Why Retailers Need To Move Beyond Cross Channel Marketing

The retail marketing power has shifted for the marketer to the customer in recent years as digital has disrupted what we used to think of as tried and true retail practices. With the proliferation of channels beyond the store and the Web site, the way customers engage with your brand is on their terms.

With this shift comes the expectation that you make it easy for them to engage with your brand, when they want to, and how they want to, no matter where they are.

What should matter to retail marketers looking to survive in today’s tough, digitally transformed, retail landscape?

Stay Focused On the Right Thing

The best-performing retailers, whether it is ModCloth, Amazon, or The North Face are not focusing on the marketing channels, but are focused on enabling seamless, low-friction customer experiences with their brands. The customer does not think about your brand in the terms of marketing channels.

They want to view your retail store as a window into the brand, but can access inventory and quickly and easily buy through their mobile device, or the website or even the store if they so choose.

They also want the product or service delivered to them quickly, no matter where they are, be it at home, work, a hotel on the road, etc. Retail marketers need to break down their siloed thinking and embrace that modern retail marketing success is driven by a seamless customer experience.

The Numbers Do Not Lie

This past December, Steve Olenski, Forbes contributor, influencer and Director of CMO Content & Strategy for Oracle Marketing Cloud shared the 4 Cross Channel Marketing Stats Marketers Need To Know Going Into 2017.

Read Steve’s post for sure but I’ll summarize the 4 stats here for you:

Two-thirds of all shoppers regularly use more than one channel to make purchases.
The average shopper makes on average 9.5 visits to a retailer’s site before deciding to buy.
Customers who shop on more than one channel have a 30% higher Lifetime Value than those who shop on only one.
Only 5% of marketers say they are “very much set up to effectively orchestrate cross-channel marketing activities.”

It’s All About the CX

As I mentioned earlier the best brands in the world are not focused on marketing channels per se but the experience they provide across those channels.

Most marketers rate Customer Experience as a top priority for their organization year after year, but very few companies are actually able to deliver on their vision. How often do we hear stories of customers with open service tickets receiving an email promotion targeted towards “happy customers”? Or display ads shown promoting a product to a customer who just recently purchased that very same item?

When investigating where these customer experience initiatives fall flat – or even fail to get off the ground – it is very often see data issues at the root of the problem.

Marketers struggle with data silos within their own organization as they try to integrate customer data across multiple systems – email, web, commerce, service, loyalty, social, etc.

Even if they are able to successfully unite data across these systems, once customer start to move across devices and channels, most marketing systems lose track of who’s who. Add in the final component of anonymous audiences who move throughout the digital world, and the average marketer is facing an impossible task.

If you can’t be sure who you’re speaking to at the end of your marketing campaign, there’s no way you can provide a positive Customer Experience.

Keep It Simple

Retailers today need an all-in-one solution that helps retail marketers develop direct relationships with customers through seamlessly orchestrated cross-channel digital experiences—online and offline—that facilitate and strengthen customer interactions across a constantly growing list of digital touchpoints.

Watch this brief case study to see how one leading retailer uses Oracle Marketing Cloud technology and expertise to deliver a perfect customer experience that speaks to the mood and the moment of the consumer using cross-channel orchestration at this women's vintage fashion and lifestyle brand.