4 examples of omnichannel changing the retail experience
The numbers don’t lie: the days of consumers visiting their local general store to satisfy every shopping need are long gone.
It’s no secret that there has been a shift in shopping preferences moving to the online world, with 67% of millennials preferring to shop online. But in recent years, even the meaning of “online shopping” has evolved. A once-simple buying journey on a retailer’s website has rapidly evolved to a complex situation, for shoppers and retailers alike.
With so many shopping options, today’s consumers are often loyal to a variety of retailers and websites, including online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, large retailers like Target, and category-specific stores like REI and Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams. And it only gets more segmented from there.
Consumer touchpoints are increasing with astounding velocity — and…
Use brand stories to connect with your customers
Story telling isn’t limited to novels or tucking kids into bed at night. In this age of short attention spans and masses of information being available, it’s incredibly difficult to capture someone’s attention and even more difficult to be memorable and encourage someone to spend more time focusing on your brand and business. Writing a story and building an emotional connection with your customers is one of the most effective ways to build a long lasting relationship and ensure that your customers come back over and over again, and consider your business their first choice in all their needs. The following five steps help to create stories that make you memorable and appealing to customers.
Writing a story and building an emotional connection with your customers is one of the most effective ways to build a long lasting relationship and ensure that your customers…
Unleashing the potential of user-generated content from brands
For digitally savvy consumers, traditional ads just aren’t cutting it. Instead, consumers are looking for “social proof.” And they’re turning to their fellow consumers on social media and blogs to establish whether you have it
Dimensional Research found that 90 percent of consumers claim positive online reviews influence their purchasing decisions, while another 86 percent say the same about negative online reviews. And when those recommendations come from social media influencers, they hold even more weight. Approximately 40 percent of consumers purchase products after seeing an influencer endorse them on social sites, perhaps because over three-quarters of consumers find this kind of content more honest than advertisements.
This user-generated content is at the foundation of social proof, and it can be anything from social media posts to Yelp reviews to comments in relevant discussion forums (Quora and Reddit have amazing SEO across a breadth of topics).…
Brands need to be authentic and put the customer at the heart of the story
For more than a century, Sacramento was defined by its history as a Gold Rush town. The mystique of rugged, enterprising gold miners drew tourists from around the country hoping to catch a glimpse of the Wild West.
This was great for tourism, but it didn’t hold much appeal for locals. They certainly weren’t ashamed of their city’s past, but they had heard the same stories of rags turned riches so many times that they could repeat them in their sleep. Grizzled prospectors mining for gold isn’t the sexiest or most exciting imagery in today’s tech-focused world.
When Visit Sacramento CMO Sonya Bradley and her team were tasked with updating the city’s branding, they built their messaging around a different kind of Sacramento gold: its thriving culinary scene. Her team highlighted the history of Sacramento’s vineyards — many…
Localization means more than just translation, you must adapt to meet your audience's needs
Selling to a worldwide audience at first might seem like the ideal way to increase your profits, but if you don’t get your messaging right you could end up talking your way out of increased revenue.
Retail E-commerce sales reached 7.4% of all retail sales in 2016, and is set to continue rising for the foreseeable future. It is predicted to increase to over $4 trillion by 2020, making up 15% of all retail spending globally; much of this percentage comes from international sales. Currently the UK holds the highest percentage of online shoppers at 15.4% of all retail sales, followed by China (13.8%), Norway (11.5%) and Finland (10.8%), and the leading destination for those sales is the United States, followed by China, the UK and Germany. By 2020, nearly…
How to use data to optimise your multi-channel marketing
Multi-channel marketing provides businesses with the opportunity to engage with consumers across a variety of different fronts, tailoring messages for specific groups while maintaining a consistent message and brand. But it’s not simply a matter of sending your message blindly out into the ether – to achieve true success over multiple channels you need to make effective use of the data at your disposal.
This article demystifies this process, helping you understand what this data is, where you need to find it and what you need to do with it. As with all marketing, a little bit of considered thought at the start of the campaign makes a real difference in the result.
Tracking your data
This may seem obvious, but the actual obtaining of your data is the most important place to start and tracking a campaign is really the only way to determine…
Sajjad Bhojani, Head of Multi Channel Marketing and Developments outlines the Dunelm process for digital strategy creation
Our recent research on managing online channels shows that many businesses still don't have a digital strategy, although a good proportion now do. Our templates and guides give ideas on how to structure digital plans, but there is also the question of what is the best process for developing online and multichannel plans and reviewing performance against targets. To help answer this question I spoke to Sajjad Bhojani,
when he was Head of Multi Channel Marketing and Development at Dunelm and asked to explains their process for strategy creation and ongoing management of online channels. (This case study was originally in 2014, but we're sharing again to fit in with our multichannel marketing theme, since there are some interesting learnings).
Dunelm is the UK’s largest…
Research reveals marketers approaches to multichannel marketing
In partnership with Digital Doughnut, EPiServer surveyed over 200+ marketers to find out how they are tackling multichannel marketing. The resulting report presents an overview of single-channel, multichannel and omnichannel strategies, as well as insights about how well marketers feel they are able to implement these strategies.
Below you will find some key findings from the report, as well as examples of companies who are successfully providing a more seamless experience for users.
Over the last five years, the way that brands are communicating with their customers has fundamentally changed. Instead of adopting a single-channel, or even multichannel approach, businesses must now offer a truly seamless experience across all devices. Rather than tailoring their approach to multiple individual touch-points, the latest digital marketers are breaking down these out-dated silos and are providing customers with a single coherent view of their brand - delivering the right message,…
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June 16, 2017
Exploring the difference between Omnichannel and Multichannel and the implications for designing effective User Experiences
We've all been hearing and reading quite a bit about Omnichannel Marketing of late. It’s great that companies and brands are embracing the ethos behind the term to make their products and services more connected, open and oriented towards the individual. For this reason I feel it must then share and indeed integrate with many aspects of user experience online. This article aims to summarise my thoughts on how UX approaches and the principles of UX contribute to effective omnichannel Marketing.
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
Okay, so we have to say Omnichannel is simply buzzword or phrase to describe something not new in real terms along with the related but similar multichannel marketing term. Omnichannel marketing is as a strategic marketing activity helps to define the marketing decisions that are driven by the choices that consumers have in how they engage a brand. It…
Ensure the names you create for your podcasts, ebooks, products…and just about anything else don’t impede your marketing success
Savvy Digital Marketers know that names (business names, blog names, podcast names, online group names) have concrete marketing consequences. The marginal effect of a bad name across key marketing goals like attracting eyeballs, encouraging buzz, facilitating word-of-mouth, and increasing top of mind awareness (TOMA) is real. If you don’t think that an awesome name that’s easy to say, spell, and remember can increase your referral rate by 3-5%, then you don’t really understand the human mind.
Check out these five insights on picking the right name for your website, online brand, mobile app, e-book or anything else shared by the team at naming platform Squadhelp.com:
1. Evocative names are most highly regarded
Online naming resources recommend catchy, unique, short and appealing names. Great advice - yet after helping nearly 8000 individuals find winning names, experts…
