Article

Creating a personal experience: First steps and the best steps

Experts offer up insight on what to do first in the personalization strategy and how to get started with some simple steps.

September 24, 2015 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com

Editor's note: In the first part of a two-part series on how retailers can move forward on personalizing the customer experience, two experts offered up the challenges inherent in the strategy and misconceptions many retailers have regarding implementing a personal consumer experience. In Part 2, experts provide valuable insight on the best first steps to take and advice on how retailers can kick-off the effort.

Personalization and instilling a one-to-one consumer touch role goes a long way in building customer loyalty, shopper recommendation activity and overall brand quality.

While it’s not as hard as most retailers assume (one of the big misconceptions noted in the first part of this series), it does require time, strategy and a commitment, and it’s something every retailer, big and small, can initiate, implement and drive forward.

The first steps are critical, according to experts, and the ability to avoid common missteps can save a lot of time, money and labor.

The first step: Know thy customer

As one expert reveals, understanding the consumer and their needs, at the point of a retail interaction, isn’t just a matter of knowing what they’ve bought or searched for in the store or online site in the past. It’s a much more detailed and comprehensive task, explained Persio CEO Marc Grabowski in an interview with Retail Customer Experience.

"The first step in delivering a personalized experience is to recognize the customer as a single person across all channels," said Grabowski, explaining the process is sometimes termed "ID resolution."

"In other words, understanding that a desktop cookie matches an email address, phone number or mobile device ID and connecting all of this with a record in the retailer’s CRM. Once a retailer can link these IDs, they can utilize the data associated with these IDs to communicate more effectively to customers online, offline, via mobile or in-store," he explained.

One reason marketing leaders and strategists have trouble with this first step is that oftentimes the unique identifiers and customer ID data are sitting in various databases, not within quick reach and not able to be integrated.

"Currently, there are few systems in place or coordinated cross-channel efforts that seek to reconcile customer profiles to achieve a single view of the customer," explained Grabowski. "This perpetuates a situation where marketers continue to look at a customer’s interactions with a brand in isolation by channel rather than as a whole across many channels."

Another good first step is ensure a  retail mobile app or e-commerce site has quality items, advised Indraneel Mukherjee, CEO and co-founder of LiftIgniter. It may seem simple and even a bit too much of common sense, but it can be a prime issue as merchandise clearly is the key to the consumer experience.

"Retailers don’t necessarily need to have a large number of items available, but they must have enough to make use of personalization. Think about it. If you only have 20 items to show consumers, you can easily hand code the items that are recommended together. Real personalization needs a decent number of items and visitors to your site to achieve scale and value," Mukherjee said.
 

Tips on driving home the personal experience

In initiating a simple customer personalized experience a retailer needs to leverage the in-store experience with any customer digital interaction and vice versa, explains Grabowski, and not focus on just one or the other.

For an example he offers up the scenario of starting in the brick-and-mortar environment by leveraging store associates and good, engaging signage to entice shoppers to opt into the retail mobile program, and a quick and easy way is to offer up an incentive coupon valid for any purchase that day.

"Double opting in with email and receiving a unique coupon to the mobile device can tie mobile number, email, store location and purchase behavior to a single customer," he explained. "And it will prompt the shopper to visit a mobile web site or download the retailer’s app — tying both experiences together."

Or another simple starting approach is to ask shoppers to share an email or phone number to have that incentive coupon sent directly for mobile device use in the store. This again connects all the potential interaction experience data points.

As Mukherjee points out, every retail site is personalizing experiences because if they don’t they won’t stay a viable ecommerce entity for long.

"Consumers now have more options than ever before and only the best sites will survive. It’s not about smaller retailers versus larger retailers or the amount of content or items available — it has much more to do with a retailers’ ability to accurately display that content and those items," Mukherjee said.

"Consumers have come to expect what they want to be placed in front of them without any searching or extra effort. Personalization does this and it's why users love Facebook so much. Consumer’s expectations for personalization will continue to rise as competition grows, so retailers need to be proactive if they want to secure brand loyalty and increase conversion."

About Judy Mottl

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Judy Mottl is editor of Retail Customer Experience and Digital Signage Today. She has decades of experience as a reporter, writer and editor covering technology and business for top media including AOL, InformationWeek, InternetNews and Food Truck Operator.

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