EXPERT ANALYSIS
SECTION ONE
SECTION TWO
Reaching out Digitally to Shoppers  

Savvy retailers and brands realize that it is critical to connect digitally with shoppers today. But there is a
right way and a wrong way to do so. Knowing the difference can mean success or failure.


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
What mistakes do brands and grocers make when reaching out digitally to shoppers?


EXPERT ANALYSIS:

While more customer data is being collected to visualize shoppers’ behavior across channels, brands are often challenged to connect in-store and digital experiences for consistent messaging. Grocers don’t just exist on digital channels. They must create an omni-channel strategy that incorporates customer preferences in-store and out. These are mistakes too many grocers make, failing to use the customer data at their fingertips. The reason is because these businesses often aren’t set up for omni-channel success, with no way to consolidate data into a comprehensive, single customer profile.
Cassandra Girard, Global Lead, Consumer and Travel Industries, SAP Hybris

In today’s digital world, it’s about relearning. Running a siloed organization in a digital world is a challenge. We have seen many of our clients have a digital strategy, but it’s a digital strategy for online, a separate one for in the store and maybe even another digital strategy for a different business unit. We talk with our clients about thinking about the experiences they want to deliver with the customer at the center.   Digital spans across the entire business and requires all business units to work together to deliver consistent and seamless shopping experiences.
Aaron Reich, Director of Innovation, Avanade

The biggest strategic mistake is to regard digital as only a channel, and to not understand the degree of relevance and intimacy required to win attention from shoppers therein. Also, many grocers think that digital is just a cheaper way to distribute the flyer or to send loyalty messages, so they get both the context and the content wrong and dramatically fail to personalize. Shoppers experience new forms of digital carpet bombing, which does nothing but destroy loyalty and trust. David Ciancio, Senior Customer Strategist, dunnhumby

Grocers often have too generic content that is not personalized (informing them of sales on products the shopper doesn't buy). Frequency is too great and blast emails that are redundant and not personalized increases the likelihood that the grocer becomes irrelevant digitally. Content on grocers’ social site is also not fresh/infrequently updated. Posts by customers go unanswered by the grocer.
Scott Bauer, U.S. Retail & Consumer Partner at PwC

Just replicating the paper circular does much more for the retailer than it does the shopper. Using the shopper’s past purchases as well as any attitudinal or lifestyle information they have offered to provide a customized message to the shopper is rarer than it should be given the technology available today.
Mark Heckman, Mark Heckman Consulting

Grocers should develop more of a 360 digital relationship with their consumers. Many grocers leverage digital for coupon distribution, but they should also strive to become stronger content experts and engage more authentically with their audience in the digital space. Ways to do this include:
  • Establishing closer organic relationships with individual brands
  • Identifying their subject matter expertise and developing content to add more value for their consumers
  • Engaging both local shoppers who are digital influencers and nationally-recognized influencers across different topics to drive awareness around products, shopping experiences, promotions and value adds
  • Utilizing social listening to understand the current conversations around grocery topics and to identify where they can both enter the conversation (responding to feedback, providing helpful content) or proactively reaching out to consumers.
Rachael Cihlar, Senior Strategist, TapInfluence

Many retailers are trying to understand how to leverage digital technologies to better connect with their customers to both develop and enhance loyalty to their stores and the brands and products that they sell. Even though retailers have been rolling out digital services like beaconing, emails, digital circulars as well as other social media connections, one could argue about how effective they have really been towards creating a long term digital connection with their targeted audience.

As a consumer, I am still surprised that many of the loyalty programs offered by retailers are still very basic in their core concepts. Many still exist in the form of a physical card and there is little motivation for people to switch over to digital versions of these on their smartphones. This is because they offer no significant advantages over their physical counterparts.

For these digital applications to be truly successful, they need to evolve in a way that a shopper can access meaningful and valuable services in a more intuitive way and provide services that are relevant and meaningful to the individual in a way that each Facebook or LinkedIn account is tailored by the user and their interests. This is also true for digital circulars and emails pushed out by retailers that on many occasions appear more like spam than anything that I may want to actually read.
Dipak Raval, Commercial Director, Cambridge Consultants


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SECTION THREE