Marketers get closer to true personalization- an essential part of customer retention
The Covid-19 pandemic is undeniably one of the driving forces in the newest rise of eCommerce. When the lockdowns were announced worldwide, people had to look for a way to purchase their necessities within the confines of their own homes. While others brought their businesses online as it became the only platform available.
The pandemic forcefully closing many doors in different sectors led one industry to open many windows of opportunity. This is the start of a whole new era for global eCommerce.
The rise of eCommerce has been observed in previous years. eCommerce giant Amazon has been around since 1994, and many different e-Commerce companies have been established. But it was only last year when a surge in this sector was noticed.
UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reported a 3% increase in eCommerce retail sale shares in 2020. At the same time, Adobe Inc. cited a total of $466 billion online consumer spending in the U.S. just between March and September of last year, a whopping 52% jump from the same period in 2019.
Contributing factors in the growth of e-commerce
Aside from the pandemic, these are other factors that contributed to the development of eCommerce.
Digitalization
From dial-up to Wi-Fi, more people are going online. As of January 2021, there are approximately 298.8 million active internet users within the United States alone. The increasing digital population meant more online consumers, making the Internet a niche for retail companies.
Convenience and Price Advantage
Remember back in the day when the nearby shop ran out of the item you needed, so you had to visit two or more other stores just to get it? Now all you have to do is simply search on the Internet, then have it shipped to your address. The increase in online consumers creates competition between online sellers, forcing them to offer lower prices to get more sales.
Range of Options
Online retail offers a greater range of options for consumers. You can easily purchase items from another town, or even from another country. Deciding on one item from a pool of options makes consumers feel smart and more in control of their purchase.
The upsurge of online retail brings about changes in consumer behavior. Since the whole process of purchasing has become a breeze, people now tend to buy more products than they need or impulsive buying among consumers. They have also come to expect more.
The transition from social to online interaction has allowed companies to step up their game in their marketing strategies. The challenge of eCommerce among marketers is to provide a customer experience that closely resembles the kind of social interaction they enjoy with traditional shopping. What is the right message that will compel consumers to explore further?
Machine learning in marketing tech stacks
Major industry players achieve such personalized customer experience through proper integration of machine learning into their marketing technology stacks.
Machine learning is an AI innovation that uses data and algorithms for predictive insights. It is used to absorb information and trained to learn as human-like as possible. It truly is a game-changer in online customer engagement and data analytics.
Different online technologies use machine learning to make the customer experience more interactive and customized: Speech recognition programs such Alexa or Siri uses machine learning wherein it transforms human voice into the text; the customer service chatbots provide us instant answers for our usual concerns through decent chat communication; and the recommendation engines which is widely used for cross-selling. This feature is usually the additional product recommendation page that pops up just before our order’s final checkout details.
Meanwhile, a marketing tech stack is a set of technical programs and strategies you need for your business. Each program and system must be carefully chosen and appropriate for the kind of business you have for it to work, or else it would only be a waste of your marketing budget. An effective marketing stack creates a seamless workflow using all available customer data.
CDP for an effective marketing stack
One of the most innovative technologies you can include in your marketing stack is a customer data platform (CDP).
Online retailers gather a slew of data daily. Your marketing analysis uses the software so that the data gets transformed into valuable segments. The segments drive more targeted campaigns which lead to more personalized customer experiences. Excellent customer experience eventually converts to more sales.
A CDP gathers data from multiple sources and creates segments to help you better engage your customers wherever they are in their journey through targeted content.
VIEWN’s customer data platform helps bring all customer data together and then formats them to boost demand generation strategies as campaigns business owners have made for their eCommerce stores. This boost maximizes the customer data and which converts to more sales.
We partner with advanced customer insights expert CEO Analytics to get data-driven segmentation from attitudes directly from your existing customers to provide more refined segments and personas. The resulting insights will give you an in-depth analysis of your customers’ who, what, when, how, and now why – a way more personal approach compared to cookie-based data. In fact, it is the exact right information for the customer.
Customer Data Platform in advertising
People are getting tired of seeing random ads online. A CDP gives you better mileage for your online advertising budget through customized content that will have an actual impact on your customers.
CDPs let you ask the right questions to the right people for you to be able to give them exactly what they need, what matters to them, and why.
Content is a key element in effective marketing. But how do marketers determine which message to give out to which people? You need to find out from your customers.
The segmented data derived from your CDP helps you understand your customers better. Having a deep insight into why customers purchase products and how they use them will help you decide which products to promote and which features to highlight to which audience. These insights are how you keep customers coming back. The intelligence you get keeps subscribers longer.
