As we know, today’s consumers are doing much of their shopping online. The number of touchpoints to reach them and the amount of data being generated, continues to skyrocket, which can sometimes make for a very disjointed customer engagement strategy.
When customer engagement is done right, brands can build customer loyalty by providing impactful, user-centric experiences. Using digital tools, brands are able to understand their customers more deeply and engage their customers in a more personalised way. In addition, with the winds shifting away from third-party cookies, brands are now having to rely on zero-party and first-party data to support their customer engagement campaigns. To help navigate this cookieless world, Braze released a Retail Customer Engagement Review that looks to solve three common challenges being faced by retailers today.
As a leading comprehensive customer engagement platform, Braze powers results-driven interactions between consumers and brands they love. It allows brands to process customer data in real-time, optimise relevant, cross-channel marketing campaigns and continuously evolve their customer engagement strategies. The Braze software development kits (SDKs) and stream-processing foundation facilitates real-time ingestion of new data and enables companies to tap into user-behavioural data in Braze to analyse, segment against, personalise and action on. This allows businesses to evaluate and continuously evolve their customer engagement strategies to grow their brand.
Take Ticketek, for example. This Australian event ticketing company, which operates ticketing operations for entertainment and sporting events, wanted to better utilise its customer data by leveraging first-party customer data and adding personalisation to its messaging mix. By using the Braze platform’s Connected Content dynamic personalisation feature, Ticketek was able to increase the range of products displayed to its customers. This improved its click-to-convert rate by 228 per cent and increased sales by 49 per cent.
The Covid-19 pandemic has further transformed the retail landscape, and spending habits of consumers. In Australia, the restrictions during the lockdown period also shifted spending habits to digital channels. Between May 2020 and May 2021, Australians spent $48.1 billion on online retail, accounting for around 13.2 per cent of the total retail sales (NAB). Brands are in dire need of new ways to deepen their direct digital relationship. Meaningful, personalised engagement is about more than just pop-up ads on a mobile site or a promotional email.
Another example of a brand that grabbed the personalisation bull by the horns is Boozebud. This online liquor retailer needed to up its messaging game for more engaged customers, so it turned to Braze Connected Content. This 1:1 personalised messaging based on previous purchases and recommendation engine guidance boosted email click-throughs by 69 per cent and revenue by 59 per cent.
With the Retail Customer Engagement Review, Braze further offers retailers a chance to mitigate these top three challenges:
- Managing and using data: Customers are generating much more data than ever before and without a strategy, brands might not be able to use this data for actionable insights. How can you leverage zero- and first-party data for more cohesive customer engagement journeys?
- Channel silos that frustrate customers: It takes more than just a presence in various channels to support seamless customer engagement. How are you connecting the dots? Is your brand experience fulfilling or frustrating?
- Missed personalisation opportunities: Are you actually offering a personalised experience or do you think you’re offering it? According to Shopify, 85 per cent of brands believe they offer personalised experiences, while only 60 per cent of consumers feel they are receiving such an experience.
Are you ready to reimagine retail marketing? Click here to download the Retail Customer Engagement review and transform shopping experiences to thrive in these times of great change.
