The "E" in Ecommerce
I recently read great report from Kantar Retail called: The Future Shopper: How changing shopper attitudes and technology are re-shaping retail. You can download the report for free here.
There are a few themes that stood out to me in this report:
1) The "E" in Ecommerce now stands for "Everywhere."
The purchase funnel has now become exceedingly complex. A consumer could research a product online, go to the store to look at the product and decide they want to purchase. However, a quick search on their phone lets them know Amazon has it cheaper and they could have it delivered by tomorrow.
The days of a simple decision making process have gone by the wayside. Consumers are now buying, shopping and consuming everywhere and all of the time.
2) The 3 P's
As shoppers, we assume the retailers we are shopping from have access to the 3 Ps (Profile, Personal History and Preferences). Whether we shop in a store or online, we expect to have wide product availability and an understanding that the retailer will provide relevant content, recommendations and pricing based on my history with them.
3) The Trust Factor
Consumers get marketed to from so many channels (Facebook, email, billboards, commercials and the list goes on). Guess what? Consumers still don't trust advertising. Shoppers still trust their friends when it comes to making purchases. Have you ever purchased something from Amazon without reading the reviews first?
So, what does all this have to do with email? Everything. Listrak is helping retailers to collect the 3Ps and then use this information to market to their subscribers and customers.
If you're a retailer, you should be segmenting your emails based on whether or not someone is a customer and when they last purchased from you. Better yet, make sure to target them with an appropriate offer. If you know someone is a loyal customer and will make a purchase without a coupon, why send one?
By marrying traditional demographic data (gender, location, interests) with customer purchase data, email marketers are now able to achieve a level of segmentation and targeting that wasn't achievable a few years ago.
In a recent Forbes interview, Robert Mettler quoted: "Retail is an industry of confluences. The competitors with better information who can predict behavior will be the winners. And, the winning model will acknowledge there are many ways to interface with the customer."
I couldn't have said it better myself.