Fall is here, and while many may welcome cooler weather, this kicks off the annual countdown to the holidays. According to the NRF, the amount holiday shoppers spend can represent as much as 30% of annual sales for the retail industry. It’s crunch time.
LiveRamp recently invited Forrester analyst Michelle Beeson, who serves eBusiness and channel strategy professionals, to share her thoughts on what retailers can do differently this season to maximize their revenue opportunities from holiday shoppers. In a recent webinar titled “Identity’s Role in Delighting Customers this Holiday Season,” she joined LiveRamp’s Managing Director of Strategic Growth, Christine Grammier, to discuss both the challenges and opportunities of next-gen personalization, and why empowered consumers expect nothing less than individualized experiences – both offline and online – this season.
1. Customers interact with brands via a growing constellation of touchpoints.
Forrester reports that in 2017, 51% of all U.S. retail sales involved digital in some way, confirming that consumers’ path to purchase includes a number of touchpoints that span both offline (in-store, point-of-sale, call center, etc.) and online (search, website, display, and more). Additionally, hyperconnected consumers expect nothing less than getting what they want in their immediate context and moment of need on their preferred devices.
2. An omnichannel approach is now essential to enabling effective people-based campaigns.
Marketers are eager to leverage technology to better recognize consumer context and motivations, previous engagements with the brand, and individual preferences. Throughout the holidays and other seasonal campaigns, many are looking to develop useful and predictive customer insights to inform engagement across touchpoints and individuals.
3. Identity is integral to marketing agility.
Given the above, how does the rubber meet the road? How can companies use technology to meet the needs of what another Forrester analyst, Fatemeh Khatibloo, calls the entitled consumer?
Identity is the key to understanding audiences and what they want in the moment, however, their needs change. For example, Philips Norelco was facing immense market pressure. To make sure they made every marketing dollar count, they took an omnichannel approach to an eight-week seasonal campaign that was designed to allow for frequent measurement and optimization based on certain hypotheses they had about their audiences.
Working with LiveRamp partner Marketing Evolution, they were able to run an agile effort to test and learn through an intense eight-week period, enabling different creative message testing tailored to individuals. Throughout the campaign, they made a number of adjustments – recalibrating TV and online video messages that were driving the most sell-through, reallocating budget per line item by segments, networks, and dayparts, and lastly, scaling up radio buys after the initial test proved strong ROI. At the end of eight weeks, they were able to show the following results:
- An overall improvement of market share of 5%
- Category growth of 3%
- $27MM in incremental profit
These results would have been impossible to obtain or pinpoint without identity and a robust data strategy.
If you want to learn more about the pieces you need to gain deeper insights and make better decisions incrementally with holiday shoppers, download our one-pager Check Off Every Item on Your Identity Holiday Wish List.