Top Takeaways from Retail’s Best and Brightest at eTail Summit & Expo
“Transforming retail, together” — that’s the mantra defined by the eTail Summit & Expo, a retail industry event that recently convened for a virtual gathering to discuss the sector’s enduring evolution, changes in consumer trends and a shifted post-pandemic reality across retail.
With a successful run for over two decades, this year eTail was joined by major brands and retailers such as Sephora, Amazon, Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom, Timberland, The North Face and Samsung, among thousands of others, to discuss where retail is headed in 2021 — and according to the experts, success in retail will boil down to the importance of trust, consumer personalization and adapting to new audiences.
In Retail We Trust
Truth be told, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated radical change in retail that was destined to come down the pike, such as significant growth of digital shopping and payments; emergence of convenience-driven flexibility, namely mobile order ahead and curbside pickup; and expeditious in-store payments via digital wallets and QR codes.
Leah Holzman Glass, Head of Global Marketing at Amazon Pay, explained that a crucial step in helping consumers adapt to these new digital innovations is gaining their trust. Eighty-five percent of consumers say that trust is “extremely” or “very” important when deciding where to shop, according to a study by PYMNTS and Amazon.
Holzman Glass emphasized that creating a frictionless digital shopping experience is a key factor in building digital trustworthiness — but the relationship between brand and consumer runs deep. According to our report, Industry Benchmarks for Ecommerce Apps, e-commerce companies gain loyalty and retention with personalized engagement strategies, real-time recommendations and assisted product discovery.
- Personalized Engagement Strategies
While retention rates are vital to the health of any growing app, it’s also important to note that growth cannot solely depend on acquiring new users (i.e., an acquisition-focused growth model) — retailers need to dig even deeper.
Users seek meaningful engagement, and we deliver it through personalized product recommendations that are contextual and specifically relevant to each user, alongside personalized campaign content that accelerates product discovery, increases average order value, and brings diversity to product sales.
- Real-Time Recommendations
Retailers’ user experience should feature personalized product recommendations via in-app notifications, in tandem with external channels such as push notifications and email messages.
It’s also crucial to track click-through rates, which helps optimize campaign content, delivery times, user segments and campaign strategies.
- Assisted Product Discovery
But personalizing campaign content does far more for your brand — it strategically builds the bond between brand and consumer, which in turn boosts conversions and repeat purchase rates.
Contextually relevant content is what draws users in and makes them come back for more. The end result is accelerated product discovery, an increase in average order value, and product sales diversification.
Personalization Post-Pandemic
Personalization has always been essential, but successfully connecting with customers during
the isolation of the pandemic presented new challenges for retailers. At eTail, industry experts from companies such as BJ’s Wholesale Club, The North Face and VF Corporation shared their personalization playbooks, which included insights on how to approach education on personalization internally and the technology it takes to execute on personalization projects.
For example, The North Face amalgamates a “recommended for you” list for online shoppers based on their browsing history; an optimized, seasonally relevant user experience; and alluring incentives and perks that appeal to new and returning customers.
The future of ecommerce belongs to brands who curate the kinds of personalized experiences that customers expect. In our playbook for building a personalization-driven engagement strategy and outlined below, we share our strategies for automating personalized campaign content to reach consumers on the right channel, at the right time — as well as thoughts on building a recommendation engine that keeps up with rapidly-changing consumer preferences.
I. Increase Average Order Value (AOV)
This helps increase revenue by sending personalized product recommendations during the most effective time. Through the use of machine learning, our product recommendations can be dynamically embedded in your campaign messages to deliver the ultimate personalized experience.
CleverTap makes this happen by serving related products to Add to Cart, and Cart Abandonment Campaigns that are powered by similar items.
II. Increase Upsell and Cross-sell Opportunities
Our advanced recommendation algorithm makes use of high intent and low intent signals to determine the most relevant products to recommend — and that means recommendations are sent with intelligent campaign triggers, which makes them remarkably effective. These real-time recommendations are triggered by customer actions, and when we follow up with search abandonment campaigns to show diversity of our product catalogue, complete the look campaigns, recommended selected product categories or brands, and engage post-purchase, we get results.
III. Increase Engagement and Retention
Highly relevant recommendations are served to customers seasonally, and throughout their lifecycle. Meeting customer expectations — or rather, exceeding them — is how to achieve high levels of engagement and retention. That means taking an omnichannel approach that consistently serves a user’s content of choice in an experience that is seamless and personalized across every touchpoint of the consumer journey.
CleverTap makes this happen through web campaigns that contain recommendations triggered on exit-intent and by bringing users back to the app via personalized push notifications.
Shopping is Social
Today’s retailers face an array of solutions to meet the needs of the new digital consumer, such as new payments partners and solutions like buy now, pay later. These shifting forms of consumer financing have impacted expectations and preferences from Millennials and Gen Z consumers.
In a retailer-only session at eTail, Carol Hargrave, Senior Director of Product Marketing at PayPal, shared her insights on how Millennial and Gen Z shoppers are leveraging buy now, pay later as part of their digital wallets — and how their preference for flexible payment options should be instructive to retailers looking to capture the attention of “next-gen” audiences.
We’ve observed that not only do Gen Z consumers expect flexible payment options, but they also prefer shopping to be seamlessly integrated with their social lives on Instagram. Our customer BUMP used intent-based segmentation and RFM Analysis to boost conversions and app launches for social buyers.
Stay Tuned!
Packed with conversations and insights for forward-thinking ecommerce brands, eTail centered its focus on supporting retailers when they need it most — and as we approach a new post-pandemic era, its resources remain essential for retailers looking to grow, evolve and connect with their audience.
