Retailers have really grasped personalisation. No sooner has the personalised user experience become de rigeur than early adopters are on the case – and seeing some stunning results.
As we have reported over the past few weeks we have seen the likes of toy store The Entertainer increase mobile sales by 120%, seen niche online fashion house JD Williams get sales uplift of 18% and Missguided increase conversion rates by 34% all by implanting various forms of personalisation technology to aid marketing and push mobile engagement.
Now these pioneering retailers have been joined by one of the big boys: Waitrose. Waitrose has also invested in a personalised marketing strategy – aimed at new and early stage shoppers – and has seen a 24% rise in online orders among these segments. Pretty impressive and, taken with all the other moves to personaliation, par for the course.
It is good to see that putting these things I write about day in day out into practice actually delivers some tangible results for the retailers that do it. Hopefully we shall soon see all retailers doing this…
Although,while this might be great news for consumers, what do you do to give yourself the competitive edge when everyone is doing this?
Could it be that you need to not just personalise your marketing, but also make it sensual – and that could well be as seductive as it sounds? The next big thing in mobile is haptics: the use of vibrations and force to give sensation. It has been used in some games and Apple has, since iPhone6S, had force control on its buttons (and for a good deal longer on its mouse pad on its MacBook Pros). All phones vibrate and most can use the accelerometer to take shake inputs. Using these factors together can make for a multi-sense experience.
Now, Ad tech company Adludio is bringing it to adverts. It has developed what it calls a “sensory Advertising Platform’ named Darwin that serves up 3D, vibrating, shakeable, touch-sensitive ads on mobile.
This of course makes perfect sense (if you pardon the pun). For more than 10 years the mobile ad industry has relied on sight and sound only, ignoring pretty much everything else the phone can do and all the other senses most humans come equipped with. Adding these to adverts apparently makes them up to 10 times more engaging.
Sanko Seisakusyo (三幸製作所) – Tin Wind Up – Tiny Zoomer Robots – Front
All this is very interesting. At a time when virtual and augmented reality are very much back on the agenda – and in the week when we are being told to look at robots as ‘cobots’ that we can work with, not fear as the precursor to our machina overlords – the move to having haptic adverts that sort of come alive in our hands is a promising first step.
But where – or perhaps ‘wear’ – does it end? With Google ramping up VR on handsets that fit into a cardboard headset, Facebook looking to socialize in a virtual world, Adludio rolling out haptic mobile advertising and the quest for total one-to-one personalized marketing, it may well be that, when the majority strap on their 3D virtual reality glasses and ‘immerse’ en masse they will enter a world of adverts and noise like Times Square or Piccadilly Circus times a thousand: imagine the scene inside your headset…
In VR everyone can Tweet about you screaming
Now whether or not this is a good thing I don’t know (I do know: it sounds like hell!), but we are creeping towards a virtual and augmented future and it could well be populated – and bank rolled – by brash noisy shouting adverts, digital spivs and the odd touch-sensitive wide-boy. Oh Brave New World that has such adverts, innit…
