The holidays are a bustling time for business. In fact, the most wonderful time of the year can account for up to 30% of a retailer’s annual sales. Last year, consumers around the globe spent roughly $1.14 Trillion online during the shopping season. According to Salesforce's 2023 Holiday Forecast report, this year they’re expected to spend even more: $1.19 Trillion.
Online shoppers are a savvy bunch, and their spending power, digital preferences, and behaviors are constantly influencing global e-commerce trends. While this year’s shoppers are forecast to spend more, they’re also looking to get more from their favorite retail stores. Their wish list includes:
- More inspiration-led purchase journeys: Consumers want to be “wowed,” and they’re looking to discover something new.
- More personalized experiences: Discounts, custom offers, and unique product recommendations are top-of-mind expectations.
- More cohesive retail experiences: Whatever the channel (mobile, website, social, app), the entire journey should be seamless and connected.
- More data privacy and transparency: Shoppers want options and insight on how their personal data is collected, used, and stored.
Delivering on consumer wishes is easy with advanced data capture. With the right technology, retailers can understand each consumer’s unique behaviors and preferences and leverage the insight to deliver privacy-focused, personalized experiences wherever shoppers interact.
Here are five gifts you can give your retail shoppers this holiday season.
1. Treat them like royalty
According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions — and 76% of consumers get frustrated when personalization doesn’t happen.
Truly understanding the interests of digital consumers starts with first-party identity resolution. Because consumers interact with retailers across multiple channels, devices, domains, and over time, it’s easy for data to become messy, fragmented, and difficult to unify. First-party identity resolution automatically stitches consumer data from all sources to create unified consumer profiles.
But stitching data for only the shoppers you know isn’t enough. It’s also critical to distinguish between anonymous and known consumers because many shoppers don’t log in to a retailer’s site until they’re ready to make a purchase. A first-party identity graph persists consumer profiles for both known and anonymous visitors and stitches all interactions together to create a 360-degree view of individual consumers. Connecting identities across all channels, domains, devices, and over time gives retailers the deep insight needed to deliver the ultimate shopping experiences.
What it means for you:
More loyal customers: Capturing and stitching data from every interaction ensures nothing gets missed so you can deliver relevant, live-time experiences that drive loyalty.
Better campaign segmentation: The more you know about consumer behavior and preferences, the more you understand their needs to deliver powerful and granular one-to-one personalization.
Complete understanding of consumer context for better targeting: Data provides context around a shoppers’ interests and behavior so your brand can develop stronger cohorts and set targeted campaign parameters. This deep understanding and hyper-personalization makes consumers feel like royalty!
2. Inspire their journey
Delivering relevant, in-the-moment experiences across all channels is key to meeting consumer expectations and maximizing sales and revenue.
Today’s shoppers aren’t looking for typical personalization like generic coupons or standard product recommendations. They want inspiration and they want to be “wowed!” Imagine the power of providing a perfect recommendation for something your customer needs or wants before they even realize it.
Going beyond personalization to predict consumer intent starts with capturing high-quality, first-party data across all touchpoints. Understanding how consumers behave and engage with your website or app reveals trends, needs, and preferences. instantly delivers data to your brand in milliseconds so you can hyper-personalize every page, deliver highly relevant offers, and enable quick adjustments based on the newest information — while the shopper is actively on the page. Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) process data quickly to automatically detect signals of consumer intent so the right messages can be delivered instantly. Acting in-the-moment to deliver the perfect experience is the difference between a conversion made and a consumer lost.
For example, let’s say a consumer is looking at red shoes. With typical personalization, your business offers a discount on the shoes and displays a “people also liked these” message. But with an advanced data capture platform, your business can see the consumer also bought a red shirt three weeks ago and always purchases party decorations this time of year. Tying this data to the consumer’s behavior (before they were even logged in!), shows they’ve also been browsing tablecloths and tableware. Your data platform and its robust ID graph has collected all this information and put them into a “discerning socialite” cohort (the consumer likes high-end things but isn’t price sensitive). With this insight, instead of sending a standard coupon, your business can offer an entire party package with high-end tableware, décor, and dishes with the message: “Be the star of the show with these perfectly coordinated accessories!”
What it means for you:
Higher conversions: Live-time data capture lets you wow your shoppers with the right messages and recommendations wherever they are in their journey — instantly. Highly relevant, hyper-personalized offers and experiences are proven to convert more.
Improved ROAS: The better the data, the more relevant the advertising, the more conversions you earn. And higher conversions mean higher returns.
More loyal customers: It’s what happens when you know your customers better than they know themselves.
3. Deliver a cohesive experience
Here today, gone tomorrow — the perfect phrase to describe today’s online shoppers. One moment they’re browsing your store app, the next second they’re on a tablet adding an item to their cart, and the next day they’re physically walking around your store.
An omnichannel customer strategy streamlines all customer interactions across multiple channels to deliver a cohesive experience — and it’s the only way to keep up with the ever-changing whims of consumers. In fact, companies that use omnichannel engagement strategies retain 89% of their customers compared to 33% of those with weak omnichannel engagement strategies.
Capturing data and interactions across all channels, apps, devices, and over time paints a complete picture of consumer behavior. To excel at omnichannel data capture, and omnichannel experiences, you need a single data model that feeds web, mobile web, and mobile app data into the same instance to unify data and eliminate data silos.
What it means for you:
Enhanced loyalty and happier customers: Delivering a smooth, consistent, seamless shopping experience makes consumers feel valued and understood, and builds brand loyalty. Meeting consumers where they are differentiates your brand from the competition to gain a competitive edge. Shoppers LOVE to share their favorite experiences via word-of-mouth and social media — great for exposure and repeat business.
4. Respect their privacy preferences
The privacy-first movement is about individuals knowing, and controlling, how their online information is collected and used. Today’s shoppers care who they share their data with and how. There are a few ways to respect their privacy preferences and consent while delivering stand-out personalization:
Be clear and direct on what, why, and how. Taking the time to explain what data you’re collecting, why you’re capturing it, and how you’ll use it makes a world of difference to consumers. A message as simple as, “We’d love for you to complete our fashion profile so we can provide better recommendations that suit your unique style,” reinforces your stance on privacy protection and paints a clear picture of your intentions. Remember, transparency builds trust.
Maximize consent acceptance. Earning consent as often as possible provides the best of both worlds for shoppers. Clear and concise messaging is key to helping consumers understand the “whys” and “hows” behind your data-driven strategies. Personal messaging (we, our, you) helps establish better connections with shoppers, and short descriptions for cookie consent choices ensure visitors understand purpose quickly and easily.
Encourage zero-party data capture. Zero-party data is information consumers willingly and actively share with a brand, like their favorite color, clothing style, or hair color. Encouraging zero-party data capture is a great way to engage with shoppers while increasing awareness and loyalty — and still respecting privacy. Quizzes, games, and customer satisfaction surveys are simple ways to gather information and, when fun incentives are on the table (like birthday discounts or personalized profiles), consumers are more inclined to share data with your brand.
Use a no-party data solution for opt-outs. When customers opt-out of cookies or their browser restricts them, retailers are typically left with a personalization gap. No-party data capture is cookieless and lets a retailer capture protected, contextualized, session-specific data insights to provide a more tailored experience that fully respects the privacy of the visitor. It works within a retailer’s website to recognize session-specific patterns and sequences while analyzing patterns in-the-moment to deliver in-session relevance. With no-party data activation, brands can still uncover preferences, and deliver real-time customization for opted-out visitors.
What it means for you:
Earned consumer trust: 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from companies that protect their personal information.
Compliance peace of mind: Data privacy laws and regulations are rapidly shifting in favor of consumers. With an advanced data capture platform, you don’t have to worry about GDPR or other privacy regulations. With true first-party data capture, you own the data, and with no-party data, it never leaves the consumer’s device. Both you and your shoppers are protected.
A competitive edge: With no-party data capture, you’re still able to deliver personalized, relevant shopping experiences while getting a leg up on competitors who are scrambling to overcome the challenges of opt-outs and privacy restrictions.
5. Protect them from fraud
In 2022, losses from e-commerce online payment fraud alone hit $41 Billion globally. This year’s number is forecast to exceed $48 Billion. Protecting consumers and your business is critical to ensuring a profitable season.
Retailers can leverage first-party data capture to prevent fraud and protect consumers. The right technology works behind the scenes to stop common types of retail fraud, including: ATO, APP, impersonation scams, Grinch bots, friendly fraud, and BNPL. The key is using a first-party solution that’s installed within your own environment to ensure true real-time data capture and feed decisioning systems with comprehensive identity verification.
Fraud can be devastating for retailers — resulting in fewer sales, lost revenue from chargebacks, dissolved consumer trust, and an overall bad reputation.
A comprehensive data capture platform uses consumer data to stop fraud before it starts. Technologies like behavioral biometrics, anomaly detection, and machine learning work together to build robust identity profiles that paint a 360-degree view of consumers. By understanding legitimate consumer behavior, it becomes easier to spot even the smallest inconsistencies or anomalies.
What it means for you:
Enhanced consumer trust and loyalty: Consumers don’t have time for errors and inconvenience. Stopping fraud before it starts ensures a safe, secure, and seamless shopping experience that keeps consumers coming back for more.
Bottom-line protection: Chargebacks and BNPL fraud are costly for retailers. Fraud prevention flags suspicious transactions to activate protection before the fraud happens.
Elevated reputation: Actively preventing fraud demonstrates a retailer’s commitment to protecting consumers. Positive shopping experiences equal happy customers.
It's time to deck their halls
‘Tis the season for making consumer wishes come true. With the right data capture platform, you can deliver the greatest gift of all to consumers — highly relevant, inspiring, safe, and privacy-focused experiences every shopper is wishing for.
Opt-outs aren't the end of personalization
Celebrus CX Vault is a no-party data solution that empowers retailers to deliver relevant shopping experiences even when a visitor opts-out of data capture. No tracking. No sharing. No cookies. Privacy-first customization.
