Originally published on MarketingLand
The holiday shopping season has long been synonymous with chaos, crowds and mass appeal. In fact, some might say that the holiday shopping season is, by nature, the enemy of personalization.
But the bedlam of the holidays actually brings invaluable insights and increased opportunities for retailers to fine-tune their personalization strategies. Indeed, today’s consumers are becoming increasingly accustomed to a highly personalized customer experience, with 56 percent admitting they prefer to shop with retailers (in-store or online) that recognize them by name, according to Accenture’s “Personalization Pulse Check” report.
With millions of shoppers ready to stampede into stores or browse through e-commerce sites over the coming weeks, now is certainly not the time to risk losing customers to a subpar experience.
To create a seamless, omnichannel customer journey — from customer acquisition to the moment of purchase, and beyond — retailers cannot just focus on the “persona” of the customer that they’ve built by analyzing trends, purchasing history and so on.
Instead, the smart retailer will zero in on the “moments” that matter most. What action or incident motivates a customer’s next purchase? Why do they decide to leave a shopping cart full? What interaction causes a customer to return to the same store time and time again?
Here are a few steps that brands can take to better capture and analyze the moments that shape a consumer’s shopping experience.
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