Making Mobile Commerce Work in Retail
The burgeoning mobile market continues to create new complexities for brands and retailers, especially as consumers increasingly use mobile devices to shop, and mobile payment, loyalty and gifting capabilities continue to advance. However, as mobile wallets continue to generate buzz, the rate of mobile payment adoption remains slow. For example, in its "Mobile Wallets for the Masses" report, research firm Yankee Group stated that while nearly 70 percent of consumers are interested in adopting mobile payments, less than 14 percent have actually completed a mobile transaction in the past six months.
As such, brands and retailers today should be hyperfocused on providing consumers with a better, more unified shopping experience that also creates higher value for them. An example of this would be one that delivers relevant and personalized offers and messages (e.g., come to a new store opening and receive a 15 percent discount) to highly segmented individuals (e.g., affluent women within a 15-mile radius) in an effort to drive specific actions and behaviors — i.e., drive traffic to the opening of a new luxury brand store and cultivate loyal customers. While there's more than one way to approach this, there are some best practices retailers and brands can follow for creating brand advocates through consistent and relevant experiences across all engagement and buying channels. Here are a few to follow:
1. Engage consumers during the mobile design phase. When it comes to mobile, it's common for retailers to become reactionary and rush to offer consumers something and then wait to see what sticks. This is a costly approach that rarely generates great results. Rather, retailers and brands should be more calculated and find out what type of mobile solution would best dovetail into their unique shopping eco-system and provide the most value for their customers. It can't always be about discounts and coupons. Consumers want a pleasing and convenient experience, one that encourages, recognizes and rewards them for shopping with your brand, regardless of whether they choose to use their mobile device, shop online or do all of the above while in-store.
By engaging consumers and learning what mobile features and functionalities they most want to see from you, you can learn what's compelling to them and create that immersive brand experience while benefitting from the engagement process. This can be done in many ways, including customer surveys, in-store questionnaires at the point of sale, commissioned market research or focus groups. Armed with actual data rather than assumptions and guesses, you can devise a mobile strategy that will deliver what your customers want to create frequency, which drives return on investment. You can then align this strategy with other business objectives — e.g., driving mobile adoption or increasing traffic to a particular location — to drive results.
2. Use loyalty as a differentiator. Take a fresh look at loyalty beyond the stale definition that we've used for ages, namely marketing efforts designed to encourage buying behavior. Focus instead on the level of involvement consumers have with your brand across channels. Ultimately, you need to deliver value to consumers to earn and maintain their loyalty. If you focus only on purchasing, you're missing a big opportunity to use your loyalty program as a way for consumers to establish an emotional connection with your brand.
Consider an athletic shoe brand. As part of its loyalty program, it could offer a mobile app that tracks distance, time and speed in a consumer's profile. Each time a runner accrues 300 miles, the brand could use the opportunity to engage directly with the consumer, reminding them that it's time to consider a new pair of sneakers and offering a discount. This is compelling for a number of reasons: one, it shows that the brand cares about the individual; two, it provides value because it reminds the consumer that his or her shoes should be replaced every 300 miles to 500 miles; and third, it rewards loyalty through a discount on a purchase — not to mention the mobile app's overall tracking of performance. The brand becomes more of a trusted partner in fitness and health for the consumer, differentiating it from other athletic shoe brands which are simply sneaker manufacturers.
Another approach is to encourage atypical rewards. Taking a "pay it forward" approach, for example, would reward loyal customers with a societal benefit such as the donation of a book to a children's charity rather than a discount or coupon. Consumers feel good about making a purchase because they're also helping others in the process.
No matter what approach you take, focusing on the customer's emotional connection with your brand and relevance to the individual are key for creating a loyalty program that differentiates you from the competition.
3. Stay engaged and alive. Once a mobile commerce strategy is put into place and initiatives have kicked off, don't set it and forget it. A tactic you introduce this month may not work next month. These programs require ongoing attention. You need to continually feed it with new ideas, create new triggers and inject fresh opportunity in order to keep it running. It's also important to outline your key performance indicators clearly and monitor them regularly to ensure that you're aligning strategies with overall business objectives.
4. Deliver value to the brand and the customer. While there's no one size fits all approach to mobile commerce and the overall unified experience, it takes more than an add-water-and-stir approach. By better understanding your customers’ needs and wants, and delivering to them a unified, relevant and consistent experience across channels that's authentic and true to the spirit of your brand, you can implement mobile commerce strategies that help you meet business objectives while inspiring loyalty from those who matter most — your customers.
Andy O'Dell is the co-founder and chief commercial officer for Clutch, a mobile commerce company that focuses on combining e-gifting, loyalty programs and merchant rewards on a single device.
