Drive Store Traffic with the Right Connected Retail Strategy

Connected retail is the next evolution in the quest for the seamless customer experience. Leading retailers are relying on customer data from all sources to ensure they’re serving customers on their terms — and using the right approach at the right time to motivate a trip to the store.

Read our free Case Study profiling Duty Free City: How Using iVend Retail Omnichannel Suite Can Increase Brick-and-Mortar Airport Store Traffic

It’s Time to Get Personal

Connected retail can help businesses get closer to the customer and enable personalized messaging and offers, which can drive higher conversion and sales. By tying together the touchpoints a consumer might encounter, retailers can leverage each point of data to identify the strategy most likely to resonate with that particular shopper.

Personalization strengthens your customer relationships by demonstrating that you “know” the shopper’s likes, preferences and more — and can not only drive but also cement the consumer’s brand loyalty when executed effectively. Your knowledge of your customers can be reflected in the new products you introduce and your marketing campaigns, helping to build excitement that keeps them coming back.

Count on Context: Why Geolocation Is Heating Up

In 2017, hyper-local marketing is perhaps the most important step toward connected retail. Savvy retailers are finally taking advantage of the power of geolocation to target customers in a contextually appropriate way and get them into stores. For example, the shopper is probably more “primed for purchase” and open to receiving offers when she’s near your store — or even if she’s browsing in your competitor’s location — than when she’s shuttling the kids to school at 7:30 a.m.

Timing and context are everything, and the power of connected retail enable you to be strategic in sending out push notifications, coupons or discount offers. Opting not to implement these kinds of notifications is like leaving money on the table.

Enable a Better Experience

Merchants that take advantage of connected retail can offer their customers a superior shopping experience. Consider Duty Free City (DFC), the Miami-headquartered chain of department stores with five locations in Texas and California along the Mexican border and plans to open 10 airport shops in 2017. In sleekly designed boutiques, it sells luxury items ranging from fragrances and cosmetics to skincare products and more. The company is looking to the iVend Retail suite to help increase traffic to its stores, as data shows that shoppers convert at strong rates once they’re within the four walls.

What’s more, the connected retail technology suite enables DFC to offer the convenience of Buy Online, Pick-Up in Store (BOPIS), saving customers time when they may have tight travel schedules to consider. Don’t forget that BOPIS has been shown to drive additional purchases once the customer arrives in store to retrieve the initial web purchase.

DFC also is using iVend Digital Passes to reach on-site tech-savvy travelers with mobile messages incentivizing them to visit the store location in their airport terminal. Going one step further, DFC leverages the iVend platform to compile customer data, in turn analyzing this information to tailor promotions to the specific shopper — increasing the likelihood of redemption and purchase.

The shift to connected retail will pay dividends in stronger sales, higher store traffic and the kind of elevated and effortless experience that consumers have come to expect. With the right strategy, your retail business can begin evolving today to compete in the connected retail environment of the future.