Commentary

7 digital retail personalization tactics to take

Jim Barnes, CEO, enVista, offers up seven tactics to enhance customer experience through digital retail personalization by establishing relationships using customer data, email campaigns, product recommendations and more.

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August 24, 2018 by Jim Barnes — CEO, Enspire Commerce

Today's customers have more choices than ever and will choose to shop with retailers that make them feel valued time and time again. For those retailers that understand the customer's happiness is the way to remain relevant, transforming digitally to deliver personalized, seamless customer experiences is a must.

Gone are the days of siloed advertisements and one-size fits all promotion. Fortunately, today's opportunities to personalize online experiences beyond just a purchase are numerous.

So, what is digital retail personalization? Retail personalization is a strategy that seeks to build brand loyalty by presenting compelling experiences to customers based on their likes and wants. Personalization requires retailers to have a deep understanding of individual customers, which demands a strong data strategy. Retailers who get personalization right drive deeper customer loyalty while increasing sales.

In this article, we'll look at seven tactics to enhance customer experience through digital retail personalization by establishing relationships using customer data, email campaigns, product recommendations and more.

Tactic 1: Favorites and wish lists
Favorites and wish lists provide digital convenience that permits customers to buy when they are ready to buy and makes reordering easy. They enable targeted remarketing, either through email or directly on the e-commerce page, complete with reminders and/or incentives to reengage with the customer to complete the sales process. Both are available in most e-commerce platforms or through additional third-party plug-ins.

Tactic 2: Customized microsites based on customer preferences
Customers will be drawn to today's most popular products, and microsites enable retailers to easily spin up customized websites based on those types of customer preferences and order history to possibly upsell or complete a sale. These sites can be set to expire after a certain number of hours/days and can showcase items based on most clicked, reviewed, and/or purchased. Microsites have been shown to increase conversion by as much as 50 percent as compared to a typical website bounce-back link.

Tactic 3: Deliver dynamic, customized email campaigns to retarget
Leverage your CRM and marketing platform to deliver relevant, personalized messages and offers. Whether in the form of pop ups after a customer has placed an item in his/her cart without making a purchase, or targeted emails, most marketing platforms will allow a way to scale personalization based on customer data to offer the most relevant items, images, copy, and promotions to your customers.

Tactic 4: Enable ship from anywhere and best ship method
Does your e-commerce system allow the customer to choose shipping date ranges, cost or both? It's a good idea for retailers to take a closer look at how to balance fulfillment time versus cost. When given shipping choices, the customer will most often select the best option based on his or her needs; retailers should not just assume that faster is always best. Some customers may be willing to accept a later delivery date in favor of a lower shipping rate.

Tactic 5: Allow for multiple orders in a single transaction
Ship one to your home and ship one as a gift — all on one receipt. Your customer won't recognize channels, and neither should your POS. Allowing for multiple orders to be fulfilled in one single transaction through e-commerce will enable a seamless buy, fulfill and return anywhere experience for customers, and, at the same time, provide a holistic view of the customer, inventory, order, item and payment across your entire organization.

Tactic 6: Invest in a comprehensive loyalty/VIP program
Loyalty programs pay off as it is more expensive to gain a new customer than it is to keep a current customer coming back.
Through customer data and profiles, loyalty programs can provide customers with information about sales on items they have favorited, added to their carts in the past or the type of items they tend to purchase. With a comprehensive loyalty program, you can provide targeted sales event information through push emails, ads, and notifications to customers when they are near your store. Tip: Don't forget to include social buttons in loyalty program emails, posts and more, allowing your customers to help you market.

Tactic 7: Utilize product-detail page recommendations
Show buyers similar or complementary products to ones they have either purchased, have favorited or maybe have in their carts. 92 percent of consumers look to discover new products. With personal recommendations, customers are easily served up new items, at a higher price points, that could lead to additional sales. Tip: It's important to mention that your Order Management System (OMS) should encompass a strong Product Information Management (PIM) component as well as Point of Sale (POS) system with advanced customer profiling capabilities, in order to clientele.

Customer journey extended
Extend digital personalization beyond just the purchase, with customized offers, continuous updates to customer data, customized email campaigns, online customer preferences, and more. Digital personalization should be part of your digital omni-channel strategy — to know where a customer is throughout their entire buying journey and even after and turn that insight into sales.

Customer Experience

About Jim Barnes

Jim Barnes is CEO at enVista and is a leading expert in supply chain management and unified commerce. Jim Barnes co-founded enVista in 2002 in response to market demand for comprehensive supply chain consulting services. He has spent the last 25 years deploying supply chain and enterprise solutions and synchronizing material and information flow for fortune 500 brands and retail companies. His expertise includes all areas within the extended supply chain, including global supply chain network design, strategic facility design, international and domestic transportation management, labor management, organizational change management and supporting supply chain and execution technology.

Jim has successfully implemented strategies for hundreds of companies including Sephora, Sur La Table, Shopko, Tory Burch, Nature’s Best, Payless Shoes, Boot Barn, Brightpoint, Gulf-States Toyota, Wal-Mart.com, Genesco, Hibbett Sports, Modell’s and Sport Chalet and sits on the Board of Directors at Walker Edison. Prior to founding enVista, Jim was the Executive Vice President and co-founder of Q4 Logistics. He also held the position as Manufacturing Practice Manager at Tompkins and Associates.

Jim received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University and a Master of Business Administration in Operations Management from the California State Polytechnic University-Pomona

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