Customer Engagement Strategy Using Live Chat

Posted on March 1, 2021 by Paola Magni

Today customer’s expectations from a brand have risen from mere marketing of freebies and discounts to a brand’s ability to relate with the “human element”. To earn loyalty, customers want the brands to interact with them and prove their worth in this cutting-edge consumer market.

What is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement in simple words is the relationship between a customer and a business. To ensure customer engagement, companies work towards creating a relationship with their customers to improve brand awareness and brand loyalty.

Customer engagement is crucial to a brand’s interaction with its customers. A highly engaged customer will be more aware of the brand’s vision and mission, and will likely become part of the loyal customer base.

What is a Customer Engagement Strategy?

Customer engagement strategy is defined as the tools businesses use to build strong and engaging relationships with customers. It also involves anticipating customer’s needs, solving their problems and helping them achieve their goals.

An effective customer engagement strategy builds long lasting impressions in the minds of consumers. It also increases awareness of the brand and improves customer engagement.

The key to a strong customer engagement strategy is to introduce technologies that favor user interaction, user retention on the page, sales, and user participation with the content.

Some of the famous brands like Coca Cola, Starbucks, Rogers Media, Super Bowl, and Apple are renowned around the world for their inspiring and effective customer engagement strategies. Let us take a look at a few of them.

1. Coca Cola

When it comes to marketing, Coca Cola is usually ahead of the game. In 2012, Coca Cola launched a marketing campaign called “ShareACoke” where the company’s logo was replaced by some of the most common names of people in the US. Adding a name to the bottle spoke to the consumers on a personal level and thus became a powerful marketing strategy.

Within the first year, people shared more than 500,000 photos via the #ShareaCoke hashtag. The campaign became consumer driven where highly active users on social media channels began sharing their pictures with friends and family.

Thus consumers were acting as creative directors for the brand itself which led to a high engagement on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

2. Starbucks

Starbucks sets a great example of establishing strong customer engagement strategies every year. “My Starbucks Rewards” program was launched in 2009 which allowed Mobile Order & Pay feature where customers would order ahead of time and pick up their orders in the store. This allowed them to cut lines and order through convenience of their phone.

In addition, the rewards program also allowed consumers to check their balance, make use of their star points and earn free coffee refills or food items.

Starbucks doesn’t just limit its marketing projects to social media but also to a wider digital audience. In one of the campaigns called Starbucks’ Love Project, the company collaborated with several artists such as Dave Matthews, John Legend and U2 to create “All You Need Is Love CD.”

In participating Starbucks locations, customers would get a free CD with a purchase of $15 or more. They were then invited to upload their video to become part of a massive sing-along. Thousands came on board!

3. Superbowl

We are all familiar with Superbowl — the iconic game that generates one of the biggest days for advertising in the US! Companies can learn amazing lessons from the way Superbowl advertisers harness the power of customer engagement in their campaigns. Many organizations even utilize the pre-gaming screen time to start advertising their products and services ahead of the game.

For example Uber’s pre-gaming marketing featured #UberPuppyBowl; hashtag and promoted the chance for select Uber offices to enjoy a 15 minute cuddle huddle with puppies in select Uber’s offices.

Today with the rise of social media, organizations are leveraging the power of both the mainstream as well as social media platforms to advertise their products. During last year’s Superbowl, Avocados From Mexico’s advertisement featuring Molly Ringwald didn’t receive as much traction as they were expecting.

However, the brand took to Twitter’s live-tweeting responses for the rest of their ads and the halftime show, garnering more attention than their original ad!

Creating a Compelling Customer Engagement Strategy Using Live Chat

User interaction, retention and participation are key elements in creating a compelling customer engagement strategy. This helps improve sales and builds long lasting impressions.

One of the tools that can help you create a compelling engagement strategy is the live chat feature. Companies are now utilizing live chats during webinars, online conferences, live events and for free ecommerces.

A live chat feature improves customer experience, builds stronger branding, and helps you gain a competitive edge over your competition.

Whether you work with small or large businesses, in 2021, you absolutely need a Live Chat tool as part of your marketing strategy. Although live chat feature has been around for a while, companies are now proactively using it on their websites and social media platforms.

Here are some of the strategies you can use to improve your customer engagement through live chat features.

Create Positive Brand Perception

Brands all around the world strive to create a positive perception for their products and services. Live chat can be a useful tool to help you achieve that perception through real-time user engagement. During your brand’s live event broadcasts such as webinars, fashion shows, conferences, concerts, or stand up comedies, you can use the live chat feature for your viewers to engage not just with the content but also with one another in real-time.

Live chat provides you more opportunities to make meaningful connections, which will further promote your brand perception and awareness. There is a power in the ripple effect that a good word of mouth can cause!

Improve KPIs

When working with live chat tools, companies need to understand how to improve their KPIs to ensure positive results. Technologies such as live chat tools can be forefront in creating real-time engagement for your brand.

When customers interact with an event on your website, they might pose questions about a product launch or may generally be interested in knowing more about your brand. Ensuring the interaction doesn’t stay one-sided, you can take that time to answer the questions for the viewers.

In addition, you can improve your KPIs in other productive ways too. For example if many customers are asking the same questions over and over again, it is a better idea to include an FAQ page on your website.

Create an Online Community

Live Chat feature is not only about consumer and business interaction, it is also about consumer to consumer interaction. During live webinars and online events, you can set up a live chat where the viewers can interact with each other. A great example of live chat interaction can be seen on YouTube live videos where viewers communicate with one another by every second.

Other companies like Daily Telegraph, City Gates, CA, Bridgend College, Fox Sports have been using the live chat feature creatively on their social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Provide a Personalized User Experience

When interacting with a brand, customers look for a personalized experience that can address their demands. A personalized real-time experience increases customer satisfaction and improves the perceived value of your brand.

Rather than treating your customer as a transaction or another name on your email list, approach them as human beings who have goals, interests, and preferences. Through a carefully tailored experience, you can help them achieve those goals.

Increase Your Revenue

According to an eMarketer survey on the attitude towards US online buyers who used live chat showed that 63% users were more likely to visit a site again. And 62% of the respondents who engaged through a live chat feature said that they were more likely to purchase from the site again.

Having a live chat feature on your website can have a significant impact on your sales. Using a chat tool during a purchase can influence your customer’s decision to continue with the purchase.

Conclusion

Companies all around the world use multiple tools to improve their online visibility, user experience and sales. Many argue that a positive customer experience is pivotal to success of a business and we couldn’t agree more.

According to a study by AMA Access on how B2B marketers are leveraging live chat to increase their sales, the research found that throughout the customer journey, companies can use live chat to improve:

Marketing awareness by 29%
Conversion to create sales suspects by 39%
Post-sales customer support and engagement by 39%

Try our freemium Live Chat tool Arena to stay on the top of your marketing game, implement effective customer engagement strategies and produce happy customers!

How Can Live Chat improve the User Experience?

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Paola Magni

Do you need to boost the user experience on your website? Live Chat might be the solution you’ve been looking for.

Make your customer service more personal and become a reference in your field. Read on to find out unique ways Live Chat can increase your website’s experience.

What is Live Chat?

For its power of handling the immediacy of customer services and fulfilling quality buying opportunities, Live Chat became one of the best –– and most wanted –– tools for marketing and sales.

Live Chat is an opportunity generator. The chance of building real connections with the customers can transform a cold purchase moment into a memorable experience. As we know, customer service can be a tremendous competitive advantage for your business.

But to reach an exceptional level, you must know what your audience wants, why they want it, and how they want to get it. Having a Live Chat will help you tailor the most effective approaches and deliver them at the right time.

Added by pasting a simple line code on your website, the Arena Live Chat allows two types of communications:

Passive, when the customer reaches out to the company;
and Active, when the company itself strategically steps in to increase the value of a visited page, of a product, a decisive moment, or even during the purchase.

But Live Chat is not only about interventions or communications. It can also be used to collect important data about the customer’s preferences and behaviors.

As simple as it might look, having proper knowledge on how to correctly use Live Chat can give you guidance –– or even maybe precise answers –– to your audience’s needs before they even realize them.

Thus, your marketing and sales teams can provide a one of a kind service. As a result, you’ll make bigger and better sales. Let’s dive into some of the possibilities to increase user experience on your website through Live Chat.

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The real magnitude of Live Chat

Before we start listing how you can increase user experience on your website using Live Chat, you must understand its real potential for the success of your company. One of the top benefits of Live Chat is its versatility.

This tool has a whole spectrum of possibilities, fitting different needs, segments, platforms, events, and more. All you should keep in mind is how can you better use this new, simple, and clear path of communication with your visitor.

Shape everything you’re about to read to the reality of your own business!

Everything customers need in a single place

Customer service always had a crucial role in all kinds of buying processes, whether in a physical or digital store. To provide great service you must understand what your audience truly wants!

Most websites are overstuffed with things irrelevant to users’ experience, forcing them to leave and search for what they need in the competition without looking back.

No need to shuffle between the website and social media

A simple, yet very frequent, example is when a visitor needs more information about something on your website, doesn’t find any, and goes to social media to look for it.

Regardless of whether this visitor is browsing on your company’s social media page, they are already out of your website. One simple pop up notification and you’re forgotten!

Having Live Chat on your website cuts off visitor’s urge to shift pages searching for further details about something or engagement they need.

Also because your prospect may find not only the answer they need, but other stores, pages, and services as well. Do you realize how damaging this is for your business?

Providing better offers

Customers hate being treated as just another person in line. They’d rather close your tab and look for someone else. Through Live Chat, every touchpoint of your company has the possibility to establish personal conversations on a level that customers realize they are a priority for your brand.

There are countless missed opportunities on automatic responses, lack of personalization, or standardized approaches. But when it comes to Live Chat, the customer service team knows precisely who they are talking to and how to better serve that person.

Designing infallible strategy plans

Now your customers don’t need to leave your website to solve their doubts, you can understand the new length and stages of their individual buyer’s journey. Those two types of approaches mentioned earlier, passive and active, create one of a kind opportunities to aim precisely at your customer’s pain point.

During a Live Chat talk, your teams can gather rich information about the audience to produce meaningful and stronger interactions during their browsing time. Besides creating a much more relevant experience on your website, you also increase the chances of conversion.

Adding more value to live events

Digital events have never been as on popular as today. The importance of creating engagement spaces for the audience through live events promotes not only a moment about generating relevant connections, but also opportunities to increase the value of your website, brand your company as an authority, and close more deals.

All you need to do is set the goals to reach what you want.

Boosting interactions

Regardless of your business segment, using Live Chat on a well-planned event can stimulate the audience to spend more time browsing through the pages of your website.

To create a sort of customer journey, think about the best ways to trigger your visitor to follow your trail of contents, allow them to fortify their perception about you and your product or service.

Whether in a single user room or a Live Group Chat, your strategy team can build up the ideal experience.

Opening group discussion rooms

Speaking of Live Group Chat, the event hosted by you can put together multiple visitors in a single room to discuss, share experiences and opinions about the main subject. Creating a sense of community on your website establishes your place as a point of reference for the audience.

Setting users’ experience this high may permanently increase traffic, bringing more visibility to your brand, as well as producing great referrals out there.

The power of always being available

Business hours are something really incoherent to the digital market. When a customer wants to make a purchase, there is no such thing as a 9-5 period. Services must not be a one size fits all. You have to build your own way to be there for your client whenever they want you.

So, to generate a continuous service through day and night, you can create schedules on-demand or sales calls.

For example, during business hours when the website traffic might be more intense, you can have 4 to 5 attendants. Each one of these customer service agents can engage around 6 or 7 simultaneous chat rooms. At night shift, when traffic might not be high, you can work with 2 attendants.

Knocking down buying objections

It is very common during decision making to pop up a situation that interferes in the buying process. A doubt, a request, a need, or even something more simple: if there is no one to assist or help, do you really think the visitor will stay until they fix the problem by themselves?

Making yourself present while the audience browses through your website reduces the chances of missing opportunities, whether because the visitor needed you or because you spotted a possibility of approaching.

Help the audience get everything they need from your page. Keep in mind that if the answer is not on you, then they will look up somewhere else. And using Live Chat, you have the chance not only to solve situations, but to tailor the response to that specific visitor.

For example, having a Frequent Questions section is great. But does that information really touch the point to make your maybe-customer give you their money? Probably not. But in a Live Chat room, you can literally embrace the opportunity to create the perfect momentum.

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Forms are dying and Live Chat is taking over

If you can give full personalization, why would you step back and deliver only half of it? That’s the feeling about using forms these days. Is it inefficient? No. But it’s not enough anymore. The worst part is that forms are always the same everywhere. Same fields, same information, same shape, same everything.

Collecting data through Live Chat gives you endless opportunities to pick up details like pieces of a puzzle. You build a bigger picture of the person you are talking to. What product or service are they interested in, what are their preferences, what problem are they trying to solve, what are their expectations…

Those are just a few examples of the level of information you can get using Live Chat. There is no way you reach that by only asking for the name, email, and phone number in a form box.

The mighty power of real-time data analysis

What if you could read your client’s minds? Predict their moves and understand what they want before they realize it for themselves. What kind of experience would you deliver?

Reading such things might sound bananas, but it is not! Having real-time data analysis takes you to a level of assertiveness that only big players in the business have.

The visitor’s browsing time can be monitored step by step. What pages are they navigating? What items are they most interested in? Are they recurrent visitors to that same spot? How much time are they spending on you? At what buying stage are they bouncing off?

Answers like those can give insight to marketing and sales teams precisely, like a script. When you track those kinds of moves, you can clearly understand what is really going on in that sale opportunity.

Combining that with Live Chat, you’ll have the power to take your visitor’s hand and lead them through your funnel all the way to the end. That walk will be constructed according to all data you already have, making it possible to shorten the process to a faster and better sell.

Customer Data Platform and Live Chat

There is no way to mention real-time data analysis without talking about the Customer Data Platform (CDP): a single place to gather information from multiple sources and touchpoints, organizes them into similar matches and creates clusters of customers as precise as a photograph.

The only way to truly know your audience is through data. Everything else is just speculation. Customer Data Platform helps you with the right segmentation, personalizing communication, humanizing your brand’s services and, as a result, increasing revenue. This is the right way to serve the best user experience on your website!

You can use the information provided by CDP to guide the conversation on Live Chat, define the best approach and strategy to use, or you can integrate your CDP to automatically collect data from the Live Chat.

Through both ways, you elevate the chances of conversion by getting to know your audience like no one else in the market has done so far.

Live Chat and Chatbot are not the same thing

If at any point of this reading the idea that Live Chat is the same thing as those automatic stiffed messages you get on most of the websites around, you’re wrong!

Those are called chatbots: responses previously set to “help” customers in need. There is a long list of reasons why we could say Live Chat is a million times better than bots, but we’ll give you just one: chatbot doesn’t have a real person behind the service. Live Chat does!

Nothing can replace the greatness of human interaction. No customer service can reach a level of perfection using the same shape formulas for everybody.

The type of communication your brand must aim for should be based on emotions, empathy, respect, and affection. It is not only about sharing cold dry information, but about understanding what’s between the lines.

Get Arena Live Chat for free

Now you have some of the answers you’ve been looking for to increase your website’s user experience. It is time to take action! We want to see you thriving, making better impressions, expanding the possibilities, and, of course, making more money.

That’s why we are giving you free access to our Live Chat service. You can have as many Live Chat rooms as you want on your website in a matter of seconds.

All you have to do is signing up, embedding a single line of code on the page you want, and start chatting!

Don’t waste more time! Click here and get the Arena Live Chat for free.

Ecommerce Customer Experience: how to optimize it

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Natalia Gaal

A good eCommerce customer experience offers much more than just speed and ease: it fits customers’ preferences to increase their lifetime value and keep your churn rate low.

It’s no secret that people are shopping online more and more. With social distancing, the average customer profile has evolved and adapted to navigate and make eCommerce purchases.

Ecommerce has been a key channel in retail, marketing, and sales operations, to the point it globally represents three-quarters of the overall retail growth. According to Statista, eCommerce sales are supposed to reach almost $604 billion in 2021.

Whether eCommerce sales are made overseas or regionally, one thing is true: The customer is at its center, and offering an at-least-good customer experience is a basic requirement.

Still, that is not what we usually see these days. Regrettably, it is very common to find bad eCommerce customer experiences, such as buggy checkout processes.

Well, that’s no laughing matter. Losing a customer in the checkout process means you’re saying goodbye to the most concrete revenue you might be able to get.

Why is eCommerce customer experience so important?

Owning an inventory and simply selling it isn’t enough, especially in the competitive market we witness today. Products and services aren’t differentiators anymore—but good eCommerce customer experience is.

An eCommerce experience refers to the quality of the interactions customers have in digital stores.

To achieve acceptable levels of quality, the user interaction should match customers’ expectations and provide them with fantastic eCommerce customer experience—there is where its importance lies.

Customer experience decides if you’re selling or not—literally—when it comes to eCommerce.

The following statistics, provided by CX Central, make it clear:

After going through a poor experience, 89% of customers say they have stopped buying from a brand
Customer experience is overtaking price and products as a key brand differentiator
Eighty-six percent (86%) of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience
In general, 61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer an excellent mobile experience
Around 25% of online shoppers leave the website without paying if they find the website navigation too complicated

As you can see, offering a bad eCommerce customer experience is the way to chaos. Simultaneously, a good eCommerce customer experience is the way to customer engagement.

But how can you avoid being in the bad eCommerce statistics?

Keep in mind that every and each eCommerce operation should be built considering how the customer feels throughout the buying journey.

If customers feel bad about your brand while on your eCommerce, they won’t hesitate to open a new tab and search for your competitor quickly. Competition is a few clicks away.

This means you have to offer a seamless, intuitive, eCommerce customer experience.

What makes a good eCommerce customer experience?

A good eCommerce customer experience should allow your customers to move through your online shop with speed and ease while matching their personal preferences.

This might differ from customer to customer – that’s why it is important to know them deeply.

In case you’re in doubt whether you’re offering a great eCommerce customer experience or not, there are a few KPIs that can help you get your answers.

We know a large portion of customers abandon the cart because that’s how they browse eCommerce.

Still, according to Baymard, the main reasons for cart abandonment during checkouts are too high extra costs (50%), eCommerce demanding customers to create an account (28%), and too long checkout processes (21%).

Another interesting statistic is that customer retention in eCommerce is 5X cheaper than acquisition.

This suggests that keeping your customers and increasing their Lifetime Value (LTV) is a great way to keep ROI coming back to you. If your customer LTV is good, you might want to keep it high to benefit from consumers’ engagement.

With this in mind, we’ll move forward to some eCommerce customer experience trends that are extremely promising for the upcoming months.

1 – Personalization

You wants your customers to feel like you care about them, right?

The best way to ensure them you do is to offer them interactions that match their context.

By basing its campaigns on factual data, eCommerce can deliver highly personalized and relevant offers to customers throughout their lifecycle and buying journey.

This means more accurate product suggestions, tailored loyalty points, smart follow-up emails, and more, to guide your customers more easily in the journey.

Please pay attention to the fact 71% of consumers express some level of frustration when their shopping experience is impersonal. On the other hand, 80% of them are more likely to buy from brands that offer customized experiences.

Tailoring a specific eCommerce customer experience based on customer data is no longer a futuristic idea. It is here, and people are demanding it.

2 – Flexibility

Customers expect to buy from anywhere at any time. This means providing them with:

A wide variety of paying methods on the checkout page
Search bars so customers can quickly find products they’re looking for
A small number of input fields in the checkout process
Fair price policies that don’t scare buyers away

Are these all? In fair honesty, they aren’t. Granting your customers with flexibility goes much further, and it starts with understanding what their preferences and hopes are.

The omnichannel market, for example, is growing at an impressive speed due to customers’ need to create deeper connections with brands as fast as they need to.

Whether customers want to shop online or to go in-store and have their package sent to their houses, omnichannel embraces countless opportunities across digital platforms and physical operations to deliver customized customer experiences.

This creates a competitive advantage and levels your eCommerce customer experience up.

3 – Human connection

The average Americans see from 4,000 to 10,000 ads daily. This massive advertising has contributed to making customers feel overwhelmed and make them harder to reach effectively.

When getting involved with brands, customers need to understand root-causes to allow an emotional connection.

This isn’t something that paid ads can tell them, so eCommerce needs to take a step back and focus on organic storytelling techniques.

By focusing their attention on unique, personal brand experiences, businesses can upgrade their marketing campaigns and shopping journeys to build an outstanding eCommerce customer experience.

How does that affect your eCommerce directly? Well, this is a fantastic opportunity to use videos and live content to tell your story in an appealing way to attract and retain customers.

This is also a sign you should focus on more effective human support.

For example, as much as people don’t mind being served by chatbots, 73% of customers still love being supported by friendly representatives who provide excellent service.

4 – Convenience

Convenience is the key to a good eCommerce customer experience, so fast and free shipping is about to become a brand differentiator.

Hitches and slowness aren’t allowed anymore and might push the demanding, time-sensitive customer away.

Let’s say your marketing team has invested time and money in delivering a campaign to attract customers to a unique sales promotion.

However, as soon as the customers engaged with your campaign get to your eCommerce, they catch themselves face to face with slow loading times, confusing pages, and unclear product descriptions.

Let’s also imagine that, as soon as customers put the products in the cart, the price previously exposed to your eCommerce suddenly increases.

Bad news: You have just wasted all the money your company invested in an effective acquisition campaign.

Studies say 14% of customers percent will begin shopping at another site when waiting for a page to load. Imagine how negatively this can affect your churn and conversion rates.

By neglecting convenience, there is a high chance your metrics towards digital initiatives might not perform the way you’re expecting them to and indicate opportunities you’re losing in the business.

Ways to improve eCommerce customer experience

There are many ways to improve your eCommerce customer experience once you decide to invest in meaningful customer-centric experiences.

One thing is universal for picking and implementing the right technologies to optimize your eCommerce customer experience: your improvements must be data-based.

This means every page and feature on your eCommerce should rely on vital customer information, such as what type of interaction your consumers prefer depending on the journey stage they’re at.

For example, have you ever considered developing a solution that allows your customers to buy from you while driving? Or delivering your products to consumers’ vehicles and other appliances?

Perhaps one of the above might make huge sense and generate even more value to your customers. But you’ll only know for certain if you rely on trustworthy customer data.

This is such a trend that customers will agree to sell their information to brands they choose.

Whether it is their in-store movements, their location, or online browsing, customers are aware data access is essential to create personal experiences—and they’re counting on you to use it wisely to reward them with the best eCommerce experience ever.

Many eCommerce leaders and professionals worldwide have been doing that and benefiting from Customer Data Platform outcomes to personalize and elevate their eCommerce customer experience.

Improving your eCommerce customer experience with a real-time engagement platform

In the process of improving your eCommerce customer experience, you should strongly consider a few tools to help you build the best user experience.

Arena’s real-time engagement platform is the choice for you. It is equipped with Live Blog and Live Chat that can easily be embedded into your eCommerce to generate leads, increase engagement, and boost your revenue.

Keep reading to find out how both tools can optimize your eCommerce customer experience. We highly recommend checking out how Shoply leverages Arena for their Live Shopping experience.

Live Blog for eCommerce

A Live Blog is a new way to blog that embraces live content to a real-time audience.

When you live Blog, you combine different post formats and sources to create a refreshing coverage feed with the latest news towards an important event in your field.

Live Blogs are huge in many sectors, such as sports, elections, protests, and conferences. However, these powerful engagement platforms can do much more, especially when we bring your eCommerce to the scenery.

Could you Live Blog a product launch? Sure! Could you live Blog a new promotional sale? Yes! Could you live Blog a special gathering for your loyal top-level clients? Absolutely.

Live Blogs transcend the way blogs have been building content over the years and should be adopted by eCommerce’s that care about the content they’re providing customers with.

Live Group Chat for eCommerce

Have you ever considered working on your eCommerce to embed tools that promote customer real-time interactions 24/7?

Live Chat Groups are an amazing option to achieve that!

As the name suggests, Live Chat Groups are chats that can easily be implemented on eCommerce to allow real-time conversations between your customers and representatives and your customers alone.

By implementing one on your eCommerce, you allow new types of interaction that add on more credibility to your pages and don’t make your customers wait for a response when customers reach out for you.

Live Chats have been used by support and sales teams for years, but now marketers have opened their eyes to its potential to engage and offer excellent customer experiences.

The advantages of Live Chat Groups are:

Availability: Consumers want businesses to be available 24/7, and Live Chat Groups are always there to prevent your customers from waiting for a response
Support: Sales representatives use Live Chat Groups to give customers great support, whether they’re in the checkout process or in doubt about a specific product
Real-time engagement: Replying quickly to customers should spare you the chance to leave them without an answer and lose them to other eCommerce on your field
Lead generation: Want a fast, simple tool that collects customer data and lets you smoothly guide shoppers through the customer journey? Live Chat is the answer!

As you read, consumers are expecting your next eCommerce customer experience move

We know how fast you need to implement changes that will give you quick and remarkable results.

That is why we have decided to let you download our engagement platform for free and get started as soon as you want!

Start now and add Live Chat and Live Blog to boost your eCommerce customer experience!

Connecting Marketing Campaigns with Customer Data Platform

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Paola Magni

Customer Data Platform has become the game-changer tool to reach business success. Find out how a CDP can integrate your marketing campaigns to increase revenue now!

Throughout the years, marketing and sales can gather large volumes of data from their actions. But the million-dollar question is how to manage that amount of information effectively and coherently apply them, connecting your marketing and sales campaigns.

But since we are experts on this issue, we made this content for walking you through and show how the Customer Data Platform can sew up your strategies to generate more profits, reduce customer acquisition costs, and increase the investment.

Keep up and find out!

What is a Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a software capable of gathering and organizing customer information from multiple sources.

It puts together data from social media, CRM, e-mails, purchase records, ads, browsers, devices, and more. It also allows real-time updates, reading customer behavior to provide fresh and relevant material.

This compiled information obtained by CDP allows communication with hyper-segmented audiences. More positive engagement is given since marketing and sales know precisely whom they are supposed to talk to and what they really want.

Customer Data Platform uses every single action taken from the audience and turns it into a data profile. So, even though a first-time visitor didn’t share their e-mail with your website, you can still use browsing behavior, pages, and items checked to build up a remarketing campaign on Google or Facebook Ads.

Build more assertive marketing with CDP

One of the essential aspects of CDP is the possibility of creating integration, not just about data but also about teams. Customer services, marketing, sales, customer experience, and support: from Customer Data Platform on, they will speak the same strategy language.

When there is communication harmony indoors, all pieces combined can show this bigger and coherent picture. As a result:

Customer services can give the appropriate approach, knowing exactly who they are talking to and what the audience truly wants. No more wasting time here.
Marketing can design unique plans of action, understanding by analyzing customer behavior, the best elements to improve conversion in that segment.
Sales can offer precisely what the audience needs to purchase, whether it be a discount, a trial, testimonials, or a personal approach to explaining some details.
Customer success can promote simple usability based on the interests listed on CDP, enhancing user experience, and improving the chances of making an upsell.
Support can grant a more humanized and empathic service, offering high-quality solutions to increase customer satisfaction, generating good referrals.

Those steps combined to ensure a buyer’s journey without bumps or unfortunate surprises along the way. Hence, the entire process gets smoother, causing the best impressions your brand could ever have.

Improve marketing metrics with Customer Data Platform

Through the Customer Data Platform, you can have a 360-degree view of your audience. Having that density of information turns easier to get tighter metrics, eligible to translate ad campaign performances, and provide relevant insights for the teams.

Data is gold, only when you use the right ones. The lack of planning and proper understanding over it may cause inaccurate results and misperceptions about the strategy. The same rule applies to metrics.

CDP does not over give you information. It hands you organized and coherent material to measure all the steps on the way. Therefore, marketing and sales can count on extra support to plan, execute, and manage their best actions.

Increase success of ad campaigns using real-time data

This is undoubtedly one of the most powerful tools currently available in the business. Real-time user data refers to new information from data sources being injected into your Customer Data Platform profiles.

An applicable example of this feature is when a sales team gets to see an online buyers’ shopping cart to induce a cross-sell. This type of data can also be used to re-target campaigns after the visitor triggers an event.

The ability to walk around the customer to scan them from multiple POVs given by real-time data grants you access to analyze aspects of your strategy. Take a look at some more possibilities you can have with real-time data on CDP:

Recognize bottlenecks on your website
Improve marketing, and sales campaigns live
Create an exclusive and personalized customer experience
Offer individualized and relevant post-sale service

All those pieces of interactions –and those many more not mentioned –create a singular environment experience for your brand, leading to customer satisfaction, positive referrals, and more revenue.

Reduce customer acquisition costs and upgrade ROI

To talk about the return over the investment (ROI) made with the Customer Data Platform. First, it is fundamental to understand where CDP is going to fit in your strategy. To get that, there are some key questions that you can answer:

Does your company work with multiple communication channels?
Do your teams need to improve their strategies to be more assertive?
Does having updated data about your customer continuously bring you more insights?
Would it help have more in-depth information about your audience to increase sales?

If you got at least three definite answers, you definitely should consider talking to a consultant to see in a more practical way how CDP can benefit your company.

With doing that, there are some aspects to measure how CDP will optimize ROI. Time, risk, and cost are the trio to show you how efficient marketing, sales, support, UX, and other teams can get with the Customer Data Platform.

To each department, you should know how much more you can get using the same budget as before. Also, it is important to list some possible cost savings due to group efficiency.

What is the value-added to the process that will lead to risk reduction? You should be aware of the strategy value as well, understanding how much cleaner the entry points will get.

Last but not least, knowing the total cost of the CDP initiative. Analyzing your new numbers, you may see the bigger picture with all stages connected and the newfound paths it leads to.

Once your teams have this level of customer knowledge, they can aim the efforts directly into actions more likely of conversions. Personalization and localization are two key features to leverage niche data and provide exclusive and relevant customer experience through CDP.

That behavior can lower customer acquisition costs (CAC), improve productivity, increase profits, and customer retention. Analyzing smart data through CDP facilitates a plan of action based on individual customer preferences instead of a massive standardized campaign.

Ease decision-making

Companies need to learn how to make profitable operational decisions fast. It is going to be an ever-increasing data-driven scenario, and we already know that more data is only relevant when it is useful data.

The only way to capitalize on significant amounts of information is by organizing them into relevant segments. By that, your team will be able to tailored offers and strategies to fill their real needs.

Enhance CRM with Customer Data Platform

Every business currently in the game is using customer relationship management (CRM) –– or, at least, they should be. CRM is a software to store customer data and help marketers and sales to develop better practices.

Their functions might sound similar, but they are not. The digital buying journey demands uniqueness to succeed. To understand what customers are doing is not enough anymore. Seeing beyond time and space to predict what customers may do is now crucial.

Also, the need is not only about capturing new customers but also keeping old ones satisfied, making more purchases, and putting great referrals out there. Each customer is now a cycle, not a straight line with a beginning and an ending point.

So, CDP has the power to add unique features to CRM information. It gives you access to a more robust and enriched database made by an organized combination of other data sources. Thus, the customer journey and experiences will become more polished and exclusive.

Customer Data Platform: the future of marketing and sales

We want to take you further and show you:

How to enhance a CDP with first-party data
What it does to CRM data –– and other data sources
A panorama about the quality of the information generated
What are the other benefits it can add to your strategies
Why getting a CDP solution can make you stand out amongst competitors

Check out Arena Personas, a great way to boost your CDP with first-party data generated by your own brand.

What is and how to do Customer Data Management CDM

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Arena

This guide will teach you how to use data frameworks to offer differentiated customer experiences and optimize marketing ROI.

It has been a few years since the buzz around “Big Data” started. Working with marketing in the media space, you probably hear your peers bragging about their data-driven strategies a lot. Do you consider yourself a data-driven marketer too?

Beyond marketing, modern CMOs have had to assimilate abilities in information technology and customer data management. In 2020, you should expect most marketing teams to effectively use customer data to drive growth and customer satisfaction.

Getting there can be quite a journey, though. Research from the Dentsu Aegis Network from 2018, made with 1,000 CMOs, shows that to two-thirds agree that while there is increasingly more consumer data available, it’s harder to extract insight from it.

Another report from Harvard Business Review shows that less than half of an organization’s structured data is actively used in making decisions, while less than 1% of its unstructured data is analyzed or used at all.

Historically, companies have relied on excel sheets and on manually storing and analyzing customer data through different software, with little to no integration. No offense to excel and isolated systems, but things have changed.

The amount of customer data flowing to companies’ databases continues to rise through new channels and platforms, and that’s where customer data management comes to play. More than ever, organizations need a complete set of practices and automation tools to help them manage customer information.

In this article, we will talk about the importance of having customer data management on top of the marketing agenda. We’ll also explore the types of data, best practices for data management, and the role of different data software in data management.

What is customer data management?

Customer Data Management, shortly known as CDM, is the framework in which companies collect, track, organize, analyze and share customer data throughout the organization.

The term “Customer Data Management” was coined in the 1990s, initially as a way to describe software that replaced disc-based or paper-based data storage. Such software was often used independently by departments within companies.

The concept of CDM evolved along with the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry and nowadays embraces a wide array of cloud computing applications that centralize access to customer data. It also embraces a set of methodologies that help marketers to locate, cross-analyze, and act on customer data.

Why marketers should invest in customer data management?

In a scenario where customers interact with brands through dozens of channels, there is almost no room for guessing and gut-feeling in marketing. Having a good hunch about what will engage audiences is not enough, and so the role of customer data management is to provide companies with accurate and actionable insights.

It reduces your chances of making mistakes, since mismanaging your customer data can lead to actions that will ultimately reduce engagement and profitability. Additionally, using customers’ data in a biased, inaccurate way can lead to poor customer experience (CX) and harm your brand.

Good customer data management is key to building a data-driven culture and bolstering customer-centricity in marketing. Isn’t it everything you wish for?

Data Management strategies can bring marketers a holistic view of customers’ journeys, connecting the dots between different channels, and offering cues to enhance their experience.

Customer Data Management is important for:

Customer acquisition
Increasing retention and engagement rates
Knowing customers in detail and in real-time, from individuals to clusters
Increasing data quality by breaking data silos
Simplifying customer relationship management (CRM)
Drive higher revenue

How customer data management is connected to customer lifetime value (CLV)

Having well-structured customer data management practices is what allows marketing teams to follow up on important indicators, like the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

Amidst a seemingly chaotic user journey – with different channels, devices, and purposes – customer data management can help marketers understand customers and guide them through the conversion funnel.

Collecting and organizing relevant customer data will allow you to better segment your audience, find out behavior and buying trends, and drive personalized campaigns. As a result, marketers can ultimately attract more qualified leads and reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) – improving overall marketing ROI.

But customer data management is useful only for marketing. It can help sales, IT, and customer success manages customer touchpoints. The great news is that every department can have access to the same data and deliver a consistent, unfragmented user experience.

Four Types of Data to pay attention to

Before trying to set up a data management framework, your team should have a roadmap of data types and specific information that can enrich your strategy, according to your business goals.

We will now explore four data types and a few examples for each.

1) Identity Data

Identity data is collected through micro-transactions and interactions in the company’s channels – when a customer signs up for a newsletter or enters their payment information on the checkout page.

By collecting customers’ identity data, marketers have the minimum amount of information to start a conversation (and hopefully a long relationship) with the customer. Such information is also helpful to help companies build brand personas.

Examples of identity data: Name; Personal data (date of birth, region, gender, etc); Address; Contacts; Social media profiles; Account data.

2) Quantitative Data

Quantitative data is mostly related to the customer’s decision making process as they interact with your brand. Such data covers different channels throughout the customer lifecycle, from emails and customer support channels to purchase transactions and social media.

The idea is to understand the specifics of how customers are interacting with your brand through important operational data. You could use quantitative data to find out details about channel interactions and steps that led customers to convert.

Examples of quantitative data: Transactional data, such as the number of purchases, time of purchase and subscription value; Order dates; Cart abandonment and Bounce info; Click-through-Rates; Website visits; Product views; Number of Interactions.

3) Descriptive Data

Descriptive data comprehend additional lifestyle information that complements customer personas. Collecting this type of data typically requires doing deeper research and interviews with customers in order to dive into individual buying behavior. Such data is pretty helpful if you want to use predictive analytics in your marketing strategy.

Examples of descriptive data: Family Data such as marital status and number of children; Lifestyle data, like hobbies and interests; Education and career data.

4) Qualitative Data

Qualitative data should describe the motivations behind the customer’s actions. Gathering such insights might be more time-consuming and expensive than simply collecting quantitative data, but it is worth it. After all, tackling into customers’ deepest motivations is how you’ll captivate them.

This type of data is better collected on a one-to-one basis, mainly through the marketing teams’ interpretations of customers’ opinions throughout their journey – through analyzing CRM notes or reviews in websites, social listening tools, feedback questions, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) systems.

Best practices in customer data management

An effective customer data management framework requires marketers to make human and tech investments, have well-defined processes and priorities. We have picked a few key practices involved CDM:

Data collection

A lot of the data within enterprises go unused, and so data collection is the first step in building an integrated customer data management strategy. There are millions of data streams coming into companies’ systems from many touchpoints, and so marketers need to make sure relevant data doesn’t go to waste.

It’s important to understand what data needs to be ingested. Ask yourself: What goals do I want to achieve with my marketing strategy? Which data points are directly or indirectly related to my Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? From there, you can start filtering your sources of data and the indicators you will track.

Data Integration

Centralizing all company’s data into a central system is also vital for customer data management. That enables the “ETL Process”, which stands for “Extracting, Transforming and Loading” data. This stage is where you will check your data integrity, filter it, and validate it.

A good data system will ingest relevant data, convert it in necessary formats and load it into different tools such as a data warehouse, a customer data platform (CDP), a data management platform (DMP), a customer relationship management (CRM) or any other system. The result? You will have a single hub for all the data you need.

Data management

This is where you connect the dots between data points to build robust, unified profiles of individual customers or segments. This could mean using statistic models to create identity graphs, applying data governance to make sure you integrate consent to customer data, or anonymizing data to be used through a data management platform (DMP).

Data analysis and activation

Data management tools: the difference between CRM, DMP, and CDP

Although customer Data Management can be described as a framework, it requires companies to have the right technologies.

Your data software stack could be more or less complex depending on the size of your business and the number of touchpoints with the customer, but, essentially, your CDM strategy will require a combination these platforms: a Customer Relationship Platform (CRM), Data management Platform (DMP) and Customer Data Platform (CDP).

Each one of them plays a role in your strategy. But what is the difference between them?

The basis of data management starts with customer relationship management systems (CRM), which are built to engage with customers by tracking their relationship with your company. They only store data if the customer has interacted with the brand in some way, and they are based on historical and general information such as contact, demographics, and notes made by CRM teams.

Data management platforms (DMPs), on the other hand, have been widely used by marketers to serve ads and lead digital campaigns. These platforms focus on third-party anonymized data collected through cookies (that typically expire after 90 days), device IDs, and IP addresses.

In a different model, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a software capable of unifying customer data from various sources, internal or external, gathering quantitative and qualitative information from multiple touchpoints between a company and its customer base. It allows you to build a holistic view of customers and their pain points in a granular way.

Why CDPs are the ultimate trend in customer data management

Although CRM systems, DMPs and CDPs share similarities, they are different when it comes to managing data. Customer data platforms, specifically, have increasingly been used as an integration hub for data systems because they are built to ingest large volumes of data from multiple sources – unlike CRM systems and DMPs.

There were days when marketing segmentation based on DMP persona segments and CRM was enough, but today, brands are expected to personalize every step in the customer journey – which is only possible through CDPs.

A study by Forbes shows that 53% of marketing executives are using CDPs to engage with existing customer’s needs, increasing the likelihood that they will become recurring clients.

The focus of CMOs is also shifting from third-party data and anonymous data to first-party, single customer data, which also underlines CDPs’ importance. As data privacy and compliance regulations arise, organizations also seek to work with their own, integrated data.

CDPs are capable of providing marketers with a historical record of identified customers that can be used not only for advertising but for other purposes as well. By centralizing information in a single platform, companies can optimize resources and avoid having to rework their data over and over through different systems.

Bonus tips for successful data management

Make data widely available to different teams: The Harvard Business Review study we mentioned before reveals that 80% of a data analyst’s time is spent on just discovering and preparing data. Customer data can be an important asset across departments, so it’s important to centralize access to it instead of storing it in separate departments and warehouses. Let the data flow!

Always keep data governance in mind: Understand the privacy policies of your data tools and ensure consent is integrated into all of your data collection, while also respected in marketing campaigns.

Don’t over-collect data: Understand exactly why you’re collecting the data your collecting, and which questions your company is trying to answer with them. Resist the impulse to gather too much data “just in case” you need it, without a proper purpose.

Create rules for data categorization: Set up file formats you’ll be using, standards for tags, file-naming, and timestamps. Such standards will make it easier for your team to navigate through the data.

Beware of new data sources: Pay attention to emerging data types, such as those from voice activation devices, geo-localization in smart devices, Internet of Things, Augmented and virtual reality platforms, etc. New data points will eventually require new processing and marketing frameworks.

Still want help defining your customer data management strategy?

Now that you have learned a bit more about customer data management, maybe your next step will be to study data management solutions.

If that is the case, we recommend you check out Arena’s customer data platform blog section to dive deeper into the subject. You can also get in touch with one of Arena’s consultants and learn the specifics about our CDP.

What Omnichannel is and Why it Leads Customer Experience

Posted on June 15, 2020 by Natalia Gaal

Omnichannel puts the customer at its ultimate core. This integrated and all-places strategy personalizes touchpoints in the customer journey to offer the most effective shopping experience anytime and anywhere.

It is fair to say omnichannel is the perfect response to a new customer-centric culture. Here’s everything you should know about it.

Taking care of customers according to their expectations is the greatest of brands’ responsibilities. This concern has made marketing, technology, and sales teams work together for years to increase customer satisfaction in different channels.

From mobile apps to desktop blogs, from e-commerce to social media and physical stores, customers expect the same service excellence in any place, at any time.

To reach that excellency level, companies these days must assemble and harmonize various components, such as data, multimedia marketing, and multiple sale channels, to get to their audiences at the right time and place, and intently offer the best of the best experience.

That’s when omnichannel walks in.

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What is omnichannel?

Omnichannel is a marketing and sales strategy that combines and crosses different channels to provide an outstanding and personalized shopping experience. By blending several elements into an integrated whole, omnichannel removes the boundaries between digital and physical spaces, optimizing brand messages, general communication, and, most importantly, customer experience.

Already a reality in some great retailers, omnichannel brings together e-commerce, shopping apps, blogs, social media, marketplaces, ads, and physical stores to improve the consumer lifecycle and customize its touchpoints, whether they’re digital or offline.

In order to be omnichannel, brands need to mix products, marketing, sales, customer support, supply chain, and more, to make their deepest reasoning clear: Put the customer in its ultimate core and let channels combine (and recombine) to deliver consistent and efficient shopping and communication initiatives.

Some omnichannel examples are:

Being able to buy a product that isn’t available in-store, using an app
Purchasing on e-commerce and collecting at the store
While collecting, being swiftly introduced to new launches that really interest you
Abandoning the cart and getting an email with the offer of a new, exclusive customer loyalty program that follows up to the abandoned product
Getting a shipping notification via e-mail and SMS

Omnichannel vs Multichannel

We can say every omnichannel retailer contains multiple channels. That makes omnichannel essentially multichannel, but the contrary isn’t true. Therefore, these terms can’t be used interchangeably.

The main difference between these “channel” concepts is that omnichannel integrates its operations while multichannel components act separately.

In a multichannel strategy, there isn’t mutual communication. In fact, it is common for multichannel retailers to face lack of information exchanges and a sense of competition between their channels.

When it comes to branding, multichannel sends out the same message in all channels and to all consumers, regardless of the lifecycle stage they’re at.

This combined with the fact multichannel doesn’t allow personalized experiences contributes to the idea that multichannel focuses on products, not on user experience.

Meanwhile, omnichannel not only integrates channels but collects and transforms customer data into personalized interactions with their consumers base. It means that, unlike lack of communication, an omnichannel brand message quickly adapts through the customer journey and remains relevant.

It doesn’t matter if the customer is online or not: The same unique message will be sent. Most businesses invest in multichannel today, although we should mention that omnichannel consumers spend between 15% to 30% more than multichannel consumers.

It is also important to distinguish omnichannel from cross channel. Cross channel strategies also integrate channels to offer more comfortable and agile shopping experiences. However, omnichannel stands out for being the only method to assess consumers’ behaviors, habits, and preferences to create personalized touchpoints.

Why should brands be omnichannel?

You probably know how exigent the modern consumer is. Technology has put a personal device and free access to information in customers’ hands, and people have grown fond of browsing and comparing. Technological and ever-changing lifestyle also makes customers enjoy shopping experiences that are flexible, trustworthy, and responsive to their needs. Buying when and where they want is a basic requirement for customer experience and care.

Another detail you should pay attention to is that people have enough time and information to consider which is the best product or service. And, thanks to content marketing, there is a huge number of tools that tailor customer journey to this new demanding and multi-connected profile. Brands work hard to make the most out of marketing in social networks, blogs, messaging applications, and more.

Still, content isn’t all it takes to engage people: Companies need to focus on customer behavior.

And, if you’re curious about it, you should definitely check these Google; and Salesforce; insights:

68% of shoppers purchase movies, books, and video games both in-store and online
66% of shoppers prefer online shopping to find items, compared to 27% who prefer offline
55% of buyers say that retail experiences are disconnected from channel to channel.
59% of shoppers prefer to shop online to get better prices
83% of U.S. shoppers that visited stores had used online search before going into the store

That being said, brands should be omnichannel because customers are omnichannel. They don’t split a brand’s perception into offline and online. It means that, if their experience is damaged in any channel, frustration will lead buyers to switch to another brand. Recall that 58% of consumers will turn to competitors if they face a single bad customer experience.

However, omnichannel benefits are not exclusive to shoppers. Companies that integrate sales, logistics, technology, and marketing channels also benefit, as they make consumers happy and likely to buy more – who doesn’t want more revenue, right?

In addition, satisfied clients talk about their experiences with friends and family and help brands increase their customer base.

Omnichannel strategies also cut costs by rethinking opportunities based on consumer habits. Another advantage is that unifying communication promotes a more consistent brand image and encourages synergy between operations. Often, it is cheaper to adopt omnichannel and optimize strategies than to open more sales channels.

Finally, we should mention that being all-places – as latin Omni suggests – makes your brand capable of solving multiple use cases, whether online or not.

How does omnichannel work in e-commerce?

Omnichannel has a huge impact on e-commerce. Known for its convenience, e-commerces allow customers to buy anywhere, at any time, and provide relevant information about products and services that interest them.

The omnichannel mindset turns e-commerces operations more efficient. Its approach aims to provide online shoppers with seamless and continuous buying experiences.

Digital components that absorb customer data through e-commerce purchases can be easily accessed to create a well-built consumer understanding. The goal here is to identify what methods will bring better results and which channels are more effective to engage and delight the customer.

Another possibility is that e-commerce can lead to many other shopping opportunities. Think about the number of shoppers that buy online and decide to collect their products in-store.

How great would it be to offer specific products once the customer arrives? Or, to look at it from another perspective, think about what will happen to e-commerces that won’t let shoppers choose how and when to get their hands on their purchases. Will they fail to deliver convenient experiences? They surely will.

When correctly implanted, omnichannel e-commerces strategies will quickly identify customer touchpoints that will lead to specific solutions – and, as a consequence, to more engagement and brand loyalty.

The effects of omnichannel in customer experience and culture

Omnichannel is all about customer experience. Its core is to deeply understand buyers’ needs and embrace them, all while respecting their time and delivering meaningful messages.

Whether online or offline, omnichannel interactions should cause a sense of identification and present a brand that gives buyers the chance to access their preferences.

The real impact here is that, by understanding people’s needs, omnichannel is extremely powerful to generate follow-up interactions and engaging buying stages.

All data available must be used to create a context for future touchpoints in multiple shopping environments. And the secret to the omnichannel done right is that this context must be continued, wherever people are.

Customer experience must be continued, otherwise, brands fail to engage and retain. If your consumers don’t identify with the message you’re sending through your channels, then they’ll look for other messages they can connect with.

That’s why you have to step back and focus on the fact that, for your channels to be truly omnipresent, you firstly need to perceive the habits and preferences of your target audience.

If you think omnichannel only personalizes messages and experiences, you better think again. Being able to collect and interpret universal customer data is a fascinating way to go a little further and customize offers and even products.

Let’s move on to some examples of how to do that!

Be inspired: real omnichannel experiences

Sephora: My Beauty Bag

Born with digital DNA, the giant beauty Sephora created a special feature to connect clients to their favorite products. Named “My Beauty Bag“, the feature – which is also an app – is part of the Beauty Insider loyalty program, and allows customers to access products and past purchases whenever and wherever they want.

While using My Beauty Bag, clients can, whether in-store or not, search for the right shade of lipstick, rebuy old purchases, and recommend products to friends. Sephora’s stores are equipped with tablets that make it possible for consumers to log-in immediately and add new items to their bag or “loves” – previously known as Sephora’s shopping list.

My Beauty Bag enables shoppers to collect favorite products, organize them in one place, create wish lists, keep track of both online and in-store purchases, and track rewards.

Burberry: Series B

Based on customer data, Burberry created a new series of limited edition products that remain available for only 24 hours on the 17th of every month. The timing here creates hype and a sense of urgency for customers to reach out and buy the exclusive and recently launched products. Purchases can be made on Instagram, WeChat, LINE, and even in the Korean Kakao platforms.

This type of strategy was essential to increase consumer engagement and create anticipation, and it paved the way for the development of new activities across multiple channels that focus on customer experience and interactions.

Amazon: Amazon Prime and Amazon Go

Even if a huge number of companies worldwide won’t have as many resources as Amazon has, there are some key details to pay attention to in their omnichannel strategy that can inspire other businesses, especially when it comes to data unification.

With the mission to be the world’s most customer-centric company, Amazon has been investing in omnichannel for years now.

When Amazon Prime membership arrived, it called public attention by offering free shipping. It saved time and was convenient. As time went by, other benefits were provided, such as unlimited video and music streaming, discounts, and even a wardrobe, that allows customers to try on items online before purchasing them.

Omnipresent, Amazon decided to expand to physical dimensions and launched Amazon Go, a convenience store where customers don’t need to wait in line.

Through the Amazon Go app and artificial intelligence features, clients register everything they’re putting into the cart and leave the store as soon as they want. There’s no need to pay in the cashier. Their receipts appear in the app and money is charged from the Amazon account.

This new type of purchase is called “Just Walk Out” and embeds different AI technologies and data to provide the best shopping experience. Omnichannel at its best!

As you might have noticed, omnichannel is intimately related to customer experience and retention – and brands that ignore its potential are most likely to fail in maintaining competitive advantage.

Want to learn more about engagement and make your customers brand loyal? Access our Customer Experience Guide!