The most successful retailers: 

• Identify customer desires and pain points. 
• Find the right technology partners.
• Track data across digital and in-store channels. 
• Personalize recommendations to the individual.
• Define success and how to measure ROI.
• Deploy, measure, and optimize personalized campaigns.

What Does Seamless Personalization Look Like?

Shoppers don’t want distracting or irrelevant interruptions that detract from their experiences. Interruptive experiences may include:

• pop-up ads, sticky info-bars, or interstitials that block the screen while browsing websites
• mobile push notifications when smartphone users have not allowed or expected them
• unsolicited marketing emails trying to sell products outside of a consumer’s interest

By contrast, seamless personalized experiences include:

• online ads that appear as “sponsored posts” on social media
• opt-in, transactional, and ongoing emails that serve as lead nurturing 
• inline code that adds sections of content to a page based on the visitor who is reading 
• A/B testing to determine which landing page or ad copy to display

Through seamless personalization, you collect information and use it in a helpful way, without shoppers feeling like you are being intrusive. Shoppers want transparent communications on their terms and easy opt-out notices.

Whether marketing offline, online, or via mobile, you’ll want to have a cohesive look and feel from your homepage and social media channels to your in-store displays and ads. Use the same colors, typography, imagery, and message tone across all channels for a seamless omnichannel experience that makes consumers comfortable with your brand.

Seamless In-Store

Despite the convenience of online shopping, most customers still prefer bricks over clicks. They like seeing, touching, and interacting with products before they buy. They like personalized attention from sales associates and the whole store ambiance. Location-based technology is one of the ways brands and retailers are creating a more seamless shopping experience. They are using beacons to know when specific customers arrive at the store, how long they stay, what parts of the store they visit, and how long they linger in a particular aisle. Mobile POS solutions are valuable in-store tools that yield a more seamless experience. Store associates can look up a customer’s shopping history to find product information tailored to their interests.

Seamless Social Media & Web

Online shopping may only represent eight percent of direct purchases, but the internet remains a vital part of a seamless customer experience with 81% of shoppers researching online before buying. Furthermore, half of shoppers use social channels to research purchases they’re considering, and a third use social as a channel to discover new items. Tracking customer behavior across the web and running email drip campaigns, paid targeted ads on social media, special web offers based on purchase/browsing history, and integrated rewards programs for online shoppers is key to seamless and personalized marketing online. Not only must retailers ensure they have a seamless user experience across all channels, but they’ll need to make the online/offline transition smoother as well. BOPIS (Buy Online Pickup In-Store) is one of the latest innovations gaining traction with busy shoppers.

Seamless Mobile

Over half of shoppers use mobile apps while in-store to inform their purchases. They use their phones to find and redeem coupons, to find items, and to learn more about items they’re intending to buy. In-app video is a fast-growing way to connect with customers, whether they are using your native app or a third-party mobile shopping platform. In 2019, click-through rates for in-app video were two times that of native ads and over ten times greater than banner ads. Shopkick, a popular mobile shopping platform, invites users to earn rewards points for watching in-app videos. These points can eventually be redeemed for gift cards to use with partnering brands or retailers. By incentivizing video, one Shopkick partner’s campaign received over 16M impressions and was highly successful in educating consumers before their trip to the store, boasting a 99% branded video completion rate.

When considering ways to make a customer’s experience seamless, begin by addressing customer pain points and bottlenecks. Asking for customer feedback is one way to get a pulse on the type of shopping experience you currently offer if you’re unsure where to begin. Once you’ve discovered the issues, move on to expanding your capabilities to be more in line with customer expectations. Technology makes a seamless engagement strategy possible. Options include intuitive web design, customer relationship management software, better back-end inventory control, location-based advertising, beacons, A/B testing, mobile checkout tools, and mobile app partnerships like Shopkick. Lastly, be sure your staff members are trained to put people first, whether it’s in-store, over the phone, on social channels, or via chat.