Commentary

3 ways to improve retail customer loyalty during a code freeze

Lindsay Bloom, senior marketing manager, SessionM, explains how retailers can avoid problems during a code freeze in the busiest shopping time of year.

Photo by iStock.com

November 12, 2018

By Lindsay Bloom, senior marketing manager, SessionM

Days are shorter, and marketers can sense a chill in the air. The season of the dreaded "code freeze" is rapidly approaching. Winter is coming.

If you aren't familiar, code freezes are a lock down of a company's website that keep IT from making any major changes. This suspension minimizes the risk of introducing flaws to your site's code that could lead to errors and glitches, downtime and purchase interruptions. For retailers and e-commerce businesses, the code freeze is meant to insulate the company from missing any potential revenue during a critical period of time for the business.

A code freeze might be initiated during a big product launch or marketing event, but one of the most common times for a prolonged freeze is the busy holiday shopping season. And it's no wonder — holiday sales during November and December reached $691.9 billion in 2017, which included $138.4 billion in online and other non-store sales (up 11.5 percent YOY). That spend is only expected to grow.

There's good reason for a code freeze, but the drawback is its hindrance to marketers. While you don't want to risk damaging your website through possible errors or glitches, putting a hold on new coding can also put a hold on optimizing marketing campaigns. The holidays are a big time for sales, but also one of the most critical times for customer engagement and growing customer loyalty. Marketers may feel limited in their ability to deliver on these goals with their full suite of IT assets off the table.

Fortunately, there are actions you can take now and during a code freeze to continue forging that strong relationship with customers – no coding needed.

Observe and manage data

When the holiday season is at its peak, new and existing customers alike are liable to pop onto your digital properties. Massive quantities of data will be created across your digital touchpoints. The busy shopping season is the ideal time to observe and capture customer and prospect data that will fuel your marketing efforts for the year ahead.

Marketers should be sure to galvanize every aspect of the business behind the data effort. Sales associates. Customer service. Product teams. They all have their own tools and datasets, but all are germane to marketing efforts in the end. Integrating and analyzing data across the organization, even if done after the holidays, can lead to customer engagement refinements that fuel incremental loyalty gains over time.

Create the right experience at the right time

Code may be on hold, but good customer service never sleeps. Small acts of personalization can go a long way as the building blocks that create long-term loyalty. I tweet at a company saying I loved their new commercial. They reply “Thanks! We like you too! And we just sent you an offer code for that item you've been eyeing.” Those are the types of interactions that make loyalty go viral.

Your code may be on hold, but leveraging the data you have to personalize, humanize and create those one-to-one “moments” should be a priority – especially for your most loyal customers. Ensure that you have access to your customers' data and are empowering those on the front lines of customer interactions with the data they need.

Prepare your digital tool belt

We've reached a point with technology where it's possible to upgrade and manage customer experiences without changing a single line of code. SessionM, for example, enables our customers to create scheduled or behaviorally-triggered campaigns that are delivered across all touchpoints – including POS systems, email, SMS, push and in-app messaging. These campaigns can be updated and optimized in real time, without coding changes.

While implementing technology like this needs to be done before the code freeze, it can be a lifeline for marketers during the holidays, providing an outlet for the nimble and responsive campaigns and offers that are so critical for customer engagement today.

The most critical thing to remember as we head towards the code freeze is this: Holiday shopping is seasonal, loyalty is lasting. Don't assume that capitalizing or missing out on a single moment in the holiday season will make or break your brand. Capitalize where you can, and then set the stage to capitalize again and again in the future. That's how true loyalty is made.