{"id":2382,"date":"2022-12-16T12:14:06","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T06:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/?p=2382"},"modified":"2022-12-20T12:57:40","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T07:27:40","slug":"retailers-drive-growth-holiday-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/retailers-drive-growth-holiday-season\/","title":{"rendered":"How Retailers Can Drive Growth During the Holiday Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ho Ho Ho! The December holiday season is upon us!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is the time of the year when people across the globe take a break from their usual routine and spend some quality time with their friends and family. It\u2019s also the time when consumers throng retail stores to get their last-minute shopping done. However, this year is different. This is truly the year post-pandemic and consumers will be out in full force to get their Xmas and New Year gifts from both the offline and online retail stores.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mckinsey.com\/business-functions\/marketing-and-sales\/our-insights\/the-great-consumer-shift-ten-charts-that-show-how-us-shopping-behavior-is-changing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mckinsey study<\/a>, during the pandemic, 75% of consumers were found to have changed brands. This is a fascinating behavioral insight. It means that consumers became more open to trying other brands which they wouldn\u2019t have done normally. The reasons here could be many such as better digital experiences and offers, or it could be as simple as they were bored and wanted to try a new brand.\u00a0 Now that the pandemic is at bay, consumer footfalls are expected to drastically increase in offline stores. But at the same time, online stores are expected to see the same traffic as consumers have multiple avenues and channels to shop from.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How can retail marketers turn this situation to their advantage? How can they drive growth during this year\u2019s post-pandemic holiday season? Let\u2019s see how:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>How Retailers Can Drive Growth During the Holiday Season<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><b>1. Deliver Next-Best Personalized Experiences<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2384\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/retail_WPN_Image.jpg\" alt=\"Personalized Next Best Experiences: How Retail Marketers Can Drive Growth During the Holiday Season\" width=\"700\" height=\"394\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As consumers are no longer confined to their homes, offline store visits will be high. Retail marketers can drive growth by focusing on both their offline and online offerings. If they can optimize their digital assets such as their website to attract in-store customer visits, their business momentum will be at its peak.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A great and simple user-friendly website or mobile app is the first step to consider.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Secondly, the digital asset should be ably supported by a martech tool such as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/exploring-the-concept-of-hybrid-cdp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Customer Data Platform (CDP)<\/a>. A CDP has the ability to can easily integrate with your existing martech stack and stitch user data across channels, devices, and systems into one central location. The unified view of each user gives ample insights that markets can use to craft next best experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/real-time-personalization\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Personalization<\/a> is the crucial final step that affirms a customer\u2019s loyalty to a brand. A personalized next-best experience speaks volumes of how much a brand cares about each user. Using the CDP\u2019s unified view, retail marketers can easily understand each customer\u2019s needs and craft their next best experience accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><b>2. Leverage Digital Channels As Per Customer Preferences<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2386\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/leverage-digital-channels.jpg\" alt=\"How Retail Marketers Can Drive Growth During the Holiday Season | leverage digital channels\" width=\"700\" height=\"495\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Customers have their own preferences when it comes to which channels they want to use to interact with brands. Either it could be website channels such as web push notifications or it could be email or SMS or even a chatbot. Different customers have different channel preferences. If marketers can recognize this channel propensity of their users, they can deliver their personalized marketing campaigns only on these <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/channel-orchestration\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">preferred channels<\/a>. Users will definitely appreciate this gesture and understand that the brand exactly knows where to get in touch with them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A CDP can again help marketers here by giving them channel propensity insights for each individual user. For example, if a user\u2019s preferred channels are email and SMS, you need to make sure that you engage with him\/her only on those channels.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><b>3. Go All Out On Social Media<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2385\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/social-media.jpg\" alt=\"How Retail Marketers Can Drive Growth During the Holiday Season | social media\" width=\"700\" height=\"467\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Social media is every marketer\u2019s best weapon that needs to be used wisely. The right move can work wonders for your brand and help in boosting customer acquisition. The wrong move can tarnish your brand\u2019s reputation and negatively impact your business.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The pandemic made retailers aware of the power of social media. Carefully crafted personalized campaigns that resonate well with your customers are what you should be aiming for. Once that succeeds, your brand\u2019s reputation will automatically surge in the eyes of your customer. And they will mostly consider your brand when they choose to buy some product that they want.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A great example of this is the US retail giant, Target. During the pandemic, Target created content around COVID and posted them on its YouTube channel. The video content featured a playlist that aimed at helping shoppers during COVID, health and safety tips, and measures taken by the company to make the in-store shopping experience safe and smooth. Therefore, instead of focusing on selling its products directly, the company used an approach that emotionally connected with consumers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><b>4. Create a Consistent Digital Customer Experience<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2393\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/consistent-digital-experience.png\" alt=\"How Retailers Can Drive Growth During the Holiday Season | consistent digital experience\" width=\"700\" height=\"467\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A consistent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/omnichannel-marketing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">omnichannel<\/a> digital experience gives the assurance that a brand is serious about retaining customers by giving them the best experience across channels. Regardless of the number of channels that a customer uses, marketers should design and deliver a consistent experience on each of these channels. The idea is to provide your target audience with a cohesive, seamless, and consistent experience irrespective of the channels or devices that they use.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a retail marketer, you can again use a CDP to assist you in providing a consistent digital customer experience. Extracting valuable insights from a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/single-customer-view\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CDP\u2019s unified view<\/a> can enable you to tailor your personalized messages on a user\u2019s preferred channels and also keep them consistent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, customers who prefer to interact with your brand via website channels should only be engaged on those channels. Engaging them on channels such as SMS or chatbot will not elicit a response. Moreover, the messaging needs to be the same for each channel. It cannot be different for different channels.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><b>Summing Up<\/b><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This holiday season is unlike anything that we have seen to date. It\u2019s time that retail marketers get on to the digital bandwagon and fire on all cylinders to drive growth for their respective organizations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can\u2019t wait for customers to come to you. You have to figure out where they are, go there and drag them back to your store.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d &#8211; Paul Graham<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h5><strong>By Bijoy K.B | Associate Director &#8211; Marketing at Lemnisk<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ho Ho Ho! The December holiday season is upon us!\u00a0 &nbsp; This is the time of the year when people across the globe take a break from their usual routine and spend some quality time with their friends and family. It\u2019s also the time when consumers throng retail stores to get their last-minute shopping done. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,58,57,75,127],"tags":[16,19,34,133],"class_list":["post-2382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-blogs","category-customer-data-platform","category-marketing","category-martech","category-retail","tag-cdp","tag-customer-data-platform","tag-martech","tag-retail-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2382"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3563,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions\/3563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemnisk.co\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}