Customer Interactions influencing digital commerce and marketing strategy

CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS INFLUENCING DIGITIAL COMMERCE &MARKETING STRATEGY

How Does Customer Interactions & Behavior Influences The Digital Commerce & Marketing Strategy?

Eswara K [email protected]

CONTEXTDigital Commerce & Marketing reached a state where I, as a customer, am being targeted with relevant content online and re-targeted again and again.

As customers we all leave digital foot prints with every interaction online and that influences commerce & marketing strategists to target us with personalised, unified and integrated digital experience.

This paper covers what are the common customer interactions in a day to day life and high level opportunities that can be utilized to deliver unified digital experience and engaging customers with optimised digital marketing strategy.

WHY…?“As a customer I just want to highlight my interactions with different brands in disparate channels and the opportunities digital commerce & marketing teams have to capitalize and deliver best possible personalised and unified digital experiences across all my interactions.”

THE BIG PICTURE…

Print

SearchMail

Messaging

SMSPush

Notifications

News Paper Offers

Social

Web

Mobile

BrandLoyalty

Subscriptions

Browse

Purchase

Post Purchase

Wi-Fi

Services

Big Screen

ChatBots

TV

Displays

Apps

Ads Relevance

Email Direct Mail

Facebook

Twitter

Cloud

WhatsApp

Malls

Offers

MWeb

Ranking

Affiliates

Two Many

Interactions And

many more……Google

Now

In-Store / Phone

In-StorePhone Ordering

Customer Services

Others..

WHAT IS DIGITAL COMMERCE STRATEGY?Digital Commerce Strategy is a consolidated view to trade products online using different channels & devices and to deliver personalized, unified and integrated digital experience across channels and every customer interaction with brand and improving brand awareness & loyalty.

WHAT IS DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY?Digital Marketing Strategy is a consolidated view to capitalize and influence customers across all interactions, target & re-target customers in disparate channels so as to improve brand awareness with better return on investment (ROI).

WEB

Web

Browse

Purchase

Customer starts browsing website and finally buys the product. In this journey customer leaves digital foot prints for marketers to identify the customer and provide targeted personalised digital experience.

Post Purchase

WEB - BROWSE• Browsing - Capture customer behavior and target with relevant content.

• Recommendations – Display recommendations based on profile, purchase history and analytics.

• Cross Sell / Upsell – Display Cross Sell / Upsell products at relevant places.

• Profile – Most Important and powerful. Personalise content, journey, recommendations and offers based on customer profile.

• Purchase History – Personalise content Based on Past Purchase History.

• Reviews & Ratings – Understand customer feedback and improve quality and customer satisfaction.

• Social Sharing – Encourage customers to share the products they like and their digital experience on website.

• Exploring other options – Retarget customers at real time to influence customers to come back to website.

• Budget – Understand what customers are interested , price range and rank relevant products higher.

• Switched Channel/Device – Identify customer across channels and provide unified and integrated digital experience.

Customer Behavior - Marketers Opportunity

WEB - PURCHASE• Add to Bag / Trolley – Re-engage customers with bag abandonment email & target recommendations.

• Multi Visit – Identify return customers and allow to continue the journey and target personalised offers.

• Not Returning – Target customer with display Ads in Search, Re-Targeting on Affiliates.

• Profile – Personalise offers & recommendations based on profile.

• Confirm Purchase– Cross Sell and influence customers to register if not already registered.

• Social Sharing – Encourage customers to share their feedback on social platforms.


WEB – POST PURCHASE• Purchase History – Personalise offers & recommendations based on Past Purchase History

• Post Purchase– Re-engage customer with post purchase email and Cross Sell offers.

• Social Sharing – Encourage customers to share their feedback on social platforms.


MOBILE / IPAD / TABLET

ChatBots

Apps

MWeb

Produce MobileFirst content. Customer expects to all web pages are mobile & touch optimised for mobile. It is also very critical to produce similar experience as Web to have customers connected across different channels.

MOBILE/IPAD/TABLET - MWEB

• All Web interactions applies to Mobile Web & Touch optimised devices as well.

• Browsing - Produce unified experience with mobile optimised content.

• Purchase - Make it easy to buy products with responsible web pages with simple and optimised customer journey.


MOBILE/IPAD/TABLET - APPS

• All Web & Mobile interactions apply to mobile applications as well. However mobile apps allows better personalisation and native experience to customers.

• Browsing - Allow continue customer journey between Web, Mobile Web & Apps for unified & integrated digital experience.

• Purchase - Native customer journey in sync with web & mobile web customer journey for consistent experience.


MOBILE/IPAD/TABLET - CHATBOTS

• Future opportunity for digital commerce teams to produce interactive AI chatbots for personalised customer experience and also for marketers to target customers with personalisation and recommendation based on predictive analysis.


BRAND

Customers become brand advocates with great buying experience, product quality and serviceability. It is very critical for brands to maintain continuous engagement with customers.

BrandLoyalty

Subscriptions

Offers

BRAND - LOYALTY• Follow & Re-visits - Once customer likes the product and becomes loyal to brand it is for marketers to

influence customers to keep them engaged & maintain the relationship.


BRAND - SUBSCRIPTIONS• Subscribe to recurring delivery - Influence customers to monthly or yearly subscriptions.

• Subscribe to news letters & events - Engage customers with occasional news letters and events to keep customer connected with BRAND.

•


BRAND - OFFERS• Looking for specific brands - Influence customers to buy products when customers are looking for

similar brands.•


SEARCHSearc

hGoogle & Others

Site Search

Affiliates

Search is the one of most critical part of customer journey. Most customers search online before buying online or in-store or using any other channel. Web search is one of most critical elements of marketing strategy to target customers with personalised products and content.

Customer behavior in search influences marketing strategy to build brand awareness, identifying popular products, and best way to influence customers.

SEARCH – GOOGLE & OTHERS

• Web Search & Results - Most customers search in google or other search engines to find best deals, offers and comparisons and product performance against similar products. Marketers have huge opportunity to influence customers by

• showing products on top of the page

• re-targeting customers via paid search and ads

• detecting cross channel customers and displaying personalized results.

• Voice Search – Asking Google, Siri and Cortana is going to be another standard way to find what we want. Being on top of relevancy for these services to pick your products is also an opportunity. And also providing voice based search on your platform may be a necessity in the future.

• Visual Search – Searching for products using an image is another flavor of finding products based on photo. This is an opportunity for digital commerce and marketing teams to help customers find what they want quickly.

• View Ads-. Marketers target customers with ads with relevancy based on whatever data they have about customer at that point in time. Customer interaction with the ads is dependent on how relevant the ads are, time & location.


SEARCH – AFFILIATES• Looking for something else – When customers are looking for something else, affiliate websites or in

search results displays products that customer viewed before to influence customers to re-start their journey.

Since affiliates usually have tie ups with thousands of sites, customers are shown recommendations based on browsing history.


SEARCH – SITE SEARCH• Site Search - Internal website search is also very critical to influence customers to find the products

they want very quickly. Provide ways to simplify and group the search results for customers to easily filter and find what they are looking for.

• Display results using personal preferences, demo graphics, purchase history and other profile attributes.

• Display relevant products on top of the list for better customer engagement.


SOCIAL NETWORKSSocial

Networks

Social networking revolution caused major disruption in the way we communicate with our friends & family and colleagues. It also brought marketers a plenty of opportunities to engage with customers and understand social behavior and brand sentiment analysis much better.

Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram and other social & media networking

sites

SOCIAL NETWORKING• Social interactions - All social media interactions (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram etc) have huge

opportunity to engage customers, selling products via social channels, spread the word, sales & promotions and so on.

• Social Commerce & Social Marketing have significant impact on customers buying pattern and intern influences digital marketing teams to have a strategy covering all social media interactions.

• Likes & Shares – Now customers share the products they like and Not Likes in social media and it influences other social media users and it spreads faster than any other media.


MAILMail

Mail marketing strategies are standard way to reach customers offline and re-engage them to have a interaction with the brand. Some customers may use email or direct mail based on their preference and it is for marketers to identify and personalize communication with customers using campaign analytics and customer behavior.

Email

Direct Mail

MAIL – EMAIL• Marketing Emails – Marketing emails are one of the popular and quickest way to engage customers with

the upcoming sales and personalised offers to persuade customers to purchase products.

• Post Purchase Emails – Post purchase emails are another way to engage customers to buy support, cross sell, recommendations, reviews and customer feedback. It helps marketers to understand customer feedback and interests to optimise the process.

• News Letters / Events – Improve customer engagement by informing customers with brand news and upcoming events to engage customers with the brand via online, instore or offline,


MAIL – DIRECT MAIL• Marketing Mails – Traditional direct mails does influence previous generations who used to use direct

mail to find best deals, offers and local events. It is still a popular method to reach certain customers offline.

• Local Events – Informing about local events and conducting the events attracts customers to engage with the brand and be connected.


BIG SCREENBig

Screen

Big screens such as TV, Displays and Malls attract customers and has potential to engage customers and connected to brands.

TV

Displays

Malls

BIG SCREEN – TV• Watching TV – TV is still one of the primary entertainment and enables marketers to target customers

during prime time or during the programs that attract more people. Analysing the performance of TV advertising will help identify right channels to optimise and minimize the marketing spend and engagement with the brand.


BIG SCREEN – DISPLAYS• Displays all over – Customers are exposed to big displays in commute, in front of shops and in high

street and in many more places. Marketers have an opportunity to choose what’s right for their brand and customers behavior to target customers at right places at right time.


BIG SCREEN – MALLS• Week end shopping in Malls – Customers are exposed to brands and big displays to influence customers

over the week ends and normal days. It allows customers to experience the brands and become customers.


IN-STORE / PHONEIn-

Store / Phone

Buying from physical stores is still fun especially window shopping. Customers can also order using in-store ordering for products that are not available in store, self serve Kiosks and via phone ordering.

These channels keep the customer engaged and influences to buy the product.

In-Store

Phone OrderingCustomer Services

IN-STORE – PURCHASE/KIOSKS

• Purchase in-store – Physical brand experience can influence customer to purchase and cross sell/upsell the products. Digital commerce teams & marketers have an opportunity to unify the buying experience in-store and online.

• Looking for something not available in store – Digital commerce to allow customers placing on-line orders in-store will keep the customer engaged and provides integrated experience. Marketers will have an opportunity to measure and personalize customer experience by associating the purchase to online account.

• Self serve Kiosks – Kiosks are self serve large screen devices for purchasing products. Digital commerce teams & marketers have an opportunity to simplify the customer journey and target customers who doesn't’t find the product in the store.


IN-STORE – PHONE ORDERING

• Order by Phone – It provides an opportunity for marketers to identify the customer uniquely, past purchases , clicks/impressions, viewed products before calling for phone ordering. With these customer insights the whole ordering process can be simplified to provide best experience in phone ordering.


IN-STORE – CUSTOMER SERVICES

• Customer Services – Similar to phone ordering, marketers have an opportunity to identify the customer uniquely, past purchases , clicks/impressions, viewed products, error pages, broken journey before calling customer services for help.


MESSAGINGMessagin

g

Messaging services such as SMS, Push notifications and WhatsApp have huge success rate of engaging customers. However most of the cases the messages are personalised and opted by customer. Marketers have an opportunity to personalize and target customers wherever applicable.

SMSPush

Notifications

WhatsApp

MESSAGING – SMS• SMS Offers – Reaching out to customers via with personalised offers is an opportunity for marketers to

re-engage customers.

• SMS notifications – Notifying customers with abandoned carts or to complete incomplete applications could be an opportunity to re-engage customers.


MESSAGING – PUSH NOTIFICATIONS

• PUSH notifications – Push notifications are one of the powerful way to notify customers with abandoned baskets, missing information and personalised offers etc. Now with an ability for websites to display push notifications this is even powerful way to engage customers using website or mobile apps.


MESSAGING – WHATSAPP• WhatsApp – One of the most powerful & popular messaging service used by a billion people. Upcoming

WhatsApp features to connect with businesses & banks could influence marketers to focus and reach customers with personalised experience.


SERVICESServices

Internet Wi-Fi and Cloud services we use opens an opportunity for marketers to delivery personalised and location based content.

Wi-Fi

Cloud

Google Now

SERVICES – WI-FI• Using Wi-Fi Hot spots – Using Wi-Fi hot spots opens up an window of opportunity for marketers to

engage customers based on location and proximity with personalised offers around that location.

• How often you think that I didn’t know that there was a sale?

• What if a push notification comes up that there is a sale in a store when you are walking past that store?


SERVICES – CLOUD• Using Cloud Services – Using cloud services across the devices provides marketers to target with

personalised content and offer services . Most smart phone users use one or more cloud based services in day to day life.


SERVICES – GOOGLE NOW• Using Google Now – Google Now delivers right information at the right time. It intelligently reminds

travel info, flight dates & time, deliveries to pickup from stores and most importantly suggested posts based on my preferences and location.

Being on top of Google search results in one thing and being on top of Google Now to appear in Google suggested posts in another important thing. I personally go through the suggested posts at least once a day and most often go through the posts.


PRINTPrint

Print is one of the popular channel to reach customers via news paper advertisements, magazines and printed offers to influence customers offline. Free news papers with advertisements is also a popular way to reach customers.

News Paper

Magazines

Offers

PRINT – NEWS PAPERS/MAGAZINES

• News Papers & Magazines – Advertisements in news papers is still one of the popular way to influence customers and increase brand awareness & brand loyalty.

Digital news papers also paves way for marketers to display ads with relevant products based on customer identification or predictive analysis using demographics.


PRINT – OFFERS• Printed Papers – Reaching out to customers with printed offers other than news papers via physical

affiliate stores is also a way to target or re-target customers and influence to buy products and improve brand awareness.


WHAT NEXT?This list of customer interactions might help you refine your digital commerce & marketing strategy to improve your brand awareness & sales.

There could be many more interactions we do online that are not listed but proliferation of technologies & tools continuously nurture new opportunities and improvements.

THANK YOU

Customer Interactions influencing digital commerce and marketing strategy

Technology

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