Using email to connect the online-offline shopping experience.
Today’s leading European retailers focus on and cater to their customers, and as consumers’ shopping behaviours evolve and expectations increase, loyalty becomes harder to earn – and it has never been more important than now to meet and exceed those expectations.
Retailers need to meet those expectations at every customer touchpoint. Consumers have channel-agnostic expectations of brands: Every channel, whether it’s email, social or in-store, comprises a single brand experience.
Now is the time to provide shoppers a personalised, customer-first shopping experience that cuts across channels and helps build brand loyalty.
Email marketing can lead the way
Email marketing has proven to be a powerful asset for retailers, yet many still struggle with delivering a personalised email experience. However, automated lifecycle messages can accomplish this.
For example, browse recovery messages – those sent when consumers view products or categories of products but don’t purchase – provide personalised content to an active shopper at just the right time. Other automated lifecycle messages such as welcome series, abandoned basket and lapsed-purchase messages similarly enhance customer experiences and guide them down their path to purchase.
Just as important as guiding consumers toward a purchase, lifecycle messages can be used to build brand loyalty. Post-purchase messages can enhance the customer purchase experience, regardless if they are first-time or your most loyal customers.
These automated messages can be tailored to the purchaser based on data such as the total number of purchases, AOV, CLTV and products purchased. Personalised messages like these ensure the experience doesn’t end once the purchase is made.
Tying email to in-store shopping
Brick and mortar stores are still a very important part of the brand-consumer relationship. The in-store experience provides consumers the ability to touch and feel a product, try on items, engage with staff, make returns and use click and collect.
In fact, the UK is the global leader when it comes to consumers using click and collect. Highlighting and even incentivising click and collect in your lifecycle and promotional emails is an effective way to provide a mutually beneficial, channel-agnostic experience.
Knowing that the majority of consumers make unplanned purchases when picking up click and collect orders, you can drive in-store traffic and influence purchases by highlighting the service and offering email promotions for it.
Making email marketing work for you
Forty percent of UK email marketers surveyed by Direct Marketing Association UK cited limited internal resources as one of their biggest challenges, but email marketing – especially automated lifecycle messages – can deliver cost-effective, personalised experiences that connect online shopping to the physical experience, drive sales and build customer loyalty with better customer experiences.
The leading retailers of the future will be those who maximise the value from each of their marketing channels, but with email marketing, it’s never been easier than it is now.
Don’t let the opportunity, and your competition, pass you by.
