The Future of Brand Loyalty is a Great Customer Experience on Mobile

Over the years, brands and retail chains have tried just about everything to earn customer loyalty and increase sales. Discounts, celebrity endorsements, loyalty points and good old-fashioned friendly and informed customer service have all been (and continue to be) important tools at a retailer’s disposal.

Despite the value these levers of sales and brand loyalty bring to the retail environment, mobile-savvy customers are more informed, more educated and demanding more from their brick and mortar retail experience. This means customers expect more from their favorite brands mobile offerings. Increasingly, these customers are taking their dollars online. Where brick and mortar retail was once king, e-commerce sites from Amazon to Zulily continue to grab market share. Stay competitive means marketers will need to continue to up their mobile game.

E-commerce — It’s Not Just About Price

Price is often looked to as the cause of this shift in customer spend, but there is more to it than that. While savings is of course a significant factor, the excellent customer experience provided by many e-commerce sites is often overlooked when explaining this shift in commerce. Online shopping places a wealth of product information that is fast and seamless to navigate at the fingertips of the customer. Products are easy to find and inventory is accurately listed. Item currently out of stock? No problem. We’ll ship it to you as soon as it is in. In addition to easy navigation, online shopping offers more product varieties than are available in store. The e-commerce experience is highly personalized with promotions and deals that are tailored to that customer’s segment and buying preferences. The products a customer views and searches for on an e-commerce site, inform the types of products that are promoted to that customer the next time they sign in.

A personalized experience and fast access to product information are just some of the ways that the e-commerce experience is superior. For the first time, the technological foundation is set to bring the e-commerce experience into brick and mortar retail. For years, customers have used their mobile phones in store to look at a store’s flyer, to Google additional product information, or to contact another store to see if they have inventory of a product that is out of stock. But this experience requires extra steps, lengthy searches and data entry through third party apps to drive any customer value. This results in a clunky customer experience, leaving the retailer with zero line of sight to what it is that the customer cares about.

The Future of Brick and Mortar Retail is Now

Enter iBeacon — a technology that sets the foundation for a brick and mortar retail revival. By enabling context relevant micro location, beacons and the incorporation of location technology opens the doors for retail apps to become relevant in-store shopping companions, enhancing the customer experience. With iBeacon integration into a retailer’s existing mobile app, customers can now:

• Be welcomed to the store with push notifications upon entry, driving app opens
• Be presented with a personalized flyer or set of custom one-to-one offers as they enter a store
• View enhanced product information and reviews when making a purchase decision
• Check store inventory and request product delivery of out of stock items

The result? The enhanced shopping experience that was once limited to the web is now placed in the hands of shoppers as they view products in the retail environment. Of course with new forms of engagement come new opportunities to gather data and further enhance the experience. Just as clicks in the e-commerce world are leveraged to inspire complimentary product offers, time spent in front of a particular product or category provide valuable data that enable further personalization of the customer experience. Spent time standing in front of tents in the camping aisle but didn’t make a purchase? How about a personalized offer highlighting tents on sale upon your next visit?

The New Face of Loyalty

So where does loyalty come in to play? In a world where every North American belongs to over 7 loyalty programs on average, there is increasing cynicism and confusion about the value of points based incentives. A flood of loyalty programs have left customers with loyalty currency overload. How often do we hear customers say “I have all these points but i can’t get anything for them”. That is not to say loyalty currencies are not a valuable tool in the mix of behaviour change tools at our disposal, but points and discounts aren’t enough. Increasingly, customer loyalty comes from great customer experiences. Informed decisions, fast access to products, personalized and relevant offers are all key drivers behind loyalty to brands. A context aware mobile experience is the most promising solution to deliver that experience.

To learn more about how you can bring beacons and location in to your app, check out how to get started with Rover!