Digital personalisation
Digital personalisation is becoming easier for retailers, as more and more capabilities and integrations are built into email marketing platforms, apps, Customer Management Systems (CMS) and websites. The ability to share data across multiple platforms gives you the ability to create personalised offers and content for your customers that results in more attention and more sales.
But only 34% of customers believe that retailers are doing well with personalisation.
A survey by Inuit Mailchimp showed that customers are willing to share their data if it means more personalization, and that retailers that sent highly personalised, segmented emails perform better than those that don’t. Investing in a strategy and technology that enables digital personalisation is essential for you to take advantage of the benefits.
Zalando, one of Europe’s leading online fashion retailers, offers personalised product recommendations across its website, app, and email marketing. It uses sophisticated algorithms and AI to analyse individual customers' style preferences, purchase history, and even social media interactions to offer hyper-relevant product suggestions.
Offline personalisation
Offline personalisation still presents a challenge for a lot of retailers because it’s not as easy as digital. But with most retail sales still taking place offline in Europe, it’s an important piece in your omnichannel puzzle.
McKinsey and Company highlights plenty of underused offline personalisation approaches that retail stores can take to improve the customer experience.
Using existing apps to drive people towards stores, with in-store personalised offers is a great way of blending both approaches. Once customers are in your store, there is also an opportunity to offer them digital experiences, like touch screen displays, where they can interact with product details or enter their information to receive offers and news.
But what about purely offline approaches? Training is a key objective here. Training your staff to deliver a personalised service, whether that’s remembering customers' names, suggesting items or products for them based on the information they give you, or notifying them of events or upcoming new releases that might be of interest to them can be a key differentiator from your competition, as well as keeping that customer happy and returning to the store time and again.
In-store beauty counters are a good example of offline personalisation. Customers go in often unsure of what they want or need. Guided by the beauty counter assistant, they get recommendations for products on their skin type, the look they want to create and how it feels to the customer.
In the UK, health and wellbeing retailer Holland & Barrett has trained its store staff as gut health advisors. This allows staff to have purposeful conversations with customers around their health as well as offering expert guidance and relevant products to help customers.
This is a perfect example of how personalisation can be achieved successfully offline. It’s worth considering how you can build personalisation into your offline activities like telephone calls, via post, special events and even click and collect locations.
Blending both worlds
Of course, the blend of both approaches is the sweet spot for retailers. You want your customers to feel they have the same personalised experience no matter where they interact with your brand.
Many retail brands are taking steps towards embracing the blend of both, and that includes ensuring that your brand messaging appears everywhere your customers meet you. That could mean branding your shipping boxes and packaging materials with logos and brand messaging or including special items and offers inside their orders.
But personalising your omnichannel strategy is a valuable way of making your customers feel welcomed wherever they are and is a move that is only getting stronger.
If you’re looking for a partner that can push your personalisation forwards, speak to our team on +31 (0) 88 494 20 80 or email us at online@worldpack.eu.
