers visit a store’s physical location, digital signage, associates’ apps and point of sale technology are all in sync creating a consistent, choreographed experience. The end result? A powerful brand experience in the customer’s journey that transcends platform and individual touchpoint. And it couldn’t come at a better time — customer experiences are far from linear, and aren’t completely digital either.
It’s a clear departure from the traditional funnel and from omnichannel marketing even a year or two ago — and that’s good for everyone. Data empowers digital marketers everywhere to deliver more effective and more efficient promotions and experiences across all channels, provided companies are willing to tear down the silos and flesh out 360-degree views of their customers. This, at the end of the day, is the Holy Grail when it comes to producing and delivering highly-relevant and incredibly timely content at scale — in other words, personalization done well.
Learn more more about how your organization can create and manage fluid experiences across all touchpoints and platforms. It’s a simple process that will take your campaigns to the next level — syncing your messaging, and enabling truly great customer experiences you can manage without long, drawn-out system overhauls or massive investments. It’s a win-win — fluid for customers and fluid for your business.
The post Make It Fluid — Creating a Seamless Experience from the Shopper’s Perspective appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.
from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/make-fluid-creating-seamless-experience-shoppers-perspective/
via Tumblr http://euro3plast-fr.tumblr.com/post/161272468504
No comments:
Post a Comment