Omnichannel Personalization at the Top of Retailers’ Holiday Wish Lists

By Dave Haucke

The holidays offer retailers a wealth of opportunities to cash in on strong online sales, but with consumers now conditioned to expect an even better holiday shopping experience year after year, their expectations will be running at an all-time high this season. Today's shoppers demand a buying experience that's highly engaging across all channels, be it in-store, online or on their mobile devices. Anything short of that could cost retailers critical holiday sales in an ultracompetitive environment.

But even as consumers are spending more online, they're becoming increasingly intolerant of marketing that's irrelevant and inconsistent. If the messaging isn't congruent with their interest, consumers will simply pay less attention to the brand and be less willing to buy its products and services.

At the top of retailers’ holiday wish lists, personalization should be the centerpiece of all marketing initiatives this season. A customized experience is critical to delivering a stellar online shopping experience and driving cross-sell revenue across all channels. Retailers not investing in a customized experience are simply risking business and mindshare to more engaging competitors.

This is especially true when it comes to mobile, where consumers are increasingly comfortable transacting. A recent IBM study highlighting how retailers can get ready for the 2013 holiday season found that mobile devices are powering an ever-greater share of sales and are playing a larger role in buying decisions. With consumers using mobile devices to evaluate and purchase products, smart retailers are making mobile a top priority to capitalize on this opportunity. To ensure fast access to the content mobile shoppers seek, retailers should optimize their site and mobile apps for each individual mobile device and each individual consumer.

Retailers must gain a better understanding of their mobile customers at a more granular level, segmenting them by characteristics such as device type and operating system, and measuring them by metrics such as site visits, time on site and types of content accessed. This kind of detailed insight enables retailers to tailor the mobile experience according to the user's interests and helps to prioritize marketing efforts for the greatest returns.

Of course mobile isn't a channel unto itself, however. It needs to be orchestrated in sync with all other channels. A personalized cross-channel marketing approach is necessary to be innovative in the way you engage consumers. With this in mind, here are some tactics and best practices to consider when developing your holiday omnichannel strategy:

Retarget browser and cart abandoners. Retargeting offers a proven technique to recapture lost business. It also suggests to shoppers that you recognize their interests and value their business. For those shoppers with short attention spans, retargeting offers a clear call to action and streamlines the path to purchase.
Accurately measure channel performance. Leading marketers are evolving beyond first- and last-click measures. Moving toward more sophisticated impression attribution enables marketers to better measure social media, optimize budgeting and marketing mix, understand display ad performance, and track brand sentiment.
Assess your strengths and weaknesses against the competition. Use digital analytics that allow for comparison of performance against peers in the same sub-sector (e.g., footwear, beauty, sporting goods, etc.) and the retail industry as a whole. This type of assessment gives insights into where efforts might be best focused, adding to the already ongoing monitoring of various tactics and techniques.
Progress towards interactive cross-channel marketing. Whatever the focus area and channel mix, it pays to think in terms of a progressive journey toward interactive cross-channel marketing maturity. With the massive amount of data generated by customer activity, technology is essential to leveraging information and automating campaigns that deliver communications as unique as your customers and evolve with the customer lifecycle.

While the holiday shopping season presents a lot of challenges for retailers, the opportunity to differentiate with personalization is enormous. By creating a strong omnichannel marketing strategy with a clear focus on personalization, retailers can adapt to the large-scale changes in consumer behavior to capitalize on the bountiful opportunities of the holiday season and beyond.

Dave Haucke is a strategist for IBM Enterprise Marketing Management.