Introduction

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• The millennial customer hops across multiple sales channels before making a purchase decision.

• He/she seeks a seamless and relatively frictionless experience across all available channels and only retailers with an omni-channel strategy can succeed at meeting these expectations.

• This approach coupled with the right strategy helps deliver a more consistent customer experience across all channels.

Hits and Misses

A well-crafted omni-channel strategy will help you maximize sales from each channel. If that’s not happening for you, take a moment to consider your strategy. You are most likely, missing something important.

3 Core areas to focus on for an Omni channel strategy

The three fixes

• Get the Analytics Fix

Getting insights on customer’s journey across physical and digital channels needs to be accurately mapped and analyzed to deliver a more personalized shopping experience.

The addition of analytics lends Omni-channel retailing real-time insights on customer engagement absent in multi-channel retailing.

It lets businesses target customers with the right marketing message based on where they are at in their buyer’s journey. Such targeted campaigns have higher conversion rates.

Analytics also helps retailers identify opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling and in identifying gaps in engagement. Predictive analytics goes further and tracks evolving trends in consumer behavior ensuring that retailers with omni-channel strategies stay ahead of the curve.

3 Core areas to focus on for an Omni channel strategy

• Product-Channel Sync fix

If a product is largely targeted towards a particular demographic, selling on platforms frequented by that demographic is crucial. For instance, if millennial are your target market, social commerce is where you must focus your efforts.

The best channel to sell a particular product also depends on the product characteristics. A product that needs to attract customers visually, needs to be showcased on platforms that champion visual creativity. If you run a resort chain, targeting prospective customers through Instagram ads is a great idea. It must deliver a frictionless shopping experience through a mobile-optimized website. The website should build on the Instagram experience through the right marketing and promotional content as well as be mobile friendly

Remember, omni-channel does not advocate or recommend giving equal or more importance to a specific channel or channels. A channel might dominate for a particular product or brand and your marketing & sales strategy must be aligned to that; while taking care of customer experience through out.

3 Core areas to focus on for an Omni channel strategy

• It is not about online vs. offline – use online to score offline wins

A recent survey by HRC Advisory found that nearly 75% respondents found e-commerce transactions were stealing sales from store fronts. E-commerce growth rates are surpassing brick-and-mortar sales by a good 10-15% margin.• Most retailers including those with omni-channel strategies fail to strike a balance

between in-store and online sales because, they think omni-channel is all about customer experience and continue to look at online and offline as two disjoint channels only. For example, beacon technology can help retailers leverage mobiles to increase in-store sales.

‘beacon technology’ retailers communicate with their customers using their online app. Based on the user’s previous shopping behavior, personalized offers are sent to the user when he/she is in the vicinity of a store. For in-store shoppers, special offers are generated based on their shopping history. This, in turn, helps companies reap up-selling and cross-selling gains.Knowing exactly what a shopper is looking for will help target the right offers to the right customer at the right time. Beacons drove sales worth US$4.1 billion in 2015 alone!

In a constantly evolving market landscape, those who get their omni-channel strategy right will march ahead in the ‘Retail Race’.

So, ready to take on an omni-channel approach? Worried about time and costs involved? Well, don’t! There are excellent off-the-shelf solutions in the market to help companies implement omni-channel strategies quickly and cost effectively. i95Dev’s E-commerce Growth Engine (EGE) is one such solution.

Conclusion

For more information

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