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Make It Fluid — Creating a Seamless Experience from the Shopper’s Perspective

About three years ago, business for the sustainable fashion brand, Reformation, was booming. But their physical stores were so jam-packed with product that the customer experience was, in short, not good. Founder Yael Aflalo began to think about how to minimize the available merchandise, but at the same time have enough for the increased foot traffic. She settled on a model similar to Tesla showrooms that are conspicuously missing a parking lot of cars, or Apple stores with very limited inventory in the front of the store. Soon, Reformation stores only displayed one of each of the most popular items. However, all merchandise options are viewable on touchscreens.

“Around the store, there are touchscreen monitors that allow customers to scan through outfits. When they find one they like, they can click on the size and it will appear in the dressing room, as if by magic,” explains Fast Company. Behind the scenes, sales associates pull all of the garments selected by the shopper and organize them in a dedicated fitting room. On the touchscreen, customer options only include what is in inventory with near perfect accuracy. And in the background, Reformation is able to collect data about the outfits and sizes that are most popular and how long customers spend trying on clothes.

It’s a huge success — Reformation runs more efficiently, and the customer feedback is overwhelmingly positive as they are able to move seamlessly from touchscreen to dressing room. If there is a question, sales associates are trained to help shoppers effectively interact with the touchscreen and they also support the dressing room experience. Yael is already planning additional improvements, such as being able to send purchases directly to a customer’s home after an in-store touchscreen purchase, or having a dressing room ready with selections the customer made while shopping online from another location.

Creating Fluidity — and Fluid Experiences
Every retailer should focus on delivering a consistent and cohesive omnichannel experience. But more and more it’s becoming clear that sophisticated shoppers want more. They want fluidity between all touchpoints — whether digital or physical — and it’s raising the bar for omnichannel marketing.

Designing fluid experiences enables retailers to create and manage omnichannel experiences across all touchpoints — including in-store associate apps, social media platforms, physical signage, IoT devices, and smart screens. Content that is centrally managed and optimized, along with the ability to automatically edit and resize images and copy based on the channel are two technologies that help you create fluid experiences at scale.

Fluid experiences also help retailers maximize the unique capabilities of any platform without the added legwork. For example, a department store promoting its semiannual runway event may promote a new collection to its customers via email. The same campaign content could then automatically be positioned for Facebook, web content, or Twitter with just 140 characters, and provide detailed personal and relevant information about the promotion — including event timing, accessible locations, and specific offers.

Granted, the level of fluid experience varies by vertical. As I explained to the New York Times, “If it’s high-touch retail, you want to provide great experiences and entertainment. But if it’s grocers or big-box stores, the technology needs to make that experience more seamless and efficient.” What unifies these moments, however, is that they’re consistent across platforms and create powerful experiences that keep customers engaged in a delightful and personal way, and keep them coming back for more.

Personalizing experiences when there’s no single path-to-purchase — and when those paths involve both physical and digital touchpoints — requires leveraging data to deliver cohesive experiences at the highest level.

Do Personalization Right
With all the intelligence and technology available, it’s essential to match each piece of content to the right individual persona so the experience delivers value. And as a word of caution, no personalization is better than bad personalization — if you don’t leverage properly the data you have, you can deliver a flat-out terrible experience that alienates customers and prospects.

For example, there is a particular retailer that I love, but I’m ready to sever ties because even though they know I’m male, they consistently show me female-focused products, services, and content. For example, I’ve never given an indication that I want or need a slimming swimsuit, but I regularly receive “personalized” messages encouraging me to invest in one. When mistargeting mistakes like that happen, your customers will quickly move on to the next retailer — a retailer who will deliver a more relevant experience.

Additionally, if you deliver an experience that’s not personalized to the platform or device your customer is using, you’ll sink more than you swim. Desktop ads viewed on mobile devices lose 50 percent of their effectiveness — they’re just not the right experience for the small screen. And 50 percent of consumers under 50 take it a step further, saying they prefer ads personalized to their specific interests, traits, and preferences — and another 30 percent under 50 say even that’s not good enough.

Driven By the Customer — and YOU
Because experiences don’t happen only in the digital world, building fluid experiences crosses over into brick and mortar as well — as Reformation noted when creating a new model for their store. Now, when shoppers visit a store’s physical location, digital signage, associates’ apps and point of sale technology are all in sync creating a consistent, choreographed experience. The end result? A powerful brand experience in the customer’s journey that transcends platform and individual touchpoint. And it couldn’t come at a better time — customer experiences are far from linear, and aren’t completely digital either.

It’s a clear departure from the traditional funnel and from omnichannel marketing even a year or two ago — and that’s good for everyone. Data empowers digital marketers everywhere to deliver more effective and more efficient promotions and experiences across all channels, provided companies are willing to tear down the silos and flesh out 360-degree views of their customers. This, at the end of the day, is the Holy Grail when it comes to producing and delivering highly-relevant and incredibly timely content at scale — in other words, personalization done well.

Learn more more about how your organization can create and manage fluid experiences across all touchpoints and platforms. It’s a simple process that will take your campaigns to the next level — syncing your messaging, and enabling truly great customer experiences you can manage without long, drawn-out system overhauls or massive investments. It’s a win-win — fluid for customers and fluid for your business.

The post Make It Fluid — Creating a Seamless Experience from the Shopper’s Perspective appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/make-fluid-creating-seamless-experience-shoppers-perspective/

Adobe Advertising Cloud named a leader in Forrester’s Omnichannel Demand-Side Platforms report

More and more often, we hear marketers who work with multiple advertising-technology vendors, complaining about how difficult it is for them to reconcile disparate platforms and efficiently manage their ad-spend across channels. According to the latest Adobe Digital Insights (ADI) “Digital Advertising Report 2017,” 41 percent of marketers work with three or more media-buying platforms, three or more media-planning platforms, and three or more analytics platforms. All these platforms make it operationally challenging for advertisers to manage their audiences’ reaches, de-duplicate conversions in reporting, and efficiently plan their ad budgets across channels and devices.

Many advertisers are realizing that they need fully integrated, cross-channel, media-buying platforms as part of their ad-tech stacks — one platform to rule them all, with unparalleled access to all paid advertising channels.

Adobe Advertising Cloud — One Platform to Rule Them All.
Adobe Advertising Cloud is the first independent, end-to-end platform that unifies lower-funnel performance tactics, such as search and display, with upper-funnel brand tactics like video and TV.

Combining the capabilities of Adobe Media Optimizer with those of recently acquired TubeMogul — a leader in “The Forrester Wave™: Video Advertising Demand-Side Platforms, Q4 2015 Report” — Adobe Advertising Cloud was named a leader in “The Forrester Wave™: Omnichannel Demand-Side Platforms, Q2 2017 Report,” achieving the highest score possible in product strategy (5 out of 5) and the top score in digital-ecosystem footprint (4 out of 5) criteria.

The TubeMogul acquisition was pivotal in fulfilling Adobe’s vision for being the industry’s first omnichannel media-buying platform, as the report notes that “Adobe Advertising Cloud is the only vendor that has gained access to all paid advertising channels.”

Complete Integrated Stack for Delivering Ad Experiences Across Channels.
Adobe Advertising Cloud reaches audiences with dynamic creative that delivers personalized ad experiences to end users — regardless of where they consume content. The Adobe Advertising Cloud has a native integration with the Adobe Analytics Cloud, empowering marketers to activate audience segments from Adobe Audience Manager and Adobe Analytics as well as from more than 40 industry-leading, third-party data providers.

We are excited to see Adobe Advertising Cloud designated as a leader, and we believe this recognition further validates our position as the industry’s only end-to-end platform for full-funnel ad-buying.

The post Adobe Advertising Cloud named a leader in Forrester’s Omnichannel Demand-Side Platforms report appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/advertising/adobe-advertising-cloud-named-leader-forresters-omnichannel-demand-side-platforms-report/

Five annoying contact page mistakes

Why Mobile May Be the Best Technology for Your Retail Stores

When making a grocery shopping list online, do you ever get frustrated with your grocer’s online sales flyer — the one that’s simply a digital image of the printed version that arrives in your mail each week? Then, even when your online list is complete, depending on which app you use, it can be hard to share it with another family member who has offered to do the shopping. And once you are in the store, there is no way to organize your list in order of where items are stocked — unless you have the store layout memorized.

Grocery shopping is a retail experience ready for improvement. Customers often visit the physical space, but frequently do their planning ahead of time on digital devices — whether reviewing recipes for meal planning, finding sale items, gathering coupons, or making shopping lists. In an attempt to show how current technology can help bridge the divide between online and offline retail experiences, Adobe partnered with global digital agency Valtech to create a proof-of-concept demo.

For the shopper, mobile is a massive part of their retail experience. People check their mobile devices an average of 85 times a day, but desktops still boast 75 percent of online revenue. And while retailers still struggle to convert mobile views or interactions into sales, physical retail locations are struggling to maintain foot traffic — due to the success of online shopping. Given this scenario, mobile interaction becomes a critical component for boosting loyalty and enhancing the overall customer experience, allowing shoppers to move seamlessly from digital to physical and vice versa.

Mobile Devices Help Deliver the Complete Experience
The grocery example looks at many small ways to change the relationship between a customer and a grocer so that loyalty can be built. The loyalty comes from the value a customer receives when grocers — or any brand — help them make the best decisions through a variety of interactions throughout their entire shopping journey.

“If marketers don’t offer a fluid shopping experience across digital and physical worlds, their customers will go to competitors that do,” says Michael Klein, director of Industry Strategy for Retail at Adobe.

Consider these additional mobile experiences that are helping retailers provide fluidity and value as customers move between online to offline spaces.

Help locate items. Finding specific items in a grocery store can be a drawn-out process for the novice and veteran shopper alike. Similarly, finding just the right pipe fitting in a big-box store like The Home Depot can be a frustrating experience. Basic digital features can help direct in-store shoppers to the item they are in search of, and also suggest additional related items they may need, whether for a recipe or a weekend DIY project.

With The Home Depot’s mobile app, shoppers will notice a subtle and automatic switch once they enter a store. The “in-store” mode helps customers quickly identify the item they need and then provide its exact aisle and bay among the other 35,000 items. No two stores have the exact same layout, so the mobile app uses location services to tell which store a customer is in and then access that store’s layout.

Provide consulting. Another way The Home Depot is using mobile technology is by providing input on purchase decisions. According to The Home Depot, about three-fourths of customers decide to forgo a paint project — and purchase — because they can’t decide on a color. By leveraging mobile devices and their cameras, the retailer created an app that lets people take a picture of their hopeful paint project and then change the colors to see how different paints will look on the space. This app uses mobile technology to connect a customer’s home with the paint selections found in store and takes some of the guesswork and anxiety out of a basic decision with a major obstacle.

Ease checkout. While most retailers have adopted mobile payment systems, others are pushing the boundaries by eliminating the checkout process altogether. Amazon, which has a handful of brick-and-mortar stores despite trends of decreasing foot traffic, is testing its system at the Amazon Go grocery store in Seattle. Shoppers — currently limited to Amazon employees — scan their phone on the way into the store, shop, and then walk right out without stopping to pay at a cashier or kiosk. The shopper’s Amazon account is simply charged for items taken, which are identified through a combination of AI, computer vision, and data pulled from multiple sensors.

Another retailer, Walmart, is rolling out its Scan & Go app that allows you to scan items with your smartphone as you put them in your cart, total the purchase on your phone, and generate a receipt. Ultimately, shoppers can bypass the checkout line and exit the store hassle free.

Says Michael, “When the items to be purchased are charged to an app on the shopper’s phone — through a variety of technologies — this is a great example of bridging the mobile, the digital, the online, and the offline into a seamless customer experience.”

Retailers Get Big Benefits Too
The retail examples above are designed to provide a fluid and exceptional experience to retail customers. But retailers should also be careful not to miss out on the benefits for themselves. Here are a few ways to do that.

Attract customers to the store. Joshua Young, vice president of global partner alliance and strategies for Valtech, explains that their ideas for the grocery app aren’t designed to keep people from the store, but rather to drive them there, while at the same time easing their experience as they walk through the aisles. “We want to leverage mobile technology that shoppers are already using, to help them easily find all the products in the store that they want to receive,” Joshua says.

Other retailers are focusing on connecting the benefits of merging online and offline experiences too. Nordstrom, for example, has a variety of online and offline brands, including HauteLook and Trunk Club, which allow the cross branding of services. For example, if a customer buys online with HauteLook, they can take that item and return it to a Nordstrom or Nordstrom Rack store. Michael explains the benefits. “This is an online to offline experience that is positive because it allows shoppers to have instant gratification in terms of getting a return back to the retailer and then getting the credit. When I made a return in this way, I actually purchased additional items while I was in the physical store. It was a win-win for both the brand and me.”

Another way Nordstrom is connecting digital and physical experiences is with value-add services. Michael shares that Trunk Club directs customers to take their selected purchases to a Nordstrom store for any desired alterations. The cost for alterations is based on Nordstrom’s rewards program — and it’s complimentary for the most loyal customers.

Sell more items. Getting customers to a store is a great opportunity for another sale. However, Valtech’s grocery app also gives retailers the chance to increase total purchases by upselling in a way that’s relevant and personalized given the context of their experience at any given time.

“We want to improve the opportunity for grocers to suggest additional products in a very logical way, based on things that we know about the shopper,” says Joshua. “By using the context of their experience — past purchase history, dietary preferences, planned meals, health concerns, and even where they are in the store — we can personalize product suggestions in a helpful, non-intrusive way.”

Capture data from physical — not just digital — experiences. It can be hard to capture data from shoppers during in-store interactions, but with mobile you have a way to give both them and you better information. Grocery loyalty programs already store a wealth of data that is necessary for historic information that will give context for relevant and personalized experiences, as mentioned above. But mobile interactions can continue to feed those databases with new and expanded information for a richer customer profile that will only lead to a better understanding of what customers want.

Another mobile technology with the ability to capture data is bluetooth low energy (BLE). It was quite the rage a few years ago, but never really took off as a tool for push marketing. “Apparently, shoppers weren’t interested in getting pinged endlessly as they walked through stores,” says Michael. “However, we are seeing the value of BLE in collecting data and other more operational items like understanding traffic patterns and dwell time in certain locations.”

The Win-Win of a Holistic Retail Experience
In an industry that has long been fractured by competition between the online and offline, mobile devices are proving to be the technology that can connect the two for holistic, fluid experiences for the shopper, and valuable feedback and contextual marketing opportunities for the retailer.

For more insights on how retailers are adopting new technologies for more personal customer experiences, read more from our digital marketing retail series.

The post Why Mobile May Be the Best Technology for Your Retail Stores appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/mobile-may-best-technology-retail-stores/

Planning your website like your holiday

Clean up your bad backlinks

Point of Sale: Retail & Travel Weekly

In this week’s articles, we peer into the state of personalization across the retail industry, the most effective automated emails to drive e-commerce, a checklist for successfully leveraging SEO on PDPs, and more.

• Executives Are Stepping Up on Personalized Marketing [eMarketer]: Marketers are still trying to get personalization to a level in which consumers are satisfied with the results.
• The Most Effective Triggered Email Types for E-Commerce Brands [MarketingProfs]: Welcome and abandoned-cart emails are the most effective emails for triggering e-commerce sales.
• 2017 SEO Checklist for Product Detail Pages [Practical Ecommerce]: Making sure your PDPs contain all the information needed on them is an important first step to actually attracting users.
• Conversing for Commerce: How the Rise of Chatbots Will Improve Your Customer Experience [Adobe Digital Marketing Blog]: As artificial intelligence increases in sophistication, so does the opportunity for retailers to impact users’ customer experiences.
• What in the World Is Causing the Retail Meltdown of 2017? [The Atlantic]: Many retailers have been struggling despite the growing economy, low unemployment, and individuals having more discretionary income.

The post Point of Sale: Retail & Travel Weekly appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/news-and-resources/point-sale-retail-travel-weekly-43/

Adobe & Econsultancy Release New Research: “Technology Companies Lead the Way in Digital Experience Delivery.”

The industry characterized by constant invention, rampant competition, and rapid obsolescence cycles also leads the way in digital adoption. A report recently released by Adobe and Econsultancy reveals that, perhaps fittingly, companies in the technology industry are leaders in both becoming digital first and digital integration. The “2017 Digital Trends in Technology” report is based on a sample of over 900 respondents working in the technology sector who were among more than 14,000 digital professionals taking part in the annual Digital Trends survey.

In this report, we highlight differences between industries, specifically profiling the technology industry. More importantly, we were able to tease out some of the nuances underlying the differences in the technology industry such as the motives, dynamics, and disruptions that are driving behavior. The report offers a wealth of valuable information — not just for practitioners in the technology industry, but for anyone who deals with the technology industry. Following is a summary of some of our key findings.

Companies in the Technology Industry Are Digital Leaders.
Our research revealed that organizations in the technology sector are, in many ways, digital leaders. For example, technology organizations are nearly twice as likely as their peers to classify themselves as digital first (19 percent vs. 10 percent), putting the sector in third place (after gaming, gambling, and media) out of the 15 key sectors we analyzed. This eagerness for digital may, perhaps, be explained by the drastic changes in purchasing behaviors that have driven a shift toward hybrid, agile product offerings, and ‘as-a-service’ models of payment. This has created the need for tech organizations to foster an ongoing, high-touch relationship with their customers, which is more easily accomplished using digital technologies.

Caption 1 — Digital-First Organizations

Shifting Customer Demands Mean That One Size No Longer Fits All.
The technology sector experiences rapid innovation that translates into relentless competition. As a result, companies place increased emphasis on providing value for their customers, differentiating through customer experiences. The vast majority (81 percent) of technology companies are putting customers at the heart of all their initiatives. Almost one-third (32 percent) of respondents said their highest customer experience (CX) emphases were being placed on value.

Customer journey management is the second-most-important priority for 2017. Ensuring a consistent CX is especially challenging in this industry due to the complex ecosystem of players — partners, resellers, field representatives, and others — that touch or play a role in delivering the customer experience. This challenge is being met internally through hiring skilled staff members to engineer good experiences. Encouragingly, the proportion of companies that have the CX skills they need has increased by 9 percent in the last two years.

Caption 2 — Where Organizations Place the Highest Emphases in Terms of Improving Customer Experiences

New Technologies Will Enable New Levels of Customer Relationships.
Although differentiation is top of mind, differentiation strategies vary greatly even within the technology industry. Again, almost one-third (29 percent) of respondents plan to use product or service innovation to differentiate themselves from competitors over the next year. However, digital-first organizations are 52 percent more likely than the others to see customer experience as a key differentiator, highlighting the inseparability of digital maturity and customer experience delivery.

The Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and augmented and virtual realities have been introduced to the industry over the past couple of years but are yet to see integration into business-as-usual strategies. The technology industry is likely to be the first to see this integration, either through internal-innovation labs, collaborations with other technology providers, or even companies from other sectors. Technology respondents see this opportunity and are three times as likely as their peers in other sectors to regard the IoT as an exciting opportunity to connect with customers. Accordingly, technology respondents are also more likely to acknowledge the future potential of AI and bots.

The full report contains many more insights with much more depth and detail than can be described in a blog post. For a comprehensive discussion on all the technology-industry insights, download the full report today.

The post Adobe & Econsultancy Release New Research: “Technology Companies Lead the Way in Digital Experience Delivery.” appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/adobe-econsultancy-release-new-research-technology-companies-lead-way-digital-experience-delivery/

Hey Marketers, the Bots Are Coming

The post Hey Marketers, the Bots Are Coming appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/hey-marketers-bots-coming/

Site Search — More Than Just a Box

Your site search could be a rock star for your business. It’s the one digital marketing capability for your website or mobile site that explicitly tells you what your customers want. It’s a customer-intent agent with the power to give your customers a “Wow!” experience by putting the right product or content in front of them. Yet most brands still view it as basic utility — a site requirement that’s been met when you have a search box on your website. If you fall into this group, or you’ve been using the soon-to-be-retired Google Search Appliance (GSA) or Google Site Search (GSS), consider this your chance to re-evaluate the role that search plays on your site.

Get Results Like Intel Did
In a recent webinar, Intel’s search guru, Shawn Basalyga, shared the company’s experiences after they switched their search to Adobe Search&Promote. With it, they could leverage profiles, behavioral data, and visitor search terms to dial in and deliver more accurate search results.

After fine-tuning search results in February, click through rates rose 8.5 percent compared to the out-of-the box search results they’d experienced in January. Searchers found what they were looking for more easily, too — the average search-results position that the visitor clicked on bumped up from 2.9 to 2.7. Even when searches on Intel.com seasonally dropped by 180,000 in March, clicks still climbed by 10,000.

To get results like Intel does, look for the following four characteristics in your search solution:

1. The Ability to Own Your Data.
In the past, a search engine periodically indexed website content and looked at the index to deliver results that most closely matched a search term. Today, search engines have much more data at their disposal to determine what results to display — visitor location, device type, browsing history, profile data, behavioral data, and more. If you’re using an Internet search engine, you’re giving away that data. Yes, these engines are powerful, but, because you don’t own your customer data, you never learn what drives visitors to your site. As a result, upsell and cross-sell opportunities become a guess. You need to own that data.

2. The Ability to Scale, With no Sweat Equity Required.
If you work for a large enterprise, you may have sites with thousands to millions of pages or products, and high-traffic volumes searching those sites. The last thing you need is a system that hiccups when pushed to its limits. If you’re like most, you don’t have time to keep backend-technology updated. You’d like to just slip behind the wheel, turn the key, and start driving. Look for a SaaS solution that handles the technology side for you.

3. The Ability to Retain Extreme Control Over the Search Algorithm and Display Results.
Rather than managing software updates, you need a solution that lets you focus on optimizing search results and delivering great visitor experiences — like Intel did. You need to be able to choose what data to index, and even how to weight your index in the results. Site search solutions like Adobe Search&Promote ensure your site search shows visitors highly relevant results with the content you want to promote.

However, you shouldn’t just cross your fingers and hope that you’ve zeroed in on the right index and weighting. A good search solution should let you easily A/B test and validate your choices.

By the way, with Internet search engines, you can’t control the algorithm to influence results. This means you can’t promote content for best results. For example, you can’t push the latest content to the top, promote a new product, or surface the most popular customer-support articles. You also can’t control how often the engine re-indexes your site, so new content will take a while to appear in search results. And, frequently, you can’t customize how results display, which can cause a jarring user experience when search results don’t feel like they’re part of your brand. Solutions like Adobe Search&Promote let you set up business rules that determine what to display and when based on specific keyword-search triggers.

4. The Ability to Easily Set it Up and Assure Quality Results.
Ironically, some search tools make you search high and low for the functionality you need to set it up and assess the quality of your results. Look for a solution that lets you work in a consistent, marketer-friendly user interface, and that easily works hand-in-hand with other digital marketing solutions for digital analytics, A/B testing, recommendations, targeting, and audience management. Make sure you can easily assure quality results before you push your site search live, so you are confident in the relevancy of those results and how they display.

Carpe Searchem — Seize the Site Search Opportunity.
Not to hammer on this point, but site search has come a long way. It’s ready and waiting to help you deliver those “Wow!” experiences that pay off for your customers and your business. If you’re ready to get the most from your site search, explore Adobe Search&Promote. It ticks all the boxes. And if you’re already using solutions in Adobe Experience Cloud (Adobe Target, Adobe Experience Manager, and Adobe Analytics), your customers will experience even more accurately personalized results, so your business will reap even bigger rewards.

The post Site Search — More Than Just a Box appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/personalization/site-search-just-box/

Transcend Technology With a Digital Foundation

In 1993, NetApp — a young enterprise storage solution provider — shipped their first data storage system to an administrator at Tandem Computers. The network appliance was simple, yet incredibly effective. Unlike its competitors, NetApp’s system could reboot in 30 seconds instead of hours — thereby decreasing downtime and giving Tandem a competitive edge.

In the more than 20 years since that first shipment, NetApp has gone on to power some of the world’s most notable businesses, universities, and scientific achievements — helping organizations worldwide manage and store their data. The angle that keeps this high-tech company on top is its ability to deliver innovation that positions their customers ahead of the curve. At the center of this customer-focused strategy is a solid foundation of digital technology.

For stand-out high-tech businesses today, being strategic and forward-thinking with digital initiatives is mission critical. Eighty-nine percent of companies expect to compete on customer experience in 2017 and 81 percent said digital helped them improve their customer experience. Yet, pressure from disruptive technologies and competitors looking to out-innovate is fierce, causing tech brands to become reactive, instead of proactive — thereby becoming followers instead of industry leaders.

According to research conducted by Ovum, smart businesses are evolving. A full 62 percent of high-tech companies have invested in a digital marketing platform, and a full 78 percent are working to create a unified approach to digital. Because 81 percent of tech companies expect competition conditions to be extreme, they’re planning their digital foundations now, so they’ll be more prepared to scale and stay ahead of fast-moving competitors.

NetApp Prepares for the Future
Like many brands interested in maturing their digital strategy, NetApp first decided to get a sense of their current digital environment before taking next steps. By working with Adobe Professional Services, they discovered they weren’t as far along as they thought in regard to having the right assets in place. Rather than start from scratch, they chose to re-align their resources to build a better digital foundation, with capabilities that could grow and be integrated as digital programs matured.

With the help of Adobe Marketing Cloud, NetApp gained improved insight into their customer base and audience segments, increased conversions by 13 percent, and added scalability and new digital capabilities. Today, they’re more prepared to meet their customers’ needs, innovate quickly, and develop more consistent, value-driven relationships with their customers.

They’re ready for the Experience Era.

Here’s how they did it — and how you can follow suite to build intelligent digital initiatives that will keep your business bulletproof into the future.

Transform Data. Build Intelligent Digital Programs.

“The more data we can capture about a customer throughout the long deal cycle, the better,” says Zann Aeck, director of digital experience at NetApp. Like many companies today, NetApp realized that to improve online experiences, they needed to better understand their customers’ behaviors and preferences throughout their journey with the brand. Sure, they collected fragmented information on customers — how often they visit the site, what pages they’re viewing, and what devices they’re using. But, to truly understand their customers, they needed more visibility into the entire journey and new ways to capture, measure, and leverage data. And, they sought to employ advanced testing to boost conversion, engagement, forms completion, and other KPIs.

With the help of Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target, NetApp was able to jump-start customer journey testing, analytics, and reporting. This insight helped them make interactions more engaging. By providing information to customers in more relevant ways, they encouraged higher form-completion rates, and better supported sales. They built intelligent digital programs and transformed data into actionable insights that could drive optimization.

Like NetApp, a digital platform into which you can integrate testing, analytics, and targeting capabilities lends to gaining a 360-degree view of customers and their needs. As such, brands gain actionable insights that will lend to delivering a cohesive and great customer experience to meet customers’ ever-changing needs.

Answer the Questions that Drive Optimization. Make Better Marketing Decisions.
With new digital programs in place, NetApp’s next step was to get answers to the questions that could help them know what to improve. Using their digital foundation — including integrated testing and personalization capabilities — NetApp marketers discovered that more than 90 percent of their visitors arrive on the site during business hours from desktop computers. This informed the decision to take a desktop-first development strategy.

However, by looking more deeply into customer segments, they also found that up to 30 percent of customers responding to campaign content were using a smartphone — a segment that was experiencing a six percent overall annual growth. This prompted the company to adopt responsive design elements within its strategy to optimize mobile experiences.

Overall, testing with Adobe Target helped answer the right questions — leading to better decisions. Insight supported the company’s complete site redesign, creating a 170 percent increase in click-through rates and a 13 percent lift in engagement — all without developing new content.

With testing that reveals optimization opportunities, brands can work to continually improve on their cohesive customer experience. In turn, they better reach their key-performance-indicator (KPI) goals and customers are delighted with cutting-edge experiences that meet their immediate and long-term needs.

Get Strategic with Your Value Proposition.
With customers expecting compelling experiences instead of just products, pressure to rise above the competition is reaching a fever pitch. Sadly, many companies are reacting to competitors instead of becoming the competitor to beat:

• 75 percent of respondents claimed to have lowered their prices because of competition.
• 67 percent said they rushed into new markets because of competitor pressures.

Instead, leading tech companies prepare themselves to take advantage of every opportunity that comes their way. They do so by understanding their customers and the value proposition of their brand that makes them uniquely valuable. Then, via testing, they gain insights regarding how to relay and deliver their value to individual customers in a timely and relevant way. In turn, as they forge a new value proposition in the industry and deliver it on a one-to-one basis in a relevant way, their standing as a leader no longer relies on beating the competition. Think about Uber’s ability to render a taxi’s value proposition obsolete.

Deliver Value Where Your Customers Are. Create a Competitive Experience.
To articulate and then deliver their value, top tech companies ensure their lead-to-revenue management is aligned throughout, allowing for a consistent message across all touch points and through the entire customer journey. Lead-to-Revenue Management — sales and marketing methods that focus on generating revenue throughout the customer life cycle — is one area where tech leaders can use a digital foundation to respond to opportunities more quickly. Look how the sales funnel has evolved: today, it’s a complicated web of customer touch points across multiple devices, and marketing and sales teams must work together for success.

NetApp transformed their marketing and sales teams into a collaborative business group by communicating online interactions to offline conversations with sales teams. As organizational silos were dismantled, cross-functional teams were able to have timely and contextually-relevant interactions with customers.

“We don’t just want our digital properties to broadcast information to customers,” says Aeck. “They’re powerful tools for starting valuable conversations and keeping them going. To have better conversations, we need more visibility into the full journey.”

With full visibility of both online and offline interactions with customers, brands can ensure customers not only join the conversation, but continue it through to conversion with their sales teams — regardless of whether that conversation flows online or off throughout the journey.

In Sum — Stop Reacting to Competition. Start Delivering Value to Beat.
By 2018, nearly 75 percent of all high-tech companies will use a digital marketing platform. Future growth revenue won’t be coming from hardware, but from services or platforms. When done right, the investment in digital can help you communicate more consistently with your customers and better understand how to deliver value across the board and on a 1:1 customer basis. This is more than simply responding to opportunities. This is making them.

Changing customer expectations and extreme competition are likely to be long-term realities of the high-tech industry. Rather than responding by rushing into new markets, lowering prices, or tinkering with new products, as many companies do when faced with uncertainties, innovate the way you understand and interact with your customers to create a customer-experience competitive edge.

Like NetApp, the tech brands that lead, the ones that rise above the competition, are likely to be the ones that understand the value of building their future on a solid digital foundation. This makes it possible to create opportunities to deliver what tomorrow’s customers really want.

To learn more about how tech companies can rise above their competition with a solid digital foundation, download our white paper.

The post Transcend Technology With a Digital Foundation appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/transcend-technology-digital-foundation/

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Conversing for Commerce: How the Rise of Chatbots Will Improve Your Customer Experience

Imagine meeting a personal stylist online who will make specific recommendations for clothing you need to purchase — including matching items and accessories. No more filters or hundreds of search results to click through. Take that a step further, and your stylist will be able to parse recommendations based on your size and budget, as well as available inventory. Finally, you can easily get input from your trusted friends online, make a final decision, and then click once to purchase.

With recent improvements to messaging, chatbots, and artificial intelligence technology, that scenario is entirely possible, and the stylist doesn’t even need to be a real person. Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms can do much more than comb through product listings and return search results. They can learn and save customer preferences, customize results to match those preferences, and even recommend related products that others found useful or entire outfits to match a customer’s personal style.

Rue21, a specialty retailer of teen apparel and accessories, is one of the latest to embrace such innovations and launch a chatbot. Designed by mode.ai (a company that builds platform-agnostic, AI-powered virtual style bots for retailers), rue21’s chatbot is a virtual stylist that works to learn a shopper’s interests and preferences, respond to their requests, and even make recommendations for complementary items. These features serve to simplify and personalize the shopping process for customers, improving their overall brand experience.

Facing pressures experienced by many brick-and-mortar stores, rue21 recently closed about one-third of its physical locations. To continue to connect one-on-one with customers as associates would in a physical store, the retail brand is integrating its virtual stylist chatbot on Facebook Messenger to help retain and engage customers in a new way.

“Chatbots offer an opportunity for retailers that shouldn’t be missed,” says Karen Ouk, senior vice president of business development for mode.ai. “For the first time, millennials have the most buying power — and yet they are the least engaged consumers. However, they’re very, very active on messaging platforms, indicating there is a need to engage with them and younger generations on a platform where they’re already active.”

Progressing from Customer Service to Customer Experience
While traditional chat interactions are hosted on brand sites to facilitate customer service conversations between a human agent and the customer, chatbots are hosted on a messaging platform, are powered by AI, and fill needs far beyond customer service inquiries. Chatbots can even respond to customer queries posed by voice, text, or images, and can manage a group conversation as customers invite their friends to the chat.

Michael Klein, Adobe director of industry strategy for retail, explains that while chatbots can lessen the load of a customer service team and sales associates, the bigger opportunity maps back to personalization and engagement. “Retailers can’t afford to make the mistake of selling chatbots short. They have the potential to not only deliver exceptional online experiences, but also inspire purchases and increase the number of items in people’s shopping carts.”

In the example of rue21, the chatbot is dubbed a “virtual stylist” to immediately communicate its purpose — helping customers select items for purchase that will match their style, needs, and budget. Narrowing the scope of a chatbot to a single purpose is an important step toward creating helpful, rather than frustrating, interactions. Quick reply buttons also can help customers navigate the chatbot and educate them on what the features and functionality of the bot are.

Beyond chat, which at this early stage may be limited by the bot’s ability to understand a natural-language description, mode.ai includes a visual analysis function. Shoppers can upload a picture to the chatbot, select an article of clothing from that photo, and get recommendations for similar items from the retailer. But they don’t need to believe the chatbot stylist when it comes to fashion recommendations. Using new social sharing features in Facebook Messenger, shoppers can get input from their friends by simply clicking on a share button and selecting the friends they want to consult with.

Working Through the Learning Curve
The catch is that chatbot technology is relatively new. Many current generation chatbots are like children — eager to please but lacking in depth of experience — and sales and service can have a very steep, unforgiving learning curve. Fortunately, with AI, each new interaction teaches chatbots how to behave in order to be most helpful. But that process can be costly if those interactions turn away customers.

To facilitate learning, brands need to focus on simplicity and make the experience as intuitive as possible. They should also offer some guidance to customers, teaching them how to interact with chatbots for a positive experience. To put it in perspective, consider online shopping. Just 15-20 years ago, nobody bought much online. Connections were slow, options were limited, and the interface was confusing. Now, shoppers can expect that nearly every online store has roughly the same visual layout, creating a streamlined interface that feels comfortable for customers no matter the store.

Chatbots will undergo a similar evolution. At Facebook’s F8 developer conference in March, the company announced additional features in its Messenger app that will improve the chatbot experience, including a menu structure. The interface is starting to standardize, and improvements to the experience are ongoing with phased roll-outs from retailers.

According to Eitan Sharon, founder and CEO of mode.ai, “Chatbots are developing faster than apps did when the App Store was introduced. Every month, messaging services roll out more functionality that improves chatbot capabilities — resulting in more and better chatbots.” Pioneers in the space, like mode.ai, will set the bar for everyone else to follow.

Examining Best Practices for your Chatbot
In addition to limiting the scope of a chatbot and guiding shoppers through the experience, a key to smoothing the transition from physical to digital interactions is to set the right expectation for customers. Some brands like to make digital interactions as human as possible. The problem arises when the gimmicks work too well. If people initially don’t realize that they’re talking to a computer, they have a different expectation. When the chatbot hits a snag and can’t help the customer, the curtain drops and the computer behind it is revealed. On the other hand, when proper expectations are set, customers typically are not put off by a chatbot’s limited understanding or ability, and their impression of the interaction remains positive.

To further reassure customers, companies need to have an effective fallback mechanism. For example, if your customer is overbilled for an order or receives the wrong size, the chatbot may not be able to help them. Errol Denger, director of the commerce program and strategic alliances at Adobe, says, “You need to have an effective protocol to say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m unable to help you this time. Let me transfer you to a live representative who can.’ And then you make sure the problem is resolved, so your customers don’t lose faith in the entire process.”

In that scenario, sending a shopper to the right channel for help provides a great experience. However, brands with chatbots should also recognize that they can design a complete experience for their customers in that single channel — from browsing all the way through purchase. Karen says, “We see the success of one-click purchases on Amazon, and other retailers who can offer this same seamless, mobile, frictionless experience will see higher engagement and conversions. That’s what we’re hoping to help retailers with.”

Evolving Channels Uncover New Opportunities
In the end, chatbots are still an emerging technology, but they are quickly taking root and it won’t take them long to mature.

Eitan shares that 1 billion people from other parts of the world are already actively participating in e-commerce via messaging. “This channel is a very successful trend and retailers should become believers. This is something that has already happened and we are late to the game.”

Karen explains another appeal to the messaging channel: “It took us less than one month to get the rue21 virtual stylist out the door in a live, brand new channel that has the potential to reach 1.2 billion Facebook Messenger users. There are not very many new channels that retailers can launch in, in this short amount of time and with that amount of reach.”

In the near future, getting a new look from a chatbot fashionista will feel totally natural — and then we’ll wonder how we ever got by without it.

Learn more about the latest retail technologies with additional articles in our series.

The post Conversing for Commerce: How the Rise of Chatbots Will Improve Your Customer Experience appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/conversing-commerce-rise-chatbots-will-improve-customer-experience/

How Digital Workflows Eliminate Unnecessary Steps from the Customer Experience

Fortune 500 computer storage company NetApp needed a way to reduce a product’s time to market and simplify communication with its customers. When sales representatives shared a new product with a potential client, they needed the legal department to draft a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), deliver a physical copy to the customer, then get that document returned and processed. It was a complicated, inefficient workflow that prevented NetApp from reaching its full potential.

The solution was to go digital. Using Adobe Sign, NetApp’s marketers worked with the legal team to draft several pre-approved NDAs that could be automatically delivered to customers in an instant. The marketing team was now able to achieve turnarounds that were impossible with individually crafted NDAs. The legal team saved time and effort too, no longer creating new documents for every new customer, and clients received information from NetApp faster than from the company’s competitors.

The results from NetApp’s new digital workflow were astonishing. NDAs were processed three times faster using Adobe Sign than physical documents. Sales contracts that used to take 19 days to finish were completed in five, and support staff productivity increased by 93 percent. NetApp’s paper-based process required 15 hours of work a week. Its digital workflow completed the same process in just one hour.

Digital platforms have the power to create more efficient workflows and better customer outreach. By following NetApp’s example, marketers can save time and money, increase productivity, and get products to customers faster.

Check out the infographic to see how incorporating a complete digital workflow can simplify and speed up your business processes, and learn how Adobe can help you transition to an all-digital workflow.

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The post How Digital Workflows Eliminate Unnecessary Steps from the Customer Experience appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/digital-workflows-eliminate-unnecessary-steps-customer-experience/

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Email Marketing Comes of Age — Three Rules for Success

In modern business, email dominates marketing channels. With the broadest reach, lowest cost, easiest measurability, and highest conversion rates, 91 percent of executives cite email as the single most-effective channel for driving revenue. Though, on the consumer end, the average person spends 6.3 hours per day checking email — while at dinner, in bed, in the bathroom, and even at the movies — only 14 percent of emails are even read. As a result, in 2017, the best email campaigns must come of age.

As consumers complain about overloaded inboxes and irrelevant messages, smart marketers are listening. They no longer push and promote products but, instead, react to their customers — and it’s presenting huge opportunities in terms of higher conversion rates and increased revenue.

Launch a Truly Successful Email Campaign — Three Rules for Success.
To launch your email campaign into a successful future, consider the following three rules for email-campaign adulthood that are sure to propel your email strategy into its prime.

1. Transform Email Strategy Across Channels.
Email strategy can no longer exist on an island. Obtaining buy-in from the C-suite is key to transforming it across channels. Leadership support removes barriers to maturation and fosters an organizational structure that promotes a collaborative approach. Communicate with all stakeholders from the beginning to secure executive support for a cross-channel strategy and organize teams around the customer. “Buy in is a whole lot easier when you have the right stakeholders in the early conversation versus trying to sell up later,” says Sachin Shroff, senior director of customer performance optimization at The Container Store.

To make your argument and secure key-stakeholder buy-in, test a small market segment and let the data demonstrate how your cross-channel strategy feeds into and propels your email campaigns — allowing customers to pick up where they left off on all channels for a seamless experience and encouraging them to engage via email where a vast majority of conversion-decisions are made.

2. Integrate Cross-Channel Data and Make It Actionable
In 2017, successful email strategy will require data from online and offline channels. Tie data together — from your digital channels to your point of sale, customer relationship management, and third-party sources — in an integrated, centralized database that everyone can use and enable your program to be part of a coherent conversation across your brand.

You can start by using an email program to connect channel data. Encourage users to sign up for your email program, allowing you to authenticate them. Then, tap into their browsing histories to send personalized follow-up emails.

But, don’t stop there. Use this authentication to look beyond online or email-only data and identify those channels that drive conversion. “We use that unique identifier to stitch together years of data sitting in all these databases — transaction, web, email, and direct mail — to get a better view of how our customer is shopping with us,” says Schroff. Create a complete customer profile that offers a single view of your customer, compiling data from every possible source — from Facebook and other social-media sites to direct mail and email inboxes. Then, use this complete customer profile to deliver a seamless, channel-agnostic, personalized campaign from first awareness to purchase and beyond.

3. Make It About Your Customers — Really.
Information is available to help you personalize, customize, and delight your customers. Send more relevant offers to more precisely targeted audiences, and you’ll drive sales. Most email users spend less than three seconds deciding whether they will read any further. Create personal and contextual emails by incorporating dynamic content. And remember — timing and location are everything. Just because email has proven its aptitude for high conversion rates, don’t be afraid to think holistically, reaching out to your customers on whatever channel is most relevant to them in the moment. In fact, with all the marketing noise you and your customer must contend with nowadays, it may take several channels to cut through that noise. And, that’s okay.

In Sum
Email campaigns in 2017 have two choices: grow up or be left behind. Start with a clear vision and a team with the skills and motivation to embrace customer-centric marketing — rather than product-centric marketing. Integrate your data across channels and make it actionable. Lastly, use your data and tools to make it personal. Today, it’s all about your customers.

To learn more about the specific statistics and case studies discussed in this article, or to read more about email marketing success in 2017 and beyond, download our in-depth white paper, Email Comes of Age.

The post Email Marketing Comes of Age — Three Rules for Success appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/email/email-marketing-comes-of-age-three-rules-for-success/

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Point of Sale: Retail & Travel Weekly

This week’s articles examine what companies need when going through a digital transformation, the opportunities showroomers could represent, the importance of researching ahead of conversion optimization, and more.

• What Is Digital Transformation, and What Does It Require? [eMarketer]: Technology is the means to transforming a business — not necessarily the end in itself.
• Retailers Have Long Feared Showroomers. Maybe They Should Love Them Instead [Forbes]: Providing a shopping experience that is seamless across channels can help companies gain valuable customers.
• Conversion Optimization: Research First, Then Test [Practical Ecommerce]: Conversion optimization research can help narrow down large opportunities for testing so companies can be more successful in their optimization approaches.
• Six Digital Marketing Trends to Budget for Today [MarketingProfs]: Data cleaning, marketing automation systems, and content analysis are among the key areas marketers should focus on to be successful.
• Why researching online, shopping offline is the new norm [Retail Dive]: More than 65 percent of consumers research a product before making an in-store purchase.
• Does Ecommerce Need a Cooperative Shipping Revolution? [Practical Ecommerce]: Small- and medium-sized businesses could cooperate to compete with industry leaders such as Amazon or Walmart.

The post Point of Sale: Retail & Travel Weekly appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/point-of-sale-retail-travel-weekly-58/

Content Marketing IS Content Experience

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from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-marketing/content-marketing-content-experience/

It’s Not 2008 Anymore — How to Meet Customers’ 2017 CX Standards

In 2008, chairman and chief executive Howard Schultz ordered all Starbucks’ 7,100 US locations to be shut down for three hours during the peak of the business day. In his book, Onward, Schultz admits that his 2008 sales were in free fall up to that point. As a result, he sent a memo to employees in which he announced the closure, stating that the goal was to improve the “Starbucks Experience.” The shutdown gave Starbucks the chance to retrain all its 135,000 baristas in the art of espresso. In parallel, the company made drastic changes to return to its roots — a complete and unabashed dedication to optimizing every detail of Starbucks store experiences. If foods, when combined with the scent of fresh coffee brewing, didn’t produce the aroma of an Italian cafe, they were nixed from the menu.

Since 2008, Starbucks has led the evolution of the customer experience. Today, they’re skilled in adapting to the future before it happens. The Starbucks experience no longer revolves around the product — now, it is centered on the customer. With the same dedication to creating flawless customer experiences, Starbucks predicts customers’ needs and designs experiences to delight their impatient, fast-moving, caffeine-loving customer base. Customers can pick up their latest addiction from the brand’s secret menu (after requesting it via the Starbucks app), which recalls their most recent orders and uses GPS to suggest the closest location.

Source Fresh Ingredients — Focus on the Customer not the Product.
In 2008, Schultz’s obsession with the customer experience was revolutionary. Today, it’s a basic expectation. Winning experiences, like those delivered by Starbucks, start with data that informs and predicts customers’ needs and wants at every moment. Sadly, unlike Starbucks, many brands are still in the Starbucks-2008 mindset, centering the brand experience on the product rather than the customer.

For brands to retain — or perhaps regain — their competitive advantage, this must change. This generic, one-size-fits-all engagement isn’t working, says Robert Cantave, senior director of solution architecture at Epsilon. “Not too long ago — from around 2007 to 2011 — organizations made investments in A/B and multivariate testing and saw terrific results from optimization. They were able to improve the overall experience of their web sites and see double-digit growth. But growth can slow down once the one-size-fits-all version of the user experience works as well as it can.”

As the value of personalization grows, brands like Starbucks are reinventing themselves as customer-centric organizations to deliver exceptional experiences. For this to happen, brands must combine and analyze their data to provide a complete customer view. Here’s how you can use data to design holistic experiences that are sure to win, serve, and retain customers — now and in the future.

1. Mix the Perfect Brew — Make Your Organization as Connected as Your Customer Journey.
To be successful, designing meaningful personalization for topnotch experiences must be an organization-wide imperative that goes beyond inserting your customer’s name in a “Dear [Customer]” salutation. Even in 2008, Starbucks was leading by example to show that winning customer experiences are holistic in nature. Today, though the brand now revolves around the customer instead of the offering, this approach hasn’t changed.

Sadly, many companies fail to deliver customer experiences that meet expected standards because they optimize only bits and pieces of a customer’s experience: a home page here, an email offer there. Even within the same organization, marketers use different marketing platforms, resulting in multiple profiles for the same customer and the delivery of experiences that compete to win a share of her.

This is because many companies organize their marketing by function —web, mobile, and social, for instance — and a different set of key performance indicators (KPIs) motivates each team. As a result, they may talk customer-centric, but disconnected departments, touchpoints, and customer data mean they can’t walk it — and their customers can tell. Those that do align business goals across functions can also align them with customers’ needs, resulting in unforgettable customer experiences.

For example, like Starbucks, British retailer Topshop is marrying in-store shopping experiences with “on the go” apps, technologies, and channels. During London Fashion Week (LFW), they encouraged brand lovers to post their looks — using the #TopshopWindow hashtag — and then featured the images in a digital fashion show at flagship stores. Via their social-media submissions, fans entered a contest in which five winners would be invited to view the LFW show in store by using fashionable virtual reality (VR) headsets. As a result, the Topshop fashion show ranked in the top five most talked about LFW shows on social media channels that year.

2. Customize the Order — Create a Holistic View of Customers’ Tastes.
Personalization on the Starbucks and Topshop level is fast becoming the new normal, especially for younger generations who have always relied on technology to solve their problems. Consider that as many as 78 percent of people will not engage with brand offers if they’re irrelevant to them based on their previous brand engagements. Business alignment is essential. But, for the benefits to reach your customers, it must also be paired with a complete customer view. An integrated data platform across all functions gives marketing teams insight into customer interactions with brands, their preferred products, and the sequence of purchases.

Marriott knows who their customers and prospects are across every touchpoint both online and offline and no matter how unique their journeys. With this holistic view, they can track the preferences of each traveler to predict their needs even before they ask for them to be met. Simple gestures — like offering coffee made the way a customer would order it from their favorite airport cafe, or offering early check-in based on a passenger’s habitual need for it — tell customers Marriott knows them and cares about them. It’s a luxury experience that deepens weary travelers’ appreciation of Marriott’s hotel offerings now and in the future.

3. Don’t Forget the Cherry on Top — Deliver Customer Service That Predicts and Acts on Needs.
Once brands have their business KPIs aligned with the customer and a data platform that spans the organization, combining a customer relationship management (CRM) solution with automation can help brands both predict and deliver on customers’ needs. Automation allows brands to test and personalize content at scale, and a good CRM solution predicts which content will resonate whenever and wherever customers engage. Robert Cantave of Epsilon explains how it works:

CRM data helps us understand what current customers are interested in seeing. Combining that with our third-party data lets us better understand what clusters of customers have in common. We present that information to the automated models and have them test and ultimately identify the product, categories, or content most likely to be of interest to both returning customers and brand new unknown users who’ve been seen elsewhere in our network.

In 2013, T-Mobile rebranded itself as the “un-carrier” by separating the cost of monthly service plans from devices. With a new competitive advantage in hand, they began to target competitors’ clients who wanted to break free from costly contracts. Based on device data that was collected when customers visited T-Mobile’s website looking for alternative options, the company sent a timely and seemingly telepathic text message to potential customers: “Stop waiting. Switch to T-Mobile and we’ll pay your termination fees when you trade in your device.” By automating the connection of data to relevant content based on a single customer view, T-Mobile received two million new customers in each of the last three quarters of 2015.

4. Own the Flavor — Create Agile, Connected Experiences to Maintain Strong Loyalty.
Connected, data-driven insights help brands deliver real-time customer experiences that delight — regardless of the situation. This is because they allow companies to pivot as the customer leads the experience demand. To reveal pain points, brands can gain insights through techniques and tools such as customer journey analytics and automation. Then, they can look at how brand and performance marketing can complement each other for added customer benefit.

For example, Southwest Airlines knows that customers who are caught in the melee of stranded passengers and amiss schedules often turn to social media to vent their frustrations, even sharing photos of long lines caused by cancelled flights. They address this reality directly by taking responsibility and apologizing on social media when necessary. Unhappy customers are allowed to rebook flights at no cost within two weeks of their original travel dates, and they receive refunds even for non-refundable flights. By answering every complaint on every channel as quickly as possible, Southwest is owning the experience to delight customers even in a crisis. As a result, Southwest Airline’s exceptional customer experience has allowed them to both attract new customers and maintain existing ones despite obstacles.

For instance, consumers’ delight with Southwest Airline’s experience has been featured in recent news. Juan (@xadoringpaige), a fan of Southwest Airlines, recently played a social-media trolling joke on the airline. The airline’s response was a delightful surprise — showing that the brand can pivot based on customers’ wants and needs — and it went viral. When asked why he chose to engage Southwest, Juan said that his great experience with the airlines made them the perfect choice to help lighten the mood in an industry that’s experienced some bruises over the past few years. Following the exchange, other customers jumped on board to express their deepened loyalty to the brand.

Design Customer Experiences That Deliver Real-Time Delight.
Since 2008, Starbucks has come to understand that customers are the center of successful brand experiences. As such, digital insights are the new currency of business. So, they have transformed their brand to become an experience business that revolves around the customer and not the product. Further, those brands that have followed suit — Topshop, Southwest Airlines, and T-Mobile, for instance — are able to win the hearts of today’s consumers. But, they must continue to evolve with customer needs.

In 2014, the average company used only four data sources for analysis and measurement; today, companies use six. According to Adobe research, 47 percent of companies in North America plan to increase their analytics budgets in the next 12 months. But, digital moves quickly, and customer standards are ever-increasing. So, your ability to use data to design exceptional customer experiences — like those of Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Topshop, and T-Mobile — is likely to determine your success in the next era of marketing. By aligning organizational KPIs based on a single, real-time view of the customer, smart brands are getting to know their customers at scale and on a personal level — both in the physical and in the digital worlds — and it’s paving the way for topnotch experiences.

To learn more about designing exceptional experiences to meet today’s consumer needs, download Experience Counts: Exceptional Experiences Happen at the Intersection of Data and Design.

The post It’s Not 2008 Anymore — How to Meet Customers’ 2017 CX Standards appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/not-2008-anymore-meet-customers-2017-cx-standards/