Most major retailers have adopted an omnichannel strategy but are they still missing a trick by not encouraging in-store shoppers to communicate with them?
Over the last few years many retailers have discovered that customers who purchase products in their stores and their on their website spend more than those who only buy from a single channel. As a result retailers are increasingly promoting the use of their websites in stores. Typically, it’s becoming an integral part of capturing extra sales when products are not available in the store but not much more.
What do stores tell customers about?
Most retailers do not do much to encourage communications from customers. A report from ExactTarget states that only 39% of top retailers sought any sort of digital engagement from in-store shoppers. Of those that did, the most popular call to action on their signage was a website URL (18%).
The report goes on to suggest that only 2% of the largest retailers use in-store signage to promote email or SMS engagement. The picture was a bit better with online social communities, which 8% promote in-store. This is an opportunity that is not being capitalised upon. The more that shoppers interact with a retailer, the more likely it is that they will become loyal customers who buy more.
Talk to customers in-store
Marketing campaigns across a wide range of industries now employ a full range of digital engagement tools to interact with customers. Retailers and brands do this too but to a varying extent. As we have seen, they rarely do this where most of their customers are, in their physical stores.
One of the main reasons that retailers have been reluctant to promote digital engagement with customers while they are in-store is the limitation of their systems to manage their in-store signage and the information on it. In other words, it’s too hard to implement and manage.
Smart signage
To fully capitalise on digital media such as: email, Facebook, QR codes, SMS, mobile apps and websites customers need to know how and why they should connect. The most effective way to do this is in stores on signage at or near relevant products. It’s often part of short term promotions. To flexibly manage this information and promote digital interactions in a joined up way, retailers need a smart ticketing system like NetTickIT.
If you would like to find out more about what can be done, please get in touch.
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