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3 Ways Omnichannel Shopping is Revolutionizing Retail

Omnichannel shopping has revolutionized the retail industry and the results are booming for businesses. The day after Christmas, online giant Amazon announced that 2017 was its biggest sales year ever, with record sales levels throughout November and December. Amazon’s success was shared throughout the retail industry, with online holiday shopping rising 18 percent in 2017, while overall retail sales for all channels including in-store rose 4.9 percent between November 1 and December 25.

The fact that Christmas fell on a Monday last year helped boost sales, with 53 percent of consumers shopping the Saturday before Christmas, according to the National Retail Federation. Fifty-one percent of these last-minute shoppers made their purchases online, while, 41 percent shopped in department stores and 26 percent shopped discount stores, the NRF said.

These numbers illustrate how retailers have effectively adapted their marketing and sales tactics to today’s omnichannel shopping environment. Here’s a look at three ways retailers are providing omnichannel shopping experiences that are positive for consumers and profitable for businesses.

Cross-platform Marketing

With sales from digital ads now surpassing sales from TV ads, and with mobile devices now surpassing desktops as the top source of internet traffic, mobile marketing has become the foundation of successful omnichannel marketing. Far from replacing TV advertising, however, digital marketing has made TV ads more effective, reinforcing branding messages across multiple channels, giving customers more information about products than ever before. This increased information access boosts consumer satisfaction by providing more ability to compare products and prices, find the best deals and make informed buying decisions. In fact, when digital marketing is used to supplement TV advertising, the result is a 60 percent boost in return on investment, according to the Advertising Research Foundation.

Successful brands have learned to use digital marketing channels to reinforce in-store brick-and-mortar marketing campaigns as well. For instance, Cabela’s uses its website both to provide shopping opportunities for online customers and to provide information to in-store shoppers who might be searching for product information or comparing prices. Cabela’s streamlines the process of shopping for firearms online by allowing consumers to place an order online and have their purchase shipped to a store near them for pickup, eliminating the need to travel from store to store to find the right model. The outdoors retailer also uses tools such as a proprietary mobile app and SMS texting to extend deals to in-store customers.

Tracking Across Multiple Channels

Effective cross-platform marketing isn’t just a matter of deploying advertising across multiple channels. It also requires integrating multi-channel efforts into a single, sustained successful campaign. This requires tracking the results of marketing efforts across multiple channels to gain a complete picture of how customers are interacting with a brand across all channels, what’s working and what isn’t. Cross-channel measurement and attribution of how much each channel contributes to overall success is marketers’ current top priority, an eMarketer survey found.

Cross-channel tracking is yielding new insights into buyer behavior that are empowering improvements of marketing tactics. For instance, the Interactive Advertising Bureau recently produced a playbook highlighting the importance of location data for understanding buyer behavior. Based on this, the IAB recommends using proximity targeting to drive in-store visits.

Omnichannel Transactions

In order to accommodate omnichannel shoppers, retailers are also making adjustments to better handle transactions across multiple channels. As brick-and-mortar retailers have been setting up online stores, online retailers have been establishing a physical presence. For instance, Amazon has begun setting up physical bookstores, a move seen as an advance against rival Walmart, which has been beefing up its online presence.

To manage both in-store and online transactions, providers have begun offering integrated omnichannel payment services. For instance, transaction technology provider NCR, which once specialized in cash registers, has branched off into omnichannel transaction processing that enables companies to offer an integrated array of in-store, online and mobile payment options to customers. The rise of digital wallet apps will make this type of integrated transaction service increasingly important for retailers in the near future.

Cross-platform marketing, multi-channel tracking and omnichannel transaction processing are three ways retailers have adapted to today’s digitally-integrated shopping environment. Companies that successfully implement these strategies are seeing increases in customer satisfaction, marketing efficiency and sales revenue.

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