This document provides an overview of a survey conducted on CRM/Unified Commerce strategies and initiatives among top North American retailers. Some key findings include:
- Most retailers have implemented customer databases and plan to implement real-time analytics to gather and analyze customer data in real-time.
- Top strategic initiatives include the ability to identify customers when they enter the store, implementing real-time retail experiences, and increasing use of mobile marketing.
- Retailers indicated increasing budgets for technologies that support customer experience, mobile marketing, CRM analytics, and loyalty programs.
- While many retailers have elements of a unified approach, such as joint marketing/IT teams, nearly half have separate marketing and IT strategies
This document discusses how precision digital marketing can now be applied to physical retail stores through technologies like beacons. It notes that consumers blend online and offline experiences, so retailers must provide a seamless experience across channels. Beacons allow proximity marketing campaigns that engage customers in physical stores and provide insights into customer behavior. This helps optimize aspects like foot traffic, customer service, and inventory management.
The document discusses the growth of e-commerce and issues related to integrating online and physical retail channels. It finds that while many retailers have an online presence, few have sophisticated strategies to integrate their online and offline operations. Specifically, it analyzes a sample of over 3000 retailers and finds that while 70% share basic contact and store information online, only 13% offer features that complexly integrate online and offline purchasing and returns. The document argues retailers need to better leverage new technologies to synergistically link online and physical shopping experiences.
The document summarizes research findings on small and medium-sized businesses' (SMBs) needs and preferences regarding online presence and websites. It finds that SMBs want solutions that are trustworthy, help them get found locally, and require minimal effort ("done" for them). However, many existing SMB websites fail to meet basic usability and functionality standards. The document then presents the Veloxsites solution, which uses customer analytics to automatically provision websites that match SMBs' specific needs, in order to better serve customers and scale efficiently.
Informes PwC - Encuesta Total Retail GlobalPwC España
El informe "Hacia un modelo de Total Retail", elaborado por PwC, analiza las expectativas y hábitos de consumo del comprador online, a partir de 15.000 entrevistas a compradores digitales de todo el mundo, y las implicaciones para las compañías del sector de distribución y consumo en los próximos años.
The document summarizes key findings from a survey of 89 companies on their digital marketing capabilities. It finds that:
1) Only 18% of companies are able to very effectively track and analyze a customer's journey across multiple channels, showing most struggle with cross-channel integration and visibility.
2) While most companies recognize the need to improve customer loyalty and targeting based on purchase behavior, few are always able to execute strategies like targeted offers (24%) or reward loyal customers (62%) effectively due to a lack of integrated customer data and systems.
3) Respondents agree better integration of retail systems and marketing channels could significantly improve customer loyalty, targeting, and marketing effectiveness, showing integration is a priority area for
The BFSI Marketer's guide to leveraging marketing automation & analyticsNetcore Solutions
Decode the unique touchpoints of the BFSI consumer journey to enable smart conversations and drive up engagement. Download this ebook here - http://bit.ly/2DAyIcl
This document discusses omni-channel retail and strategies for enhancing the customer experience across channels. It describes both the current and enhanced processes for fulfillment and delivery, shopping experience, and designing service offerings. For each process, it outlines the key steps, limitations of the current process, and how technology like big data analytics, mobile apps, and digital displays can help create a more seamless omni-channel experience for customers. The goal is to provide personalized recommendations, streamline queries and purchases across channels, and ensure consistency in customer interactions online and in-store.
This document discusses how precision digital marketing can now be applied to physical retail stores through technologies like beacons. It notes that consumers blend online and offline experiences, so retailers must provide a seamless experience across channels. Beacons allow proximity marketing campaigns that engage customers in physical stores and provide insights into customer behavior. This helps optimize aspects like foot traffic, customer service, and inventory management.
The document discusses the growth of e-commerce and issues related to integrating online and physical retail channels. It finds that while many retailers have an online presence, few have sophisticated strategies to integrate their online and offline operations. Specifically, it analyzes a sample of over 3000 retailers and finds that while 70% share basic contact and store information online, only 13% offer features that complexly integrate online and offline purchasing and returns. The document argues retailers need to better leverage new technologies to synergistically link online and physical shopping experiences.
The document summarizes research findings on small and medium-sized businesses' (SMBs) needs and preferences regarding online presence and websites. It finds that SMBs want solutions that are trustworthy, help them get found locally, and require minimal effort ("done" for them). However, many existing SMB websites fail to meet basic usability and functionality standards. The document then presents the Veloxsites solution, which uses customer analytics to automatically provision websites that match SMBs' specific needs, in order to better serve customers and scale efficiently.
Informes PwC - Encuesta Total Retail GlobalPwC España
El informe "Hacia un modelo de Total Retail", elaborado por PwC, analiza las expectativas y hábitos de consumo del comprador online, a partir de 15.000 entrevistas a compradores digitales de todo el mundo, y las implicaciones para las compañías del sector de distribución y consumo en los próximos años.
The document summarizes key findings from a survey of 89 companies on their digital marketing capabilities. It finds that:
1) Only 18% of companies are able to very effectively track and analyze a customer's journey across multiple channels, showing most struggle with cross-channel integration and visibility.
2) While most companies recognize the need to improve customer loyalty and targeting based on purchase behavior, few are always able to execute strategies like targeted offers (24%) or reward loyal customers (62%) effectively due to a lack of integrated customer data and systems.
3) Respondents agree better integration of retail systems and marketing channels could significantly improve customer loyalty, targeting, and marketing effectiveness, showing integration is a priority area for
The BFSI Marketer's guide to leveraging marketing automation & analyticsNetcore Solutions
Decode the unique touchpoints of the BFSI consumer journey to enable smart conversations and drive up engagement. Download this ebook here - http://bit.ly/2DAyIcl
This document discusses omni-channel retail and strategies for enhancing the customer experience across channels. It describes both the current and enhanced processes for fulfillment and delivery, shopping experience, and designing service offerings. For each process, it outlines the key steps, limitations of the current process, and how technology like big data analytics, mobile apps, and digital displays can help create a more seamless omni-channel experience for customers. The goal is to provide personalized recommendations, streamline queries and purchases across channels, and ensure consistency in customer interactions online and in-store.
Omni-channel strategy aims to connect and engage customers throughout the entire purchase process by integrating all sales channels. It allows customers to move seamlessly from awareness to research to purchase whether in-store, online, or via mobile. To develop an effective omni-channel strategy, companies should assess their experience, information, product range, pricing, and convenience using the P.R.I.C.E model and consider customer data analytics, niche product sales online, channel integration, customer loyalty programs, and strategic partnerships.
The document discusses how big data can help retailers in the apparel industry analyze consumer behavior and trends to improve business strategies. It describes how retailers can use big data to optimize pricing, promotions, inventory, product assortments, store layouts and more. Specifically, big data can help retailers with customer segmentation, cross-selling, analyzing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and gaining insights from omnichannel shopping behaviors. Implementing big data analytics allows retailers to better understand customers and adapt to changing preferences and market conditions.
Raymark | Beyond MPOS: Diversifying Retail Mobile Solutions for Greater ROIRaymark
This document discusses how providing retail sales associates with mobile devices can empower them and improve the customer experience. It notes that consumers now have more information than associates when shopping due to being constantly connected. Mobile devices can give associates real-time access to product information, pricing, inventory levels, and customer data to allow them to better assist shoppers. This positions associates to influence purchase decisions rather than just complete transactions, potentially increasing sales and customer loyalty.
Be Like Bezos 2 - The Future Omnichannel Brand EconomyRevel Partners
The document discusses the evolution of business models in the brand direct economy. It outlines how brands have moved from relying on third-party retailers to controling their own omnichannel experiences and collecting customer data directly. It identifies five key technology areas (product availability, customer experience, product delivery, post-purchase satisfaction, advertising accountability) and recommends using a centralized customer data platform to integrate first-party and third-party data. The conclusions predict that brands will own sales and logistics across all channels, commoditizing retailers, and that retailers will focus on experience and seamless transactions to maintain brand relationships.
RSR ebook: Retail ecommerce in context: the next iterationLeigh Doyle
After years of steady ecommerce growth, there has been an unprecedented acceleration of the shift from physical stores to online shopping. Retailers are facing the limitations of their aging technology stack in allowing them to offer buy online pick up in store (BOPIS), social commerce, adding new payment methods, launching subscription programs and more. This study aims to understand how well retailers have been able to pivot to a digital-first world, the challenges they face, the opportunities nascent in the marketplace, and how their technology portfolios are able to support these shifts profitably.
Digital marketing is fundamental for businesses today as consumers do most of their research online. Effective digital marketing requires strategies across multiple channels like search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and conversion rate optimization. It also requires understanding customers as individuals and connecting with them seamlessly across devices. Personalization is key to engagement marketing, using data to deliver tailored experiences online and on mobile. As technologies like the Internet of Things grow, marketers must have multi-channel, multi-device strategies to stay connected to consumers wherever they are.
Be Like Bezos - Enterprises Must Invest in Marketing Technology or Risk Extin...Revel Partners
Investing in data and marketing technology is necessary to survive.
Activating data is key to avoid being left behind by Amazon and the other walled garden platforms.
Amazon's Trojan Horse platform for owning end-to-end customer experiences is actively deployed.
What is your technology strategy?
Dealerships will remain an important touchpoint for customers during the car buying process, as most customers still want to test drive a vehicle before purchasing. However, changing customer behaviors and new technologies are challenging the traditional dealership model. To adapt, dealerships will need to transform into modern, multichannel sales networks that combine online and offline experiences. This involves introducing new retail formats, technologies, and optimizing existing dealership networks. Those who do not change may struggle. Successfully transforming will improve the customer experience and increase returns for dealerships.
10 Digital Commerce Trends from the Fashion and Apparel, 2020 ReportAlaina Carter
COVID-19 made this season quite unfashionable as, just like other industries, the fashion industry also faced the consequences of this pandemic. Thanks to digital transformation, the fashion and apparel industry has a fair chance to bounce back. Read more to know what are the 10 Digital commerce trends from the fashion and clothing, 2020 report.
1) The document discusses the continuum of direct marketing relationships between businesses (B2B) and consumers (B2C). At one end is branding only, and at the other end is direct sales. In between are insights, experiences, product testing, and hybrid models.
2) Customers and B2B buyers now expect convenient online shopping experiences similar to B2C. Over 50% of B2B buyers expect to make purchases online within 3 years.
3) Moving further along the direct continuum can improve brand control, increase conversions, and help grow and retain customers. While challenging, direct approaches may become necessary as other players adopt them.
The document discusses consumer purchasing paths and how insights can be distilled from large amounts of digital data. It provides an example analyzing athletic footwear purchases, finding that about 1 in 3 online shoppers prefer purchasing online over stores. Both online and in-store shoppers visit brand and retailer websites for information, but their timing and purpose varies depending on where they ultimately purchase. The document recommends how brands can incentivize purchasing on their own sites at different points in the consumer journey.
Digital transformation for aftermarket sales serviceJohn Mertl
Digital transformation can help aftermarket sales and service businesses address changing customer expectations and increase competition. Leading companies are embracing new technologies like mobile, analytics and cloud to create better customer experiences, drive operational excellence, and generate new revenue streams. However, many manufacturers have been slow to change. A survey found most aerospace and defense manufacturers' digital services failed to meet customers' expectations. Successfully transforming requires a strategic roadmap and leadership commitment.
Junivo Solutions - Smart Touchpoint PlatformMurat Eren
Know your customers, engage better and use data driven decision making
Smart Touchpoint Platform provides a powerful all-in-one Wi-Fi based in-store analytics and mobile marketing solution for PFEs (Public Facing Enterprise)
The document summarizes predictions from retail analysts for key trends in 2011. Mobile technologies like mobile web, coupons, and apps will be important for retailers. Customer data analytics will also be crucial to help retailers better understand customers and optimize inventory, merchandising and marketing. Social media and customer relationship management tools will be further integrated into retailers' cross-channel strategies to improve the customer experience. Business intelligence applications will also help retailers make more customer-centric decisions using customer data.
Why digital-will-become-the-primary-channel-for-b2 b-engagementCMR WORLD TECH
The document discusses how digital commerce is becoming the primary channel for B2B engagement. Some key points:
- B2B customers and decision-makers now prefer digital channels and self-service options for repeat purchases. This positions digital as the primary engagement channel.
- B2B organizations that invested early in digital see benefits like increased customer retention, acquisition, and expected business growth attributed to digital commerce programs.
- Features like tailored products, order automation, and self-service are valuable for both B2B businesses and customers in the digital channel.
Connected brand commerce experiences (CBCE) are triggered, shareable, and shoppable experiences across digital and physical touchpoints that compress the consumer purchase journey. A CBCE strategy defines a brand's essential purchase journeys and ways to remove friction to allow immediate purchasing. It ensures touchpoints have the right mix of on-demand, personal, engaging, and networked attributes. This fusion of branding, social interaction, and direct sales creates bias towards action for consumers and sustains relationships before and after purchase.
Euromonitor digital consumer index extract - top 20 marketsAlexandre Pallota
The document discusses the rapid growth of digital connectivity globally and its transformation of commerce. It introduces the Digital Consumer Index created by Euromonitor International to help companies prioritize markets for digital initiatives and commerce. The index analyzes over 2,500 data points across 18 metrics to assess countries' current digital standing and projected status in 5 years. Most of the top 20 markets on the index are developed countries, though China and UAE outperform other emerging markets. The tool aims to help companies determine where to focus limited resources for digital and e-commerce strategies.
In Q4 of 2013, we surveyed over 100 retail marketing executives across the United States on what technologies, data, and innovative ideas were most important to them. Not only that, we asked them what there current budgets and planned budgets were for all these strategies over the next 5 years. The results were surprising!
Why Email Just Doesn't Die - Bright Shiny Objects: What's Sexy Now in Digital...National Retail Federation
What's sexy now in digital marketing? Forrester analysts Melissa Parrish and Shar VanBoskirk explore what's new in digital and email marketing - digging into which are worth your time and budget versus those that are truly just shiny objects. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
The document discusses the technology strategy and transformation at Cambridge Satchel, a British bag company. It summarizes that in 2014, the company saw an opportunity to reinvent its technology and team due to technology debt. It implemented a clean sheet approach, building a new modern technology stack from the ground up with a small but highly skilled team. This included replacing all existing systems and building new capabilities for unified commerce across multiple selling channels.
With examples of how Calvin Klein set up their online presence in China, highlights from this session provide proven strategies to take your business to emerging markets in the fast-growing regions of India and Southeast Asia. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
Omni-channel strategy aims to connect and engage customers throughout the entire purchase process by integrating all sales channels. It allows customers to move seamlessly from awareness to research to purchase whether in-store, online, or via mobile. To develop an effective omni-channel strategy, companies should assess their experience, information, product range, pricing, and convenience using the P.R.I.C.E model and consider customer data analytics, niche product sales online, channel integration, customer loyalty programs, and strategic partnerships.
The document discusses how big data can help retailers in the apparel industry analyze consumer behavior and trends to improve business strategies. It describes how retailers can use big data to optimize pricing, promotions, inventory, product assortments, store layouts and more. Specifically, big data can help retailers with customer segmentation, cross-selling, analyzing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and gaining insights from omnichannel shopping behaviors. Implementing big data analytics allows retailers to better understand customers and adapt to changing preferences and market conditions.
Raymark | Beyond MPOS: Diversifying Retail Mobile Solutions for Greater ROIRaymark
This document discusses how providing retail sales associates with mobile devices can empower them and improve the customer experience. It notes that consumers now have more information than associates when shopping due to being constantly connected. Mobile devices can give associates real-time access to product information, pricing, inventory levels, and customer data to allow them to better assist shoppers. This positions associates to influence purchase decisions rather than just complete transactions, potentially increasing sales and customer loyalty.
Be Like Bezos 2 - The Future Omnichannel Brand EconomyRevel Partners
The document discusses the evolution of business models in the brand direct economy. It outlines how brands have moved from relying on third-party retailers to controling their own omnichannel experiences and collecting customer data directly. It identifies five key technology areas (product availability, customer experience, product delivery, post-purchase satisfaction, advertising accountability) and recommends using a centralized customer data platform to integrate first-party and third-party data. The conclusions predict that brands will own sales and logistics across all channels, commoditizing retailers, and that retailers will focus on experience and seamless transactions to maintain brand relationships.
RSR ebook: Retail ecommerce in context: the next iterationLeigh Doyle
After years of steady ecommerce growth, there has been an unprecedented acceleration of the shift from physical stores to online shopping. Retailers are facing the limitations of their aging technology stack in allowing them to offer buy online pick up in store (BOPIS), social commerce, adding new payment methods, launching subscription programs and more. This study aims to understand how well retailers have been able to pivot to a digital-first world, the challenges they face, the opportunities nascent in the marketplace, and how their technology portfolios are able to support these shifts profitably.
Digital marketing is fundamental for businesses today as consumers do most of their research online. Effective digital marketing requires strategies across multiple channels like search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and conversion rate optimization. It also requires understanding customers as individuals and connecting with them seamlessly across devices. Personalization is key to engagement marketing, using data to deliver tailored experiences online and on mobile. As technologies like the Internet of Things grow, marketers must have multi-channel, multi-device strategies to stay connected to consumers wherever they are.
Be Like Bezos - Enterprises Must Invest in Marketing Technology or Risk Extin...Revel Partners
Investing in data and marketing technology is necessary to survive.
Activating data is key to avoid being left behind by Amazon and the other walled garden platforms.
Amazon's Trojan Horse platform for owning end-to-end customer experiences is actively deployed.
What is your technology strategy?
Dealerships will remain an important touchpoint for customers during the car buying process, as most customers still want to test drive a vehicle before purchasing. However, changing customer behaviors and new technologies are challenging the traditional dealership model. To adapt, dealerships will need to transform into modern, multichannel sales networks that combine online and offline experiences. This involves introducing new retail formats, technologies, and optimizing existing dealership networks. Those who do not change may struggle. Successfully transforming will improve the customer experience and increase returns for dealerships.
10 Digital Commerce Trends from the Fashion and Apparel, 2020 ReportAlaina Carter
COVID-19 made this season quite unfashionable as, just like other industries, the fashion industry also faced the consequences of this pandemic. Thanks to digital transformation, the fashion and apparel industry has a fair chance to bounce back. Read more to know what are the 10 Digital commerce trends from the fashion and clothing, 2020 report.
1) The document discusses the continuum of direct marketing relationships between businesses (B2B) and consumers (B2C). At one end is branding only, and at the other end is direct sales. In between are insights, experiences, product testing, and hybrid models.
2) Customers and B2B buyers now expect convenient online shopping experiences similar to B2C. Over 50% of B2B buyers expect to make purchases online within 3 years.
3) Moving further along the direct continuum can improve brand control, increase conversions, and help grow and retain customers. While challenging, direct approaches may become necessary as other players adopt them.
The document discusses consumer purchasing paths and how insights can be distilled from large amounts of digital data. It provides an example analyzing athletic footwear purchases, finding that about 1 in 3 online shoppers prefer purchasing online over stores. Both online and in-store shoppers visit brand and retailer websites for information, but their timing and purpose varies depending on where they ultimately purchase. The document recommends how brands can incentivize purchasing on their own sites at different points in the consumer journey.
Digital transformation for aftermarket sales serviceJohn Mertl
Digital transformation can help aftermarket sales and service businesses address changing customer expectations and increase competition. Leading companies are embracing new technologies like mobile, analytics and cloud to create better customer experiences, drive operational excellence, and generate new revenue streams. However, many manufacturers have been slow to change. A survey found most aerospace and defense manufacturers' digital services failed to meet customers' expectations. Successfully transforming requires a strategic roadmap and leadership commitment.
Junivo Solutions - Smart Touchpoint PlatformMurat Eren
Know your customers, engage better and use data driven decision making
Smart Touchpoint Platform provides a powerful all-in-one Wi-Fi based in-store analytics and mobile marketing solution for PFEs (Public Facing Enterprise)
The document summarizes predictions from retail analysts for key trends in 2011. Mobile technologies like mobile web, coupons, and apps will be important for retailers. Customer data analytics will also be crucial to help retailers better understand customers and optimize inventory, merchandising and marketing. Social media and customer relationship management tools will be further integrated into retailers' cross-channel strategies to improve the customer experience. Business intelligence applications will also help retailers make more customer-centric decisions using customer data.
Why digital-will-become-the-primary-channel-for-b2 b-engagementCMR WORLD TECH
The document discusses how digital commerce is becoming the primary channel for B2B engagement. Some key points:
- B2B customers and decision-makers now prefer digital channels and self-service options for repeat purchases. This positions digital as the primary engagement channel.
- B2B organizations that invested early in digital see benefits like increased customer retention, acquisition, and expected business growth attributed to digital commerce programs.
- Features like tailored products, order automation, and self-service are valuable for both B2B businesses and customers in the digital channel.
Connected brand commerce experiences (CBCE) are triggered, shareable, and shoppable experiences across digital and physical touchpoints that compress the consumer purchase journey. A CBCE strategy defines a brand's essential purchase journeys and ways to remove friction to allow immediate purchasing. It ensures touchpoints have the right mix of on-demand, personal, engaging, and networked attributes. This fusion of branding, social interaction, and direct sales creates bias towards action for consumers and sustains relationships before and after purchase.
Euromonitor digital consumer index extract - top 20 marketsAlexandre Pallota
The document discusses the rapid growth of digital connectivity globally and its transformation of commerce. It introduces the Digital Consumer Index created by Euromonitor International to help companies prioritize markets for digital initiatives and commerce. The index analyzes over 2,500 data points across 18 metrics to assess countries' current digital standing and projected status in 5 years. Most of the top 20 markets on the index are developed countries, though China and UAE outperform other emerging markets. The tool aims to help companies determine where to focus limited resources for digital and e-commerce strategies.
In Q4 of 2013, we surveyed over 100 retail marketing executives across the United States on what technologies, data, and innovative ideas were most important to them. Not only that, we asked them what there current budgets and planned budgets were for all these strategies over the next 5 years. The results were surprising!
Why Email Just Doesn't Die - Bright Shiny Objects: What's Sexy Now in Digital...National Retail Federation
What's sexy now in digital marketing? Forrester analysts Melissa Parrish and Shar VanBoskirk explore what's new in digital and email marketing - digging into which are worth your time and budget versus those that are truly just shiny objects. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
The document discusses the technology strategy and transformation at Cambridge Satchel, a British bag company. It summarizes that in 2014, the company saw an opportunity to reinvent its technology and team due to technology debt. It implemented a clean sheet approach, building a new modern technology stack from the ground up with a small but highly skilled team. This included replacing all existing systems and building new capabilities for unified commerce across multiple selling channels.
With examples of how Calvin Klein set up their online presence in China, highlights from this session provide proven strategies to take your business to emerging markets in the fast-growing regions of India and Southeast Asia. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
For years, we’ve heard how new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality are going to transform the way retailers do business and how people shop. But now they're actually on board and in use. Experts share who’s using which technology, how it’s working and some thoughts on what to embrace and where to use caution. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
Being the new kid is tough, but it also presents opportunities. On the first day, you have little or no data to work with. You may have been influenced by external marketing, a store experience, or even how the brand treated you in the past. But you also have a distinct advantage over every other person at that company: for better or worse, you’re not jaded.
Charlie Cole was faced with this same challenge/opportunity upon entering Tumi. How do you take advantage of it? What do you do? What do you need to learn? Who do you need to talk to? How quickly can you change things? What should you change? Learn why and how to run this new employee process on an annual basis.
Presentation from the Digital Marketing Workshop at Retail's Digital Summit.
A team of venture capitalists, retailers and industry analysts have narrowed down the nominees to three finalists that have the biggest potential to transform the shopping experience or make a positive impact on the retail industry. This showcase from the top finalists and award one winner includes ideas and technologies destined to significantly impact the business of retailing in the next five years. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
Backlinks. AdWords. Rank Brain. Pay per click. What does it all mean and where should retailers concentrate their efforts when it comes to search engine marketing? Ron Dod of Visitor gives a peek into new strategies to increase organic and paid search engine traffic. These strategies--which Dod illustrates through case studies and data--are working for retailers today and driving traffic to their sites. Find tools to boost your own website’s performance and combat against the trends that play against retailers in today’s market.
Presentation from the Digital Marketing Workshop at Retail's Digital Summit.
How can digital marketers finally dominate the industry? By changing the metaphor. Forget storytelling. Move to worldbuilding. Internet marketing prodigy Ian Lurie shows how to shake off old methods and develop environments where customers can move from one ‘place’ to another, building their own individual and adaptable pathways. Find out how to use social media advancements, user-generated comments and highly polished content to build worlds for your customers to explore and return to time and again. Learn how effective marketing can be -- even when you don’t control “when, where or how" the audience consumes your message. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
These two rising media stars in the e-commerce and retail industry brought their weekly podcast, “The Jason and Scot Show” to the Shop.org stage. Join Jason Goldberg and Scot Wingo as they tackle three of the most pressing challenges facing retailers: lagging mobile conversion rates, Amazon domination and brands going direct. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
This document discusses embracing imperfection and how the concept of "good enough" can be a perfect solution. It promotes agile thinking and emphasizes understanding the problem, defining a minimum viable product (MVP), and building credibility incrementally. The document provides examples from ThinkGeek of addressing issues like address normalization and pre-orders with iterative, pragmatic solutions. It also discusses techniques like design sprints and feature planning that help determine MVPs and prioritize work. The overall message is that by focusing on solving core customer problems with iterative solutions, organizations can achieve success without needing a perfect plan or solution.
The document summarizes a presentation given by Neda Navab of Enjoy.com on transforming commerce to be digital-first. It describes Enjoy's on-demand service model that allows customers to choose a 4-hour window for an Enjoy expert to deliver a new product, set it up, and provide instruction in their home. The summary highlights Enjoy's focus on excellent customer service, same-day delivery, and a flexible employee model to power the on-demand experience.
The document discusses achieving unified commerce through the right technology. It defines unified commerce as eliminating individual channel silos to offer a holistic customer experience across all touchpoints. Only 2% of retailers have adopted this approach. The document recommends retailers implement a single commerce platform, middleware/SOA, master data management, and business process management to enable unified commerce capabilities like personalized selling, real-time operations monitoring, and enterprise inventory visibility. This will allow retailers to sense and respond to customer needs in real-time.
The document discusses the challenges facing retailers from increased pressures in the industry. It outlines how SAP cloud solutions can help retailers address issues like rapid changes in customer preferences, global expansion, pricing pressures, and the need for flexibility and speed. Specifically, SAP's cloud offerings for customer engagement, business networks, human resources, financial management, and data management can help retailers deliver personalized experiences, optimize sourcing and buying strategies, empower employees, gain real-time insights, and leverage in-memory computing in the cloud. The cloud provides benefits like faster innovation, scalability, cost reduction, and a lower barrier to innovation. SAP has deep expertise and many retail customers using its cloud solutions.
Explore the most promising new technologies and organizational structures you should employ in any size organization to encourage constant innovation. This presentation, addresses how and what small- and medium-sized businesses can learn from big innovation labs.
E-commerce leaders Mike Ward of Thrift Books and Oscar Castro, formerly of Big Lots, offer some of the innovation principles that big companies use and how to adapt them to work in your organization. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
Digital Retail Fast Track explores the sophisticated capabilities and applications of AR/VR as they transform the way retailers and brands touch consumers digitally. Learn how Google Tango and the Sephora Innovation Lab are leveraging augmented and virtual reality technologies. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
Buy It to Try It: Where New Consumer Expectations Meet Retail-Redefining Inno...National Retail Federation
However financially and logistically burdensome, ecommerce merchandise returns are a necessary evil. Yet most retailers haven’t fully grasped consumers’ attitudinal change -- what could be called conditional buying -- driving those returns. Three recent ecommerce models -- home try-on, subscription shopping and e-stylist -- have seized upon the conditional buying attitude as a given. Together, they symbolize retail’s shift from product- to service-centricity. Learn how these ecommerce models are capturing the new consumer fervor for convenience, curation and continuity and converting transactions into relationships in the process. Presentation from Retail's Digital Summit 2016.
The document discusses 10 eCommerce trends to watch for in 2017. It notes that online sales are increasing significantly each year and retailers need to embrace digital commerce. Some of the key trends discussed include the end of focusing on just Black Friday and Cyber Monday and instead having promotions span all of November. Other trends include real-time customization of the shopping experience for each customer, using data services to provide more product information, increasing use of artificial intelligence such as chatbots, moving away from traditional wallets to mobile payments, hyper-local and real-time promotions, predictive analysis of customer purchases, and streamlining shipping/delivery.
Noch denken viele stationäre Händler, aber auch eCommerce Anbieter, dass die grösste Gefahr seitens Amazon zu drohen scheint. Dem ist jedoch nicht so. Die wirkliche Gefahr liegt uns jeden Tag in der Hand: mit fast 500 Millionen Nutzern und nun mit einer eigenen App, welche auch Bezahlungen ermöglicht: Facebook Messenger und WhatsApp. Auf mobilen Geräten hatte Facebook die Kurzmitteilungs-Funktion aus seiner Haupt-App ausgelagert und die Nutzer in eine eigene App dafür gezwungen. Das solle eine schnellere Einführung neuer Funktionen ermöglichen, hiess es damals.
The document discusses how mobile technology is transforming the customer experience in retail. It finds that mobile point of sale (POS) implementations are expected to increase 373% over the next few years. Mobile devices allow retailers to provide enhanced customer service on the sales floor and enable transaction processing anywhere in the store. The survey also found that retailers are expanding their use of customer-facing mobile services like geolocation, personalized recommendations, and mobile loyalty identification to improve the shopping experience. Finally, mobile payments using near field communication (NFC) technology are growing, though widespread adoption may be inhibited by the long change cycle in the payments industry.
Informe de PwC sobre las expectativas y hábitos de consumo del comprador onlineMaría Bretón Gallego
The document discusses 8 customer expectations for retailers identified from a survey of 15,000 online shoppers. The first expectation is a compelling brand story that promises a distinctive experience. The survey found that consumers are consolidating their shopping to just a few favorite retailers. This presents an opportunity for retailers that can emotionally connect with consumers through a strong brand narrative. Retailers need to focus on cultivating their brand to provide a consistent experience across all channels.
Digital marketing is poised to revolutionize the automotive industry as it transforms how consumers research, evaluate, purchase and interact with vehicles. While automakers have begun using social media and online platforms, the full potential of digital marketing remains largely untapped. Customers now rely heavily on digital channels for information gathering and half would consider online vehicle purchases. To understand digital's impact, McKinsey conducted a survey of 600 car buyers, dealerships, and experts, finding that a strategic, systematic approach to digital could significantly boost operations and revenues through opportunities like digital lead generation, product co-creation, and retail innovation.
Digital marketing is poised to revolutionize the automotive industry as it transforms how consumers research, evaluate, purchase and interact with vehicles. While automakers have begun using social media and online platforms, the full potential of digital marketing remains largely untapped. Customers now rely heavily on digital channels throughout their decision journey, from initial research to the purchase itself. To succeed, automakers must develop more integrated and compelling digital strategies that address the entire consumer experience holistically.
A Guide to Crafting an Effective Omnichannel Strategy (1).pdfchristiemarie4
Omnichannel is a marketing approach that offers an integrated shopping experience to the customers. Keep reading to know more about this omnichannel strategy.
This document discusses how clienteling can help retailers strengthen customer relationships and drive brand loyalty. It begins by explaining how today's customers are more informed and have higher expectations. Clienteling gathers customer data across all touchpoints to improve the customer experience. When done effectively through mobile apps, it can increase store traffic and conversion rates. The document then outlines the key stages in a customer's journey and how clienteling supports each stage through targeted communication and empowering sales associates. It emphasizes the importance of a customer-centric foundation and metrics to measure success. Overall, the document promotes clienteling as a strategy to boost repeat purchases, sales, and long-term customer loyalty.
This document discusses the rise of omnichannel retailing globally. It presents the Strategy& Global Omnichannel Retail Index, which ranks 19 countries/regions on their omnichannel readiness across 9 retail segments. The US, UK, and Australia rank as the top 3 omnichannel countries. China ranks 5th overall and leads in apparel/footwear and grocery omnichannel. Many European countries lag in adopting omnichannel strategies. The index provides insights for retailers on omnichannel opportunities and maturity in different markets.
How Tablet Mobility is Transforming the Way Retailers Engage Customers & Driv...National Retail Federation
The document discusses how tablet mobility is transforming retail by engaging customers and driving business growth. It summarizes that customers are more knowledgeable than ever before and expect unified commerce experiences. The rise of millennials and their preference for digital and mobile experiences will also impact retail strategies. Successful retailers will offer seamless omnichannel experiences and implement comprehensive mobile strategies to improve the customer experience and increase sales.
attune Whitepaper - How Fashion Businesses Can Win the Race for Omnichan...Andy Larsen
Fashion businesses face challenges in meeting evolving consumer demands and expectations in an omnichannel marketplace. Existing fragmented systems that operate in silos hinder businesses' ability to gain insights across their value chain. SAP's new Fashion Management Solution integrates operations to provide end-to-end visibility and allow businesses to better align supply with consumer demand in real-time across channels. This helps reduce costs and out-of-stocks while improving customer experience.
Mobile advertising spend is up 80% over the last year, but sales from mobile represent only 1% of commerce. While initial mobile performance seems low, analytics tools cannot fully measure mobile's impact because they fail to track how consumers use multiple devices before purchasing. To better understand mobile's influence, retailers must analyze consumer behavior and measure metrics beyond single-device transactions, such as how mobile drives in-store sales and new customer registrations.
It is widely acknowledged that omnichannel is the future
of retail. Customers want to shop anywhere at any time and expect a
seamless experience across all channels while doing it. However, it is also
widely acknowledged that most retailers are a long way from achieving
this complex state of readiness due to the fact that delivering against
those customer expectations touches virtually every department in the
retail enterprise.
The document is a study by Catalyst and Kantar on the state of ecommerce in 2021. It analyzes survey responses from 500 online shoppers and 200 industry professionals to provide insights into evolving shopper expectations, the importance of integrating retail, search, and social strategies across platforms, and how leading companies are adapting their strategies in response. Key findings include that shoppers prioritize convenience over price, use multiple online touchpoints for research and discovery, and expect a seamless omnichannel experience. The study recommends brands break down silos, optimize product pages, and partner with retailers to measure success beyond just return on ad spend.
A Guide to Crafting an Effective Omnichannel Strategy.pdfLaura Miller
Omnichannel is a marketing approach that offers an integrated shopping experience to the customers. Keep reading to know more about this marketing strategy.
What is likely to outnumber the billions of human beings on planet earth over the next few years? The answer: mobile devices. While mobile devices have been around for several yea rs, there are two categories that have resulted in the explosive growth in this industry especially over the last two or three years – smartphones and tablets i .
CompaniesCompanies around the globe are using social media to co.docxdonnajames55
Companies
Companies around the globe are using social media to connect with their customers.
Consider an online social media network, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, and respond to the following:
· For targeting new customers, examine the advantages and disadvantages of using these social networks compared to search engine advertising.
· Provide specific examples of products that lend themselves more to social networks than to search engine advertising.
· Discuss how this avenue of marketing might be effective in the success of a new product associated with existing brands.
Write your initial response in 300–500 words. Your response should be thorough and address all components of the discussion question in detail, include citations of all sources, where needed, according to the APA Style, and demonstrate accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Due Saturday, June 17, 2017
Business Case #8
Planning and implementing effective mobile marketing programs
Abstract Mobile marketing is an ever increasingly important component of a firm’s overall
promotional strategy. The importance of this medium can be seen through time spent on mobile
media, number of searches, and direct and indirect mobile-generated sales. Despite its increased
importance, the effectiveness of mobile marketing needs to be improved based on such metrics as
bounce rates, add-to-cart rates, shopping cart abandonment, and average order size. Strategies to
increase the effectiveness of mobile marketing are discussed. Firms need to capitalize on the three
major strategic advantages of mobile marketing: (1) the fact that mobile marketing devices are
always on, always connected, and always with the consumer; (2) the ability to generate location-
sensitive offers; and (3) the ability to send relevant personalized messages and offers. Firms also
need to develop and implement an effective mobile marketing strategy through a series of
activities. These include understanding and reacting to the complexity of mobile marketing,
designing sites based on ease of use versus ‘bells and whistles,’ increasing opt -in rates, using
effective customer engagement strategies, and developing effective mobile coupons. Criteria to
evaluate the effectiveness of mobile marketing are discussed.
The current state of mobile marketing
For a majority of consumers, mobile devices have surpassed both desktop and laptop computers
as the principal gateway to the Internet (O’Kane, 2013). Mobile phones and tablets now account
for about 44% of all personal computing time, twice the level of 2008 (Duncan, Hazan, & Roche,
2014). According to one source, just over one-half of all searches on Google are now performed
on mobile sites (Graham, 2015). A recent Deloitte study found that smartphone devices influenced
almost $600 billion of in-store purchases, up from $159 billion in 2012 (Haims, 2015).
According to Shop.org/Forrester Research Inc.’s State of Retailing Online study, 58 % o.
360° Customer Capture - Enabling Retailers to Deliver a Complete Shopping Experience. Now!
TechVista provides a unified approach that reduces complexity for Retailers, allowing them to focus on connecting with customers and empowering their employees across all channels that allows them the flexibility necessary to respond quickly to the needs of your customers. TechVista empowers Retailers to deliver a complete shopping experience – personal, seamless, and differentiated – by helping them create a complete 360-degree view of the customer.
1) The document discusses the findings of a survey of 50 leading U.S. retailers about their challenges with personalized marketing, customer profiles, and creating a single customer view across channels. 2) Many retailers still struggle with data integration across channels, inability to measure marketing ROI, and lack of data science skills. 3) Emerging data sources like beacons and WiFi provide new customer insights, but retailers must combine internal, customer-provided, and purchased data to improve personalization.
Technology will transform retail resulting in the growth of brick and mortar retail. Check Retail Technologies trends that will help retailers survive.
Consumer adoption of Mobile-point of sale technologyGunika Arora
The document discusses the increasing adoption of digital technologies and mobile point-of-sale (POS) systems in the retail industry. It notes that customers now research purchases online and expect convenient, customized service. Retailers are adopting IT solutions to gather customer data, manage inventory, and empower store associates. Mobile payments processed directly at POS terminals are growing in popularity as customers seek quick, flexible purchasing options. The widespread adoption of smartphones is driving further integration of digital tools and mobile commerce in the retail experience.
People.ai is an AI platform that helps sales teams become more efficient in 6 key ways:
1. It increases CRM adoption by automatically logging activities and contacts.
2. It boosts sales productivity by reducing administrative tasks like data entry.
3. It enables data-driven sales coaching by providing metrics on reps' activities.
4. It improves forecasting, pipeline analysis, and deal intelligence with more accurate data.
5. It maintains a self-healing contact database by identifying errors and keeping data current.
6. It creates unprecedented buying group visibility to focus marketing and sales efforts.
The document discusses how CIO Ed Toner of Nebraska has successfully implemented agile principles across both IT and business teams in his organization. He includes language in contracts requiring business teams to actively participate in software development for projects to succeed. Toner also proved the value of agile approaches by delivering projects faster. While getting business teams on board with agile principles poses challenges, taking an incremental approach of implementing agile within IT first, then evangelizing successes to others, can help spread agile practices across an organization. CIOs must sell agile in business terms focused on value and outcomes rather than technical terminology.
Keynote dean-leffingwell-keynote-be-agile-scale-up-stay-lean
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Why SAFe
Pillars of SAfe
Value
Respect for People
Product development
Kaizen
Leadership
Agile manifesto
Agile
SCRUM
SAFe
IBM approach to SAFe
Why Scale Agile?
IBM’s Point of ViewScaling Agile –The Recipe
SAFe® Overview
IBM’s Support for SAFe
5 Simple Value Propositions
Evolving to SAFe
How IBM uses SAFe to deliver ALM tooling
Summary
This document describes the basic team structure for an agile transformation, including roles like the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Solution Lead. The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing business value from the team by managing the product backlog. The Scrum Master facilitates the Scrum process and removes impediments for the team. The Solution Lead translates the business vision into a technical vision and supports developers during execution. Management helps allocate team members, coach growth, and improve processes.
Agile , SCRUM
Introduction
What is Agile Methodology?
What is Scrum?
History of Scrum
Functionality of Scrum
Components of Scrum
Scrum Roles
The Process
Scrum Artifacts
Scaling Scrum
Q & A Session
This document provides an overview and summary of key concepts related to Hyperledger Fabric, a blockchain platform. It discusses how Fabric solves problems with existing systems by creating an immutable, shared ledger using blockchain technology. The key components of Fabric are peers that maintain the ledger, an ordering service that orders transactions into blocks, and a certificate authority for identity management. Smart contracts called chaincode define transactions and rules for updating ledger states. Channels provide private transaction ledgers for subsets of network members.
The experts discuss the future of point-of-sale (POS) and e-commerce systems for retailers. They agree that retailers should work towards an "omni-channel platform" that provides a single view of inventory, orders, and customers across all sales channels. This platform would replace separate POS and e-commerce systems. In the short-term, retailers can use a middleware layer to integrate different systems, but ultimately there should be one platform handling all transactions. Mobile POS should be an extension of the main POS system to provide a consistent experience. POS in the cloud offers lower costs and flexibility for retailers of any size.
Using an intensive process enumerated here can certainly make a Startup succeed 70% of the times.
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Secrets of a Successful Sale: Optimizing Your Checkout ProcessAggregage
https://www.onlineretailtoday.com/frs/26905197/secrets-of-a-successful-sale--optimizing-your-checkout-process
Once upon a time, in the vast realm of online commerce, there lived a humble checkout button overlooked by many. Yet, within its humble click lay the power to transform a mere visitor into a loyal customer. 🧐 💡
Getting checkout right can mark the difference between a successful sale and an abandoned cart, yet many businesses fail to make payments a part of their commerce strategy even when it has a direct impact on revenue. But payments are just one part of a chain. What’s the next touch point? How do you use the data sitting behind a payment to find the next loyal customer?
In this session you’ll learn:
• The integral relationship between payment experience and customer satisfaction
• Proven methods for optimizing the checkout journey
• Leveraging payments data for personalized marketing and enhanced customer loyalty
• Gain invaluable insights into consumer behavior across online and offline channels through data
3. 2CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Introduction
Customers have forced a fundamental reshaping
of retail, demanding a seamless convergence of
the in-store and digital experiences. Retailers can
no longer divide that experience among separate
channels; they must make it a holistic experience,
transcending channels to effectively relate to their
customers. From the customer’s point of view,
she doesn’t care what channel she is shopping
from – she simply wants to shop the retail brand.
In summary, this is Unified Commerce!
While delivering a seamless customer experience
is the driver, technology allows the customer to
tailor her own experience. Unified Commerce
leverages technology to provide the platform,
and real-time retail is the key to delivering the
experience. As retailers change the focus within
their organizations, the elimination of silos and
need for unification to support this initiative
becomes apparent.
• Where is your retail organization
on its journey to deliver a Unified
Commerce experience?
• Are you farther along the path than
your competitors?
• Has your organization “unified” enough
to offer your customers a seamless
shopping experience?
Read on to see how your organization stacks
up to other retailers …
4. 3CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
2014 CRM/Unified Commerce
Benchmark Survey
To deliver a seamless experience, retailers need
to gather, analyze and disseminate customer,
product, pricing and inventory data in real-time.
In the 2014 CRM/Unified Commerce Benchmark
Survey of top North American retailers, most
of the respondents said they already have
implemented customer databases to gather this
data, and nearly two-thirds of the retailers have
plans to implement real-time analytics within the
next two years. Retailers certainly seem to be
moving in the right direction.
However, achieving Unified Commerce can
be a monumental project requiring seamless
execution of the right strategy, technology and
business processes. Retailers that successfully
deliver Unified Commerce will understand
and adopt a “unified” approach for all
these components:
• Unified Strategic Customer Initiatives
• Unified Technology
• Unified Business Processes
• Unified Execution of Initiatives, Technology
and Processes
The objective of BRP’s 1st Annual CRM/Unified
Commerce Benchmark Survey was to identify
retailers’ current and planned customer
relationship management (CRM) and marketing
initiatives as the shift to Unified Commerce
occurs across the retail industry.
5. 4CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Unified Strategic
Customer Initiatives
Overall, both the market and retailers are shifting
toward this new paradigm, offering customers a
seamless experience and the ability to easily shift
from one touchpoint to another. This trend is
clearly indicated by the top initiatives identified in
the CRM/Unified Commerce Survey (Exhibit 1):
• 3 percent have the ability to identify the
customer when she walks in the store, and
another 72 percent plan to implement this
within five years.
• 16 percent currently have real-time retail
from POS (which offers the “Amazon”
experience in the store), and another 63
percent plan to implement this within
five years.
• 28 percent currently use mobile marketing,
and another 62 percent plan to implement
it within five years (56 percent plan to
implement mobile marketing within
two years).
Today
Plan in 5 Yrs
Exhibit 1 — Overall Customer Experience Initiatives
Identify Customers Walking in Store
Have Real-time Retail from POS
Use Mobile Marketing
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
62%
63%
72%
28%
16%
3%
6. 5CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
The customer is the center of the universe.
Retailers need to ensure their customers are
able to get the shopping experience they want
and expect – wherever and whenever they want.
Offering that necessitates a Unified Commerce
approach, delivering a convergence of digital
and in-store shopping experiences in a
holistic manner.
Unified Commerce requires a common
commerce platform for customer engagement,
whether in the store, on a mobile device or
online. Combining traditional point of sale,
mobile, Web, clienteling, order management and
fulfillment into a consolidated, real-time platform
is the objective. Many retailers realize the
implications that come out of this convergence
of platforms when they add mobile to their
e-commerce experience, surfacing a number of
questions around pricing, promotions, delivery,
payment and a host of related issues.
In Boston Retail Partners’ 15th Annual POS/
Customer Engagement Benchmarking Survey,
published earlier this year, we identified that
customer experience is the driver. Customer-
facing technology allows the customer to tailor
her own experience, Unified Commerce offers the
means to meet customers’ needs, and real-time
retail is the key to making it all happen.
In this survey, we find the same driver, with 95
percent of the respondents indicating customer
experience/customer engagement is one of
their top three current initiatives (Exhibit 2 – see
Figure 1 in Appendix for full list of initiatives).
Some of the other top initiatives that indicate a
focus on customer experience and involve the
ability to personalize that experience include
guided selling/clienteling, social selling and
location-based mobile marketing.
Personalization is critical to the shopping
experience. With real-time retail, the possibilities
for personalization are nearly endless. At a recent
workshop moderated by Boston Retail Partners,
a group of more than 40 retail executives
discussed some of the potential ways to
understand who the customer is and how she
shops. Some of the possibilities identified by this
group included:
• Creating persona-based user interfaces to
provide associates and customers with the
right tools for their personal needs.
• Using a mobile phone’s MAC (media access
control) address to identify the customer
as she enters the store and track her
browsing patterns.
• Employing energy-efficient smart LED
lights that track customer traffic patterns
in the store via their smartphones and
offer timely, relevant promotions based
on the planogram.
• Offering digital interactive customer receipts
that provide links to how-to videos for
self-installed products, or affirm a fashion
purchase by associating the item with a
favorite celebrity.
Exhibit 2 — Top 3 Current Initiatives
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Customer Experience /
Customer Engagement
Customer Analytics Customer Segmentation
95%
69%
63%
7. 6CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
• Offering guided selling enabled by real-
time retail to allow associates to tailor
each customer’s experience based on her
preferences, previous purchases and online
shopping habits.
• Employing social selling to understand the
customer’s preferences and desired level
of engagement.
From this discussion, we see that location-
based mobile marketing is gaining importance
as retailers look at ways to offer promotions
inside and outside the store. Offering a timely
promotion within the store when your customer
is nearby customizes her visit and offers a one-
on-one opportunity to influence a purchasing
decision before she reaches the checkout line.
As we look at the initiatives retailers plan to focus
on within the next two years, real-time analytics
bubbles to the top: 23 percent have implemented
it, and 61 percent plan to do so within two years.
This capability allows the retailer to perform
analysis on the customer, transaction and
inventory data as it streams in. (Exhibit 3 – see
Figure 2 in Appendix for full list of initiatives)
Analytics is a key enabler for retailers to
affect the customer experience in real-time.
Real-time analytics allows a retailer to
immediately update and analyze data held in a
customer database, offering the ability to support
guided selling, clienteling and the “Amazon-like”
ability to remember previous purchases and
support suggestive selling in the store.
Another interesting initiative is the ability to
identify customers when they walk in the
store via their smartphones. Only 3 percent
of respondents have this ability today, but 72
percent plan to implement it within five years.
This capability is a fundamental requirement
for location-based marketing and personalizing
the customer experience. This is an area that
has seen controversy as retailers move to adopt
technology that allows for tracking customer
in-store shopping behavior, just like online
shopping behavior is tracked. The technology is
evolving from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth-based solutions,
and even to some nontraditional solutions. In a
similar vein, state transportation authorities are
using related technologies to measure and report
traffic delays on public roadways. Automated
signs anonymously track Bluetooth-enabled
devices carried by motorists and their vehicles in
real-time to estimate how long it takes to travel
between two locations. This system complies with
new federal legislation that requires real-time
traffic information be provided to the public.
Exhibit 3 — Initiatives Planned for Next 2 Years
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
61%
41%
31%
Real-time Analytics Real-time Retail from POS
(Amazon Experience at
the Store)
Ability to Identify Customers
when they walk in the store via
their smartphones
8. 7CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Apple’s Bluetooth-based iBeacon technology is
also being tested in different ways to personalize
the customer experience through upcoming
trials at companies like American Eagle, Alex
and Ani, and Virgin Atlantic. Regardless of the
technology, the goal is to engage the customer
in a more meaningful way. Once a customer
opts in or engages, real-time analytics can access
the knowledge of purchase history, online and
in-store browsing behavior and preferences
to potentially influence what ends up in her
shopping basket during this visit.
Retailers are developing budgets with increased
marketing dollars allocated to mobile marketing,
CRM analytics and customer experience/
customer engagement, all of which support
the initiatives indicated above (Exhibit 4 – See
Figure 3 in Appendix for full list of budget
items). This data validates that retailers realize
the importance of Unified Commerce and the
technology to support it.
Exhibit 4 — Budget Increase 2013 to 2014
63%
59%
56%
53%
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Mobile Marketing CRM Analytics Customer Experience /
Customer Engagement
Loyalty Program and
Supporting Technology
9. 8CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Unified Technology
Enabling the customer to have the shopping
experience she demands requires a strong
technology foundation. In order to connect
the various components and deliver a Unified
Commerce experience, a robust messaging layer
– or service-oriented architecture (SOA) layer – is
usually required. This middleware layer is what
allows retailers to enable real-time capabilities
and deliver personalized user interfaces
for both the associate and customer. These
interfaces blend traditional POS, Web and mobile
capabilities, ensuring customers have exceptional
service while retailers simplify support structures
and lower selling costs.
Most retailers surveyed – 81 percent – have
implemented some type of customer database,
typically as part of a CRM or loyalty platform.
As indicated by our 15th Annual POS/Customer
Engagement Benchmarking Survey, we’ve seen
a steady increase in customer identification and
capture at POS. Traditionally, this data has been
leveraged for back office direct marketing efforts
(mail or email). This data is how retailers know
what’s in the customer’s closet, where and how
she shops across the brand, and what defines
a meaningful recommendation or offer. With a
Unified Commerce approach, this knowledge
can be used to engage the customer in real-time
while she is shopping, or enable an associate
with guided selling or clienteling tools (Exhibit
5 – see Figure 4 in Appendix for full list of CRM
technologies).
As real-time engagement becomes more
important, it’s essential that retailers capture
customer data and preferences at every
touchpoint. Real-time analytics are a priority
for retailers, but they’re only as good as the
data available.
More than half of the retailers surveyed also
have plans to implement clienteling within
the next five years. Having customer data and
being able to offer it to the associate to build a
relationship with the customer allows the retailer
to increase sales and loyalty, as well as deliver
a more personalized buying experience. Most
of the clienteling implementations in use today
leverage technology that is not integrated to the
POS. By separating this data from POS and from
the selling process, associates are not able to
leverage it at the time buying decisions are being
made. As Unified Commerce solutions evolve, we
expect to see opportunities to deploy clienteling
or guided selling as part of the overall
commerce solution.
Exhibit 5 — CRM Technology Planned for Next 2 Years
50%
45%
41%
56%60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Mobile Marketing Customer-Facing
Technology
Analytics/Dashboards/
Business Intelligence
Campaign Management
10. 9CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Mobile technology has completely transformed
retail. Customers now have information
available 24/7. They have become accustomed
to shopping online and they want to have that
same personalized digital experience in the store
and they often want to control that experience!
Savvy retailers realize that putting tools into
customers’ hands is critical. Offering customer-
facing technology and even allowing customers
to use their own tools to create shopping/wish
lists, look up inventory and shop from a digital
catalog all are important pieces of the customer
experience. One-quarter of the retailers surveyed
offer customer-facing technology, with another
50 percent planning to offer it within two years.
Of the retailers surveyed, 28 percent have
implemented mobile marketing, and another
56 percent plan to implement it within two
years. With mobile marketing and the ubiquitous
mobile phone, retailers can reach their customers
nearly anywhere. This creates opportunities to
fundamentally shift how retailers market to
their customers and allows for a more
personalized offering.
The overall focus in the next two years is about
taking the data that already is being gathered and
applying math and science to the data to improve
the customer relationship.
11. 10CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
As mentioned above, offering a Unified
Commerce experience requires a unified
approach within the organization. Unified
Commerce is one platform to eliminate the
different silos originally set up to address
the different channels that are available to
customers. This platform gathers point of sale,
mobile, Web, clienteling, order management and
fulfillment into one area to address the customer
across the entire transaction. Selecting and
implementing the right technology for Unified
Commerce requires a consistent and holistic
approach to ensure the components work
well together to deliver a seamless customer
experience. Too often, we see different areas
of the organization with different objectives
and different ways of choosing and
implementing technology.
Because marketing and CRM technologies play
a critical role in Unified Commerce, we asked
retailers about their current processes for
developing a marketing technology strategy,
evaluating and selecting solutions, and
implementing that technology. We wanted to
understand the current cohesiveness between
marketing and IT because these are such
critical areas within the development of Unified
Commerce: IT owns the Unified Commerce
platform, while marketing generally “owns” the
data that is gathered and analyzed, which are key
to the customer experience.
Slightly more than half the retailers surveyed
currently utilize a combined in-house process
between IT and marketing to develop a
marketing technology strategy (Exhibit 6 – see
Figure 5 in Appendix for full list of processes).
Unfortunately, this indicates 44 percent of the
retailers surveyed currently are not involving IT in
strategy development, which offers opportunities
for some organizations to bridge this current gap
between marketing and IT.
Unified Processes
Exhibit 6 — Current Unified Process Status
Technology evaluation
and selection
Marketing technology
strategy development
In-House - Marketing & IT
56%
56%
20% 40% 60% 80% 100%0%
12. 11CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
The selection of new technology also sees
56 percent of the retailers surveyed using a
combined approach, and 75 percent of them are
satisfied or extremely satisfied with their current
process. Of course, this also means 25 percent
of these retailers are dissatisfied with their
current process (Exhibit 7).
The current marketing software landscape
is quite crowded and confusing. There is a
wealth of marketing technology vendors in the
marketplace – the image in Exhibit 8 represents
nearly 1,000 companies that provide software
for marketers, organized into 43 categories
and six major classes. And this image is not
comprehensive! It represents only a sample of
the types of software available, and there are
many companies and additional categories
that are not shown. Although there are a
tremendous number of software options and
technical choices facing the marketing
department, 44 percent of the retailers surveyed
are not including IT in their software planning
and selection. For various reasons, marketing
often conducts its own projects to evaluate,
select and implement technology without the
guidance of the overall corporate IT strategy.
Further, marketing technology strategies
are also often separate – 44 percent have a
separate marketing technology strategy from
the corporate-level IT strategy. Again, this shows
separation between these departments when a
unified vision is critical.
Exhibit 7 — Satisfaction with Current Selection Process
Extremely Satisfied
Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Extremely Dissatisfied
72%
3%3%
22%
14. 13CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Effectively delivering a seamless customer
experience requires collaboration and unified
execution among key stakeholders, departments
and systems. With any CRM initiative, marketing
and IT are the two key departments involved. As
we look at the challenges within marketing and
IT, we asked retailers about the organization in
place to support the processes needed. One of
the ways some larger retailers are improving
the unification of marketing and IT is by creating
a new role within the organization, sometimes
called a chief marketing technologist.
The chief marketing technologist is a senior-level
employee responsible for developing a marketing
technology strategy and evaluating and
implementing appropriate technology solutions.
This role often is filled with a dedicated IT person
residing within the marketing department. When
we asked respondents whether they currently
had this type of role within their organizations, 37
percent said they have created a similar role.
The top responsibility of this role is to align
marketing technology and business goals, with 70
percent of respondents indicating this is the most
important responsibility within the role. Having
this role develops better collaboration between
marketing and IT and aligns the organization to
deliver a seamless customer experience.
A majority of retailers (63 percent) either do
not have someone in this type of role, or they
manage the marketing technology landscape in
another, perhaps less-formal manner. Of this
group, 74 percent reported they do not plan to
implement such a position (Exhibit 9). With the
emphasis on technology within marketing and
the focus on delivering a seamless customer
experience, there needs to be a closer connection
between marketing and IT, and the marketing
department needs someone skilled at evaluating
and implementing the technology solutions
needed to offer customers their personalized
shopping experience.
Unified Execution
Exhibit 9 — Plans for Marketing Technologist Role
Yes - within 12 months
Yes - within 1-3 years
Yes - timeframe unclear
No plans at this time
11%
74%
5%
10%
15. 14CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Conclusion
Unified Commerce is becoming the mantra of
the retail industry. While it is not yet pervasive,
the key initiatives required to achieve Unified
Commerce consistently are the top priorities
for retailers, and the industry is slowly and
consistently working toward this goal, as
evidenced by the results from the CRM/Unified
Commerce Survey.
The top initiatives identified by the retailers
surveyed revolve around customer engagement
and the customer experience. The results
also show most retailers are collecting quality
customer data and plan to implement real-time
analytics in the next two years. The looming
challenge is that while marketing has become the
center of the Unified Commerce organization, it
is often still on its own in regard to developing
marketing technology strategies and evaluating
and selecting technology. With the importance
of multiple key marketing initiatives to achieve
a seamless shopping experience, retailers need
to examine ways to improve the unification of
marketing and IT to successfully implement
these projects. And in many larger retailers, that
improvement comes through the development
of a role in the organization that helps bridge
that gap. This senior-level role is responsible
for working with IT to develop a marketing
technology strategy and evaluate and implement
the technology.
It is impressive how many retailers are focused on
implementing CRM and marketing technologies
and capabilities to enable Unified Commerce,
but there is a lot of work to be done to deliver on
this promise. Achieving Unified Commerce is a
monumental project that requires the seamless
execution of the right strategy, technology and
processes. Retailers that successfully deliver
Unified Commerce will have done so by adopting
a unified approach: unified initiatives, processes,
technology and execution.
16. 15CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Future Possibilities
As retailers work toward unifying the organization
to fulfill the Unified Commerce promise, the
next phase of enhancing and personalizing the
customer experience already is approaching. This
next phase will shift the focus from customer
identification to retailers having new insights into
not only the customer’s shopping behavior, but
also her behavior at home or work.
The “Internet of Things” (IoT) describes an
environment where the Internet is connected to
physical objects embedded with sensors that can
then communicate data. The IoT is not just about
gathering data, but also about the analysis and
usage of that data. It has the potential to change
the way the customer shops and will, in turn,
change the way retailers market.
IoT will further enhance the personalized
customer experience, as marketers have further
opportunities to interact with the customer after
the purchase. Instead of an item being purchased
and taken home, never to be seen again, there
can be ongoing communication with the item
to understand and even enhance its usage for
the customer. This helps extend the customer
experience beyond the purchase.
The IoT also will change the checkout experience
and transform the point of sale. With sensors
embedded in merchandise and mounted within
the store, customers have further control over
their shopping experience. They can choose the
items they want to purchase and the purchase
will automatically be charged to their credit card
on file as they leave the store.
The challenge for retailers will be continuing
to understand how to encourage and entice
customers to opt-in and provide personal
information. Retailers that focus on utilizing
customer data to enhance the customer
experience will be more successful than those
retailers who demand customer data without
positively enhancing customers’
shopping experience.
The opportunities are endless, and retailers who
continue to look for additional opportunities to
enhance the customer experience will be
most successful.
17. 16CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Boston Retail Partners conducted the 2014 CRM/
Unified Commerce Benchmark Survey in March
and April of 2014 by contacting more than 500
top North American retailers. Through an online
survey system, we gained insight into retailers’
planned initiatives, priorities and future trends.
This paper summarizes the survey’s results and
key findings, offers insight based on BRP’s client
engagement and retail experience, and identifies
current and future trends in the industry to offer
retailers opportunities to continue to evolve
and prosper.
Specialty retail represented the largest segment
of survey responses with 31 percent falling into
the specialty soft goods category and 31 percent
in the specialty hard goods category (Exhibit 10).
The remainder fell into various other categories,
such as grocery, food and beverage, and
general merchandise.
Of the retailers surveyed, the breakdown in
size based on gross annual revenue included
a broad selection of Tier 1, 2 and 3 retailers.
Three-quarters of the retailers surveyed had
gross annual revenue of $100 million to $5
billion (Exhibit 11).
The respondents were primarily vice presidents
and directors of CRM or C-level executives.
Survey Methodology
Exhibit 10 — Company Category
Exhibit 11 — Gross Annual Revenue
31%
31%
19%
7%
6%
3%
3%
Specialty - Soft Goods (Accessories, Apparel, etc.) — 31%
Specialty - Hard Goods — 31%
(Books, Electronics, Furniture, Home & Garden, Sporting Goods, etc.)
Convenience & Fuel — 3%
Grocery, Food & Beverage — 19%
General Merchandise — 7%
Other — 6%
QSR/Restaurant — 3%
(Mass Merchant/Department)
$10B or more — 9%
$5B to $10B — 6%
Less than $100M — 10%
$500M to $1B — 34%
$100M to $500M — 25%
$1B to $5B — 16%
34%
16% 25%
10%9%
6%
19. 18CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Appendix - Graphs
Figure 1: Rank the following current initiatives in order of importance to your organization.
Exhibit 2 within the main document is an excerpt from this graph.
Figure 2: Indicate your organization’s plans for these potential initiatives. Exhibit 3 within
the main document is an excerpt from this graph.
Importance of Current Initiatives
Plans for Potential Initiatives
Customer Experience / Customer Engagement
Customer Analytics
(Lifetime Value, RFM, etc.)
Customer Segmentation
Guided Selling / Clienteling
Social Selling
Social Log-in or Sign-in
(Facebook Connect)
Mobile Apps
Location-based Mobile Marketing
Digital Signage
Ad retargeting - tracking cookies
on site visit for retargeting
Real-time analytics
Paid organic social amplification - paying
for ads on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
Niche marketing or narrowcasting
Real-time retail from POS (Amazon experience
at the store)
Embedded digital marketing in print media
Virtual Closet across all channels
Gamification
Ability to identify customers when they
walk in the store via their smartphones
1
Implemented
2
Implement in <2 years
3
Implement in >2 years
6
4
No plans to implement
7
5
8
9
0%
0%
20%
20%
40%
40%
60%
60%
80%
80%
100%
100%
66%
16%
16%
13%
6%
22%
28%
28%
25% 13%
13% 3% 3%13%
13% 6%
6%
16% 13%
13% 13% 13%
3%
3%
3% 3%
3%
3%
6%
6% 9%
22% 31%
25%
28% 9%
6%
6%
6%
6% 6%9%
9%
9%
9% 9%
9% 9%34%
19%
19%
22% 16%
16% 16%
13% 13% 44%
13%
16%16%
9% 9% 19%
3%
31%
23%
22%
19%
16% 41% 22% 22%
16%
9%
6%
3%
19%
31%
23%
41%
52%
25%
19% 31% 41%
31% 6% 47%
28% 13% 41%
34% 16% 28%
61% 10% 6%
44% 13% 13%
20. 19CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Figure 3: Indicate how your organization’s budget has changed from 2013 to 2014. Exhibit 4
within the main document is an excerpt from this graph.
Figure 4: Indicate the status of the following CRM technology implementations. Exhibit 5 within
the main document is an excerpt from this graph.
Budget Change from 2013 to 2014
CRM Technology Implementations
Increased Decreased No change
Mobile marketing
CRM analytics
Customer experience / Customer engagement
Loyalty program & supporting technology
Customer-facing technology
Social selling
CRM outsourcing
Customer Database
Digital Marketing
E-commerce
Loyalty
Anyalytics / Dashboards / Business Intelligence
Campaign Management
Mobile Marketing
Customer-Facing Technology
Clienteling
22% 6%
3% 55%
55%
42%
45%
53%
56%
59%
63%
47%
44%
38%
38%
3%
72%
Implemented
Implement in <2 years
Implement in >2 years
No plans to implement
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
81%
78%
69%
56%
42%
41%
28%
25%
17%
13%
9%
25%
34%
45%
41%
56%
50%
27%
6%
6%6%
6%
6%
6%
16%
9%
9%
27%
3%
6%
3%
6%
16%
30%
21. 20CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Figure 5: Indicate your organization’s current process for the strategy, selection and
implementation of new technology within the marketing department. Exhibit 6 within the
main document is an excerpt from this graph.
Marketing Department’s Current Processes
Marketing technology
strategy development
Technology evaluation
and selection
Technology implementation
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
In-house -
marketing dept
In-house -
IT dept
In-house -
marketing & IT
Vendor partnership Utilize ad agency Unsure
13%
3%
0% 0% 0%0%
16%
31%
56% 56%
38%
13%
19%
28%
6% 6%
3%
13%