Multichannel Commerce: Creating Loyalty in the New Era of Syndicated Commerce
1. Focus on customer experiences first. Drive relevancy through targeted, personalized experiences delivered consis- tently across all channels. Shoppers' expectations of a robust, rich, informative, responsive and personalized experience applies whether they're shopping online, via their mobile phone, responding to a transactional email, visiting a store or interacting with a customer service representative. First and foremost, build an integrated central customer database that provides complete customer history and preferences. Use this history to inform personalized emails, mobile promotions and on-site experiences.
2. Establish cross-channel integration strategies for product and promotional information. Whether a consumer enters via your website, brick-and-mortar store or mobile phone, sales and loyalty will grow if you deliver consistent brand experiences and offer relevant products and promotions. Here are a few examples:
- Deliver personalized offers and promotions via email or text message to be redeemed online, in-store, via your mobile site or through a customer service interaction.
- Holiday gift lists can be sent to customers reminding them of the items they purchased last year — and whom they sent them to. Offer to package and send these items to the same list of recipients, saving time for harried holiday shoppers.
- Allow shoppers to select items in-store, purchase them via in-store kiosks displaying your website and have them delivered to any address they choose, simplifying holiday gift giving.
- Provide additional product information online, as well as giving consumers the option to interact with a customer service representative on the phone or via live chat.
- Develop transactional pages on social sites that can promote featured items or special discounts as items are "liked" or recommended.
- Enable shoppers to share product recommendations through on-site postings or linked social networking pages.
3. Integrate business processes and multiple storefronts. As e-commerce platforms become the central hub for marketing to consumers, conducting transactions and providing customer service across all touchpoints, integration with the enterprise technology environment will continue to be a requirement. Retailers must build integrations between their commerce hub and the following systems:
