Think about it, if you pay for a front-row seat at the ballet, you expect to see a spectacle of coordination and grace. After all, you didn’t spend good money to witness one dancer headbanging to Tchaikovsky while another is pirouetting across the stage. That would be a disappointment (and probably, a little weird).

Audiences have similar expectations for your brand. They want a synchronized visual identity, precise messaging, and a steady experience across every touchpoint. In short, they want consistency.

With so many channels to manage, each demanding more and fresher content than the last, how can brands keep consistency at the forefront?

Chapters:

1. What is brand consistency and why is it important?
2. 8 strategies to keep your branding consistent
3. Examples of brand consistency
4. From consistency to authenticity: the next step for your brand

What is brand consistency and why is it important?

Brand consistency means delivering content and experiences in line with your brand’s identity, values, and strategy across all channels. It’s about creating a cohesive narrative that threads through every Instagram story, every Google ad, and every PR package. 

This unified approach makes your brand instantly recognizable, whether through the color palette of your ads, the tone of your content, or the personality of your social media posts.

With consistent branding, your audience is enveloped in the essence of your brand with every interaction, slowly building trust and familiarity. 

Enhance brand recognition

Think of how a green mermaid signals a Starbucks, or how a checkmark instantly brings Nike to mind. These symbols are the shorthand for the brands they represent — not by chance, but by careful consistency, respected and maintained over the years and across channels.

You want your brand to become a friendly face in the crowd, a welcoming sight to customers. Repeated exposure to the same visuals, slogans, and brand ethos helps you accomplish that. When your brand is consistently represented, it doesn’t just stand out. It stands for something in the minds of consumers. It becomes a story they remember and trust, one that feels comforting in its familiarity. 

And trust is the foundation of successful customer relationships: if people trust you, they will reward you with purchases, recommendations, and long-lasting loyalty.

Foster brand advocacy

Consistent branding transcends visual elements. Uniformity in logos, colors, and typography matters, but it’s just as essential to deliver on your brand’s promises and provide reliable experiences. 

When customers encounter consistent messaging, the same level of service, and the same commitment to quality in every interaction, they turn into vocal advocates for your brand.

Advocates aren’t just sharing a logo. They’re sharing powerful stories that can make other people excited about your company. They’re the ones who celebrate your brand and carry it forward, all because they have come to trust in its unwavering presence in their lives.

8 strategies to keep your branding consistent

Let’s dissect eight actionable steps you can take to lay the groundwork for a strong brand identity and maintain its integrity across all platforms and initiatives. 

1. Establish and enforce brand guidelines

Let’s go back to our headbanging and pirouetting dancers. In this scenario, there’s an obvious disconnect. Everyone is doing something different because there isn’t a clear set of steps to follow. The same level of chaos ensues when a brand operates without guidelines.

Guidelines are a blueprint for how your brand shows itself to the world. They ensure that everyone, from the marketing team to external partners, understands how to represent the brand correctly. 

Here’s the key elements that should be included in your guidelines:

• Logo usage: Instructions on how to use the logo (and its variants), including sizing, spacing, what to avoid, and variations for different contexts
• Color palette: An explanation of primary and secondary brand colors, including exact color codes for print, web, and digital
• Typography: Detailing the typefaces and fonts your brand uses, including hierarchies and how they should be used in various formats
• Imagery and iconography: Guidance on the style and types of images, illustrations, and icons that fit with the brand’s aesthetic
• Voice and tone: Outline of the brand’s personality in writing, including how it should sound in different types of communication
• Editorial style: The particular style choices your brand makes in writing, which can include grammar, punctuation, and preferred spelling
• Brand story: A narrative that communicates the brand’s history, mission, vision, and core values
• Applications: Examples of how to apply these elements in different contexts, such as social media, advertising, website design, packaging, and more

Once the guidelines are in place, store them in a central location, like a shared drive or an intranet, where they can be easily accessed by anyone who needs them. 

The enforcing part is just as relevant as the establishing portion. Guidelines won’t do any good if no one uses them, so conduct regular training sessions for all employees, especially team members directly working with your brand’s identity. These sessions should walk through the guidelines in detail, explaining the rationale behind each element and showcasing examples of correct and incorrect usage. 

2. Regularly audit your brand across channels

Maintaining brand consistency is an active process. While creating guidelines lays the foundation, audits keep the performance in line and synchronized across channels. 

Here’s a step-by-step process you can follow for your brand consistency audits:

1. Do thorough channel reviews. Review every channel where your brand is present, from social media platforms to your website and ads. Look for discrepancies in brand elements like logo placement, color schemes, and font usage. Check that your brand’s core messages are clear and that all content supports your overall brand story, and evaluate whether the tone and voice are uniform
2. Monitor brand touchpoints. Consider the customer journey from start to finish. Is there a consistent level of service and brand presence at every touchpoint, from initial discovery through post-purchase support?
3. Evaluate partnership and affiliate representation. Make sure partners, influencers, and affiliates are adhering to your guidelines. Their representation of your brand should be as accurate and consistent as your own channels
4. Conduct a competitive benchmarking. Regularly compare your branding efforts with your competitors to evaluate whether your brand stands out while adhering to industry standards

The frequency of these audits will depend on the size of your company and the scope of your branding efforts, but they should be regular enough to catch issues before they become ingrained in your brand’s presentation. Quarterly or bi-annual audits strike a balance between being thorough and adaptable. 

3. Create and maintain a social media posting schedule

Social media channels are often the most dynamic touchpoints of a brand, buzzing with updates and conversations. So much activity means they’re particularly vulnerable to inconsistencies, but creating a social media content calendar curbs potential issues on this front.

A disciplined posting schedule helps you evenly distribute content across important dates and events, so that your message is timely and relevant. It also allows you to cater to the nuances of each platform while maintaining the thread of your brand’s voice and visual style. For instance, the fast pace of X (formerly known as Twitter) might require multiple updates a day, while Instagram may benefit from a well-crafted post every other day. 

Keeping a consistent schedule also means you can plan better for active engagement — answering comments, joining conversations, and updating followers with fresh and relevant content that reinforces your brand promise.

4. Monitor and respond to feedback

Customer feedback, whether it’s in the form of online reviews, social media comments, or customer surveys, provides precious insights into how your brand is perceived across different channels. 

Regularly monitoring this feedback helps you understand the customer experience and identify any inconsistencies in brand communication. If customers frequently mention a disconnect between your brand on social media and your website (very friendly and humorous vs extremely serious, for example), that’s a clear sign that your brand consistency needs attention.

Actively responding to feedback also shows that your brand values its customers and is committed to maintaining a dialogue with them. This doesn’t just apply to positive feedback, either! How your brand addresses criticism or negative comments can significantly impact customer perceptions. A consistent, respectful, and solution-oriented response strategy helps reinforce your brand’s ethos, even in the face of challenges.

5. Practice what you preach

As we already touched on, consistent branding is also about living up to the expectations set by your brand’s promises. When your company’s actions align with its stated values and mission, customers take notice. And the opposite is also true.

Say your brand positions itself as an environmentally friendly and sustainable company, but then customers discover your products are packaged with non-recyclable materials. This discrepancy will lead to a loss of trust in your commitment to sustainability. Customers expect the brands they support to be transparent and genuine in their practices, not just in their messaging. 

Part of practicing what you preach involves regularly reviewing and reassessing your business practices and products to ensure they stay in sync with your branding. It’s okay to stumble, as long as you own up to it — according to Sprout Social, 89% of people say a business can regain their trust if it admits to a mistake and is transparent about the steps it will take to resolve the issue.

6. Don’t sleep on customer service

Customer service is a public performance of your brand’s commitment to its values, and consistency on this front is just as crucial as in any other aspect of your branding. 

If your brand is known for being cheerful and friendly, each service interaction should reflect that. Every email, phone call, and live chat should display the same level of enthusiasm and warmth that customers have come to expect based on your brand’s messaging and personality. It’s not just about resolving customer issues — it’s about doing it in a way that reinforces your identity.

This is another area where your promises are put to the test. If your brand touts its commitment to swift customer service, every aspect of customer interaction should be optimized for speed, from the first response to the resolution. 

Train your customer service team to understand and embody your brand’s identity and values. Arm them with the knowledge and tools to provide a consistent level of service that matches your standards and voice across all channels.

And, of course, collect feedback from your customers and use it to refine your service approach and align it more closely with their expectations.

7. Work with partners that source the right content for your brand

Producing enough content to keep up with the fast-paced nature of social media is a common challenge for brands. One of the best solutions to this conundrum is sourcing and sharing UGC (user-generated content), which is any piece of content produced by customers and not brands. 

While this takes the weight of creating content off brands’ shoulders, there’s the issue of curating it. UGC brings the voice of the customer into your brand narrative, but not every piece of content is guaranteed to resonate with your brand’s voice or adhere to your guidelines. And sifting through all the UGC to ensure it does is time-consuming and out of reach for teams short on time.

Solutions like Creator Partnerships take on the heavy lifting of content sourcing and curation, allowing you to tap into the power of UGC without risking brand consistency. Connect brands with a network of content creators to produce high-quality, on-brand social content that amplifies your brand story through their engaged followings. 

The process is simple — you provide your content goals, ideal audience, and core messaging, and Bazaarvoice handles the rest. We make sure that the content not only resonates with your audience but also follows the guidelines, feeling like a natural extension of your brand.

8. Don’t follow trends blindly

The pressure to jump on the next TikTok trend or Instagram fad is hard to ignore. And trends can be a powerful way to put your brand in front of new audiences, show off your personality, and humanize the company. But doing so without strategic thinking can muddle your brand and dilute its consistency.

Before adopting or adding your own spin to a social media trend, ask yourself whether it aligns with your values and messaging. Not every viral hashtag challenge or meme format fits the narrative your brand is building, and that’s okay. The key is to be selective and integrate trends that complement your brand identity rather than overshadow it.

If your brand is on the more sober and professional side, suddenly participating in a quirky dance will disorient your audience (yes, the headbanging dancer metaphor is still relevant here.) 

On the flip side, if a trend naturally aligns with your brand’s persona, it can be woven into your marketing strategy to feel organic and enhance engagement without sacrificing brand consistency.

3 examples of brand consistency 

What does brand consistency look like in action? Here’s what three successful brands can teach us about maintaining a cohesive narrative across channels, products, and marketing campaigns.

1. Duolingo

You know the bird, we know the bird, your grandma probably knows the bird. Duolingo’s green owl has become an emblematic figure for language learning worldwide. And it’s not just about the bird, but rather the personality that Duolingo consistently manifests in every platform. 

From its friendly push notifications to its playful social media presence, Duolingo maintains a cohesive narrative that’s equal parts instructive and entertaining. The brand leverages its quirky tone of voice and approachable visual style to create a learning experience that feels less like a chore and more like a conversation with a witty friend (who is sometimes a tad menacing).

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A post shared by Duolingo (@duolingo)

Whether it’s through their app or social media posts, Duolingo stays true to its core message: learning can be fun. It has turned language education on its head by keeping a consistent theme of gamification and light-heartedness that resonates with a broad audience. The signature green color palette and the playful illustrations are instantly recognizable, and also present across the website, app, emails, and social media.

Plus, even when the brand innovates, it’s imbued with the same personality that audiences have come to love. The Duolingo ABC app for kid literacy, for example, carries over the same brand aesthetics and ethos, providing familiarity and reliability to users.

2. Amazon

Amazon set the bar high for brand consistency across every single customer touchpoint. The iconic smile etched onto its logo represents what Amazon promises to deliver with every package, service, and interaction — customer joy and satisfaction.

This pledge to put customer happiness above all else is consistently present in all aspects of Amazon’s branding. Its website is intuitive and takes a no-frills approach to design and navigation, its voice maintains a professional and informative tone across channels, and every new business venture, from cloud computing to entertainment, remains unmistakably Amazon. 

The e-commerce giant only got this far because it walks the walk. Amazon doesn’t just say it’s customer obsessed, but proves it with fast and hassle-free deliveries, personalized recommendations, swift resolutions to customer issues, and generous return policies.

3. Glossier

We live in an aesthetics-obsessed world, particularly where social media is concerned. When cosmetics brand Glossier arrived on the scene, it quickly captured the hearts and wallets of its target audience — millennial and Gen Z women. And a lot of its success can be attributed to the aesthetically pleasing, pastel-glazed branding that spoke directly to what consumers craved.

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A post shared by Glossier (@glossier)

From the simple, functional, and feminine packaging to the minimalistic yet ethereal store decor, every aspect of Glossier’s branding reflects that it “was built to make beauty accessible and uncomplicated.” It hit the sweet spot in projecting an aspirational but very approachable persona, a “big sister” the audience looks up to and is more than happy to engage with.

The brand’s social media presence, particularly on Instagram and TikTok, was vital in establishing Glossier’s identity and building a community of mega fans that spread the word about the company. Each product picture aligns with the brand’s visual identity, while each tutorial further emphasizes Glossier’s ethos that beauty doesn’t have to be complicated.

From consistency to authenticity: the next step for your brand

Consistent branding is key to becoming a familiar and steady presence in your audience’s lives, feeds, and inboxes. But in a saturated and highly competitive market, consistency alone isn’t enough to thrive. Brands that truly wish to stand out and build lasting bonds with their customers have to be authentic.

Authenticity is the linchpin of customer trust. Today’s shoppers have more choices and power than ever, so it’s up to brands to be transparent, human, and reliable. For a complete set of strategies for building consumer trust with authenticity, try our e-book: The authenticity movement: building consumer trust.

Chapters:

1. What is multi-touch attribution?
2. How to collect the right data for multi-touch attribution
3. Multi-touch attribution and the customer journey
4. Types of multi-touch attribution model
5. Multi-touch attribution tools for a privacy-first world
6. Data won’t tell you everything

In a privacy-first world, legacy approaches to multi-touch attribution are neither accurate nor reliable. Ad services like Meta and Google continue to remove user-level tracking capabilities from their reports in response to regulations, and marketers who rely on third-party cookies to quantify the mid-funnel are doomed.

User-level data is less reliable than ever and low accuracy isn’t a winning start to data-driven decision-making.

So, what are data-driven marketers to do — go back to the siloed, single-touch attribution models of Web 2.0? In an omnichannel landscape where consumers interact with brands across channels prior to a conversion, single-touch attribution doesn’t make sense. An effective marketing strategy requires a cohesive set of tactics that build on each other’s efforts to create and maintain momentum in a focused direction. 

Single-touch attribution only allows marketers to look at one tactic at a time, usually in the discovery or conversion stages. Marketers who rely on single-touch attribution to understand multi-channel strategies risk myopic decision-making by ignoring critical mid-funnel tactics. Brands need a fuller picture of what’s contributing to success to make informed multi-channel decisions. 

What is multi-touch attribution?

Multi-touch attribution is a marketing model that measures every touchpoint on the customer journey by assigning a numerical value to each channel so that marketers can see the impact each touchpoint has on conversions.

The mid-funnel is hard to measure, but investing resources in quantifying the mid-funnel pays off. Mid-funnel marketing makes a brand’s acquisition efforts more successful by lifting conversion rates across multiple channels. It also smooths the path to retention by building advocacy early, improving LTV, and taking pressure off of customer acquisition. 

Multi-touch attribution — assigning value to every stage of the customer journey — is still an important framework, but today’s version is a far cry from the third-party cookie-based approach marketers used to love. 

How to collect the right data

Third-party data collected through pixels and cookies used to be the primary source of multi-touch attribution. If a marketer wanted to track user behavior across channels, devices, and platforms, they just had to add a snippet of code to their website. Traffic would get tagged with a Facebook or Google cookie automatically without the user’s consent. That cookie would follow the user around the web to watch what they did and retarget them with relevant ads. Marketers would aggregate data from third-party cookies into multi-touch attribution reports to understand user behavior and optimize customer journeys. 

Today, that same user-level data is harder to access. GDPR and CCPA prompted Google, Facebook, and other platforms to phase out third-party cookies, a move that forced marketers to abandon tried-and-true methods of multi-touch attribution. 

Data-driven marketers have started to adapt to the new analytics landscape, leveraging first-party data and zero-party data to quantify performance across the marketing funnel.

The distinction between zero-party data and first-party data is relatively new. Until recently, all data that a brand collected was considered “first-party.”

Today, first-party data refers to quantitative behaviors that a brand tracks through their interactions with customers. First-party cookies, tags, and urchin tracking modules (UTM) are the common methods consumer brands use to collect first-party data. Omnichannel retailers might also track brick-and-mortar store visits in tandem with e-commerce customers’ behavior, like cart abandonment and email clicks. GDPR-compliant cookies can replace some of the metrics marketers used to track using third-party cookies.

Using them properly requires a privacy-first strategy that asks for consent and allows users to request that their personal data be deleted.

Zero-party data refers to qualitative information a customer tells a brand voluntarily. Customer support conversations, product reviews, survey responses, and social media comments all fall under the umbrella of zero-party data. Qualitative customer data can be invaluable to a brand if leveraged properly, but finding meaningful insights in text can be challenging to marketers used to relying solely on quantitative reports.

In an era of increased regulations and phased-out tracking systems, the best consumer marketers rely on Bazaarvoice’s zero-party qualitative insights to illuminate buyer journeys and find opportunities for growth.

Multi-touch attribution and the customer journey

Using multi-touch attribution in multi-channel marketing uncovers tactics to increase conversion rate, reduce average time to purchase, and improve average order value (AOV). 

Marketing tactics don’t exist in a vacuum — they exist in a multi-channel ecosystem. Giving full credit to any one tactic through single-touch attribution, no matter where it lies in the customer journey, ignores everything else that plays a role in customer acquisition. A brand’s relationship with prospective customers in the mid-funnel is crucial to earning more business and increasing revenue.

In a multi-channel marketing landscape, multi-touch attribution is the key to understanding what’s working and why. Consider this fictional six-step purchasing journey for a $500 Dyson vacuum cleaner. 

Using first-touch attribution, a marketing team might conclude that paid search was a clear winner. But paid search isn’t the full story. Dyson might not drive as many conversions without social proof from UGC and affiliates, which first-touch attribution can’t illuminate. 

If Dyson relied only on last-touch attribution, the team might decide to build their marketing strategy on discounting — a tricky move for a premium market player. Dyson’s products are unapologetically expensive, a pricing strategy that works because of Dyson’s proprietary technology and strong brand. Heavy discounting would counteract Dyson’s brand superpowers instead of complementing them, creating a race to the bottom that nobody can win.

Multi-touch attribution gives Dyson a better understanding of their paths to conversion, which presents more options for experimentation. Since UGC is known to improve conversion rate and plays a role in their (fictional) customer journey, Dyson might decide to experiment with more UGC ads the following quarter to increase revenue.

Types of multi-touch attribution model

Consumer marketers use linear, J-shaped, inverse J-shaped, and U-shaped models to attribute performance across the customer journey.

Linear attribution gives equal weight to every stage along the customer journey and gives marketers a balanced view of the path to conversion. It gives more credit to mid-funnel tactics than other models, which can be useful when focusing on the mid-funnel for the first time. 

It’s a good starting point, but it might inflate the value of unimportant interactions and undervalue crucial tactics. Linear attribution modeling can therefore help marketers challenge their own assumptions about what works but is rarely accurate enough in the long term to work for every scenario.

A traditional J-shaped model assigns more credit to the last stages of the customer journey, while an inverse J-shaped model puts more weight on the beginning stages of a customer journey.

U-shaped models, also called position-based models, assign equal weight to first and last touch with a smaller percentage attributed to everything in between.

Let’s look at how each type of multi-touch attribution would assign value to our fictional $500 vacuum buyer’s journey.

The attribution model a brand chooses depends on their scenario, priorities, and philosophies. Teams that are focused on building discovery might use an inverse j-shaped model to understand the beginning stages of their customer journey, while teams that are focused on the mid-funnel might apply a linear model to generate insights. 

Leveraging a multi-touch attribution model in multi-channel marketing

Here’s a scenario: a children’s apparel brand wants to find growth opportunities for their e-commerce channel. 

Using first-touch attribution, the team concludes that unbranded paid search traffic has a higher average order value (AOV) than customers acquired through paid social but generates less revenue overall.

If they stopped there, the apparel brand might conclude that despite the lower volume, paid search is a better use of their time and money. That could make sense but would increase end-of-month (EOM) revenue by a relatively small margin.

Baseline EOM Revenue: $212,350

Pairing a multi-touch attribution model with a first-touch report gives the team more options. 

When they run a buyer’s journey report in Segment, the team discovers that higher-AOV buyers from paid search traffic tend to visit a testimonial page on the store in the days preceding a purchase. The page highlights reviews from happy customers and is linked on product pages. 

Since the brand is looking at performance from an acquisition standpoint, they decide to use an inverse J-shaped model to understand the path to conversion from paid search, a high-AOV customer journey. 

After comparing the relative value of each interaction to those from lower-AOV buyers’ journeys, the team decides to direct paid social traffic to the testimonial page through a retargeting campaign, which might increase AOV from that channel.

Enter Scenario B: Leverage UGC, in this case ratings and reviews, to improve AOV and get more revenue from paid social. The team hypothesizes that AOV from paid social will increase to $99 as a result of the experiment. If it works, the experiment would increase revenue by a greater increment than Scenario A. 

Baseline EOM Revenue: $212,350

Multi-touch attribution puts complementary tactics in context, giving a team what it needs to make nuanced decisions with the constraints of their market and the strengths of their organization. 

Multi-touch attribution tools for a privacy-first world

Bazaarvoice’s suite of omnichannel commerce tools is the best way to collect zero-party data. 

Hardys Wines, the UK’s #1 wine brand, uses Bazaarvoice to collect zero-party data through ratings and reviews, two of the most important contributors to a purchasing decision. After syndicating reviews across retailers through Bazaarvoice’s platform, Hardys increased their review volume by 2,300% and improved their average star rating from 4.32 to 4.59.

Since many online shoppers filter results to show products rated 4.5 stars or higher, Hardys was able to get in front of more potential customers, building revenue across multiple channels with one mid-funnel tactic. Insights & Reports inside Bazaarvoice helps brands like Hardys maximize the value of zero-party data.

Pair Bazaarvoice’s tools with an owned marketing platform like Klaviyo to collect behavioral data that complements zero-party qualitative insights. Klaviyo’s customer profiles allow brands to map buyer journeys at the user level and then deliver a personalized experience through their suite of email and marketing tools. 

Leverage aggregation tools like Segment to quantify the customer journey across channels and uncover purchasing patterns at scale. Segment integrates first-party data flows from multiple sources, connecting insights to help consumer brands understand common buyers’ journeys and attribute performance across the entire purchasing journey.

With Segment’s Linked Profiles, consumer brands can segment customers based on affinity, buying patterns, and sentiment, getting more specific with multi-touch attribution to drive engagement and loyalty.

Data won’t tell you everything

Attribution models are just that — models. Every model has flaws, vulnerabilities, and blind spots. Brands that take quantitative data at face value without leaving room for nuance, insight, and intuition incur more risk, not more safety, in their overreliance on data. 

Multi-touch attribution is not perfect — even in the days prior to GDPR, multi-touch attribution models were never an unbiased picture of reality nor a foolproof blueprint for success. Every business uses a slightly different approach to marketing attribution — none are “wrong,” but all of them reflect different priorities and intrinsic biases.

Approaching multi-touch attribution like a model rather than a prescription is key to opening the door to strategic conversations and meaningful insights.

For a well-rounded view of customer behavior, pair quantitative attribution models with qualitative user data from Bazaarvoice. Ratings, reviews, and user-generated content are a goldmine of insights that consumer brands can leverage to understand their audience.

Bazaarvoice’s Insights & Reports tools equip brands with sentiment data, social analytics, and customer feedback trends to optimize the mid-funnel and improve conversion across channels.

A well-designed channel sales strategy will deliver optimal results, helping you take your sales to the next level. Specifically, having a rich product detail page full of user-generated content (UGC) will create a higher-trafficked, more-engaging, and higher-performing product page.

And, partnering with retailers will help you reach new audiences. 

What is a sales channel?

A sales channel is where consumers meet your brand, whether for the first or the hundredth time. They’re the sales strategy for your organization, and they include direct sales channels, indirect sales channels, and distribution channels.

While an omnichannel experience boosts customer acquisition, it’s crucial to focus on the channels that work best for your brand. Developing your channel sales strategy and getting your products on retailers’ digital or physical store shelves will deepen connections with your existing shoppers and inspire new ones.

What are the top sales channels?

There’s a number of different sales channels, their importance varying depending on your type of business. Generally, the top sales channels are:

• E-commerce. Any transaction that’s completed online
• Retail. When a business sells through another store, like selling your goods at Samsclub.com
• Marketplaces. These include traditional marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy, or modern marketplaces like social media platforms or Shopify
• Direct-to-consumer. For example, buying Nike shorts directly from Nike’s website
• Wholesale. Selling your products, usually in bulk, to businesses who then retail them

How to boost your sales channels strategy for retail

If you’re a brand selling at retail, you’ll want tips on how to increase sales and drive conversion at key retailers. Here’s the top three ways to optimize your retail channel sales strategy.

1. Use visuals to enhance product detail pages

Product detail pages (PDPs) are the web pages where shoppers go when they want detailed information about a specific product on a retailer’s site. They give shoppers everything they need to know about something so they can buy it with confidence: colors, dimensions, material, shipping details, and a call-to-action, such as a “buy now” button. 

Well-crafted PDPs are where shoppers go to actually purchase. They help build brand trust, generate new customers, and minimize returns and complaints.  

Boost PDPs with UGC photos 

Visual content is a crucial component of a PDP. Professional product photos are great, but photos from real shoppers are better at connecting with consumers. Featuring visual UGC, including photos and videos, gives consumers a glimpse at how products look, work, and feel in real life. 

Based on our own research, visual UGC on product pages can generate a 45% revenue lift, a 31% conversion jump, and a 16% higher order value. And images from social media make shoppers 6x more likely to buy from a PDP. 

So, how do you collect vthis isual UGC? There’s several quick ways to do so, including review request emails, searching social media, and sampling programs.

Use sampling to fill PDPs with visuals

Product sampling — where you give consumers a product to try in exchange for a review — can really boost UGC volumes. With our product sampling campaigns, we’ve found that when they sample something, 63% of consumers purchased the product again, 50% said it became a new staple in their lives, and 87% recommended the product or brand to others. 

From a results standpoint, it’s been a positive experience to see that we can get 10-15 reviews for new products quickly

Hannah Kredich, Category Specialist, Petco

Petco’s Spotted Sampling Program, for instance, delivers crates, pet food, collars, and treats from brands to pet parents in exchange for honest reviews at Petco.com. The campaign has increased review volume by 405%, generated a 9% lift in review ratings, and brought in a slew of adorable pet photos — revving up brand and retailers’ visual UGC. 

Display UGC across channels 

Whenever you collect UGC, make sure the visuals align with your brand and resonate with your consumers across different retail channels. To maintain trust with shoppers, be sure to label any influencer content as such and establish a strategy for moderating content to weed out fake reviews. Or, you can work with a content moderating partner to help. 

Syndicating visual UGC — when you distribute reviews and photos on retailer websites — lets you reach our network of 1.3 billion shoppers with exciting and authentic content, everywhere they are. Our retailers see 20x more shopper traffic with retail syndication. 

Content syndication helps brands elevate shopping experiences. It ensures you have plenty of high-quality content on your PDPs that help shoppers make informed, confident purchasing decisions. Consumers perceive visual UGC as authentic and trustworthy, akin to getting a recommendation from a friend or family member. 

Enhancing PDPs with high-quality visuals can significantly improve your channel sales strategy by increasing conversions, building trust, and providing a better shopping experience across direct and indirect sales channels.

For indirect sales channels like retailers, providing top-notch visuals makes it easier for them to sell your product, improving your relationship and positioning with these partners. It also helps them maintain a level of quality on their platform. 

2. Enhance relationships with online retailers

Maximizing your retail sales channels depends on building and maintaining solid relationships with retailers. Digital and physical shelf space is competitive, and retailers are a crucial player in your success. Their goal is to drive sales and profits, and they do that by having a firm grasp on who their customers are and what they want. 

Remember, flexibility and adaptability are key when collaborating with retailers to maximize the benefits of your partnership.  Most already have decades of experience working with brands and know what works and what doesn’t. 

Use UGC to stand out with retailers 

UGC helps you tell your brand story and shows retailers what you’re all about. Collecting reviews and customer photos, via sampling, social media, and review request emails, helps you gain insights into what shoppers think about you and your products and demonstrates how your products perform. 

Rug and home decor brand Nourison worked to grow its retail partners by expanding and improving the content mix on its PDPs. Nourison relies on UGC to help shoppers make informed decisions, since its customers have unique needs around sizes, styles, and prices. 

Nourison syndicates UGC to 32 retailers worldwide, including Target.com, and brings major value to its retail partners. Since it’s devoted time to strengthening relationships with retailers, the brand has seen a 4x lift in conversions and a 3x lift in revenue. 

Create win-win retailer relationships

Retailer partnerships are mutually beneficial. They increase brand and retailer awareness, for one. When your fans know they can get your products at major retailers, they might pick them up on their usual Target or Walmart run. That’s a win-win. 

You’re helping bring your existing customers to the retailers. And new shoppers will find you while browsing for other things at their favorite stores. 

Another benefit is that retailer relationships can reduce customer returns. UGC influences purchases, and displaying feedback from real shoppers and photos of your products being worn by real people or used in day-to-day settings will help shoppers better understand whether an item will meet their needs. 

Co-marketing is a crucial aspect of partnerships between brands and retailers – it helps raise awareness and drive growth for both parties. It’s also a great approach for smaller businesses with lean marketing teams. By collaborating on a shared campaign, brands and retailers can leverage each other’s strengths and reach new audiences. Your customers, who already trust you, will shift some of their trust to the retailers you’ve partnered with, and vice versa.

3. Analyze and benchmark performance insights at retail

How will you know if your retail sales channel is working? You have to monitor its performance and analyze the data. Regular auditing and analysis make all the difference. The better your products sell, the more likely a retailer will keep stocking them.

Assess product performance 

Walmart helps its brands understand how their UGC and products are performing on its website. The retailer’s Content Quality Score (CQS) offers clear, objective standards for the content on brands’ PDPs, including style guides for every product category that they sell. 

The CQS measures your content against those guides, which lets you easily see what elements you’re missing. It also tells you where you can improve. These analytics can help you make data-driven decisions about how to improve your content, removing the guesswork.

Another way to assess your performance is via Bazaarvoice’s Premium Network Insights, which includes sentiment analysis, UGC performance tracking, social analytics, and competitor insights. You can optimize your retail sales channels by better understanding and monitoring what customers are saying about your products. 

Uncovering insights can help you drive higher click-through rates, product discovery, and, ultimately, purchases.

U.K.-based retailer Argos uses sampling to generate UGC quickly. Allowing shoppers to test new products before they launch helps the retailer collect and feature reviews before a product is even available to purchase. 

The sooner Argos can collect UGC, the sooner it can identify opportunities to improve products and marketing messaging. When online shoppers interact with UGC, Argos sees conversion lifts of 53% on mobile, 51% on desktop, and 45% on its app. 

Analyze and optimize data 

Examining data from your UGC campaigns can tell you how consumers feel about your products and brand as a whole. You can learn which products are performing well and which need improvement.  

You can keep track of how shoppers are engaging with UGC and other features of your PDPs, and identify how it affects sales. We’ve found that across our network, brands see a 136% conversion rate life when shoppers interact with UGC on best-in-class sites.

You’ll also see which PDPs lack adequate review coverage, so you’ll know when to beef up your UGC collection strategies, whether it’s via sampling or sending post-purchase emails.  

Petco collaborates with the brands that it sells to collect content and engage with shoppers — syndication accounts for about 80% of the retailer’s total review volume. 

The revenue-per-product rate for dog food products with one review is 20% higher than no reviews and 43% higher when a product gets at least five reviews. Overall, conversion rates are 8% higher for consumers who engage with reviews on Petco’s website, and revenue per visitor is 15% higher. 

How to optimize UGC to boost your retail sales channels

Building a robust channel sales strategy for retail is not just an option for brands — it’s a must. Understanding and optimizing key elements such as enhancing PDPs with compelling visuals and other UGC, fostering meaningful relationships with retailers, and regularly analyzing performance metrics, can unlock your retail channel sales’ full potential.

These best practices will not only put products in front of shoppers but also build trust, deepen engagement, and create a holistic shopping experience that turns first-time buyers into loyal customers. With the right strategy and tools, you can scale your reach, boost revenue, and secure your place as a favorite among new and existing shoppers.

Bazaarvoice’s unique retailer programs are a great place to optimize your UGC strategy and boost your retail channel sales. Click the retailer(s) you sell at to learn more:

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Where brands and retailers should lean in next with Zarina Stanford

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Just like your trip, your customer’s journey has a beginning, a middle, and (eventually) an end. Throughout that journey, they’ll have experiences with your brand like visiting your website, using your mobile app, or interacting with a social media post. These are called digital touchpoints.

Each of these touchpoints is crucial to forming a seamless, consistent customer experience that’s informative and enjoyable. If one doesn’t go well, you risk losing that customer.

Design your digital touchpoints so they’ll give your customer a seamless experience, with quick, easy access to the information they need. And in turn, they’ll feel valued and connected to your brand.

Chapters:

1. Start by mapping the customer journey
2. How to optimize the essential digital touchpoints
3. Take your customers for a smooth ride at every digital touchpoint

Start by mapping the customer journey

You need to map out that buyer journey to determine your ideal digital touchpoints. Sticking with the road trip analogy: You want to get from point A to point B, but you’ll need to stop for gas and food — and maybe a little sightseeing — along the way. Those stops are the (digital) touchpoints in your customer’s journey.

For example, the mega gas station and convenience store chain Buc-ee’s is famous for providing excellent service and a great experience (especially their clean bathrooms!) for travelers. Make your digital touchpoints so amazing that they deliver that same level of service each time.

To design the best touchpoints, identify the most common ways people begin their journey with you and interact with your brand. Once you have those, create a map of your customer journey so that you can optimize each touchpoint along the way.

How to optimize the essential digital touchpoints

Not everyone was born a ramblin’ man who enjoys a long and winding road. Some people prefer to get to their destination as soon as possible. Think of your customers the same way. You want your digital touchpoints to, well, point the customer down the easiest route toward making a purchase. To do that, you’ll need to optimize each digital channel for the best possible customer experience.

1. Search engines

In the Year of our Lord 2023, a lot of people are making purchases online — last year, there were 268 million e-commerce shoppers. And if those people are going to buy from you, they have to find you first. 

Back to the road trip: If you’re trying to find a destination, but it’s down some nameless dirt road and doesn’t have a visible sign, you’ll have a tough time getting there. But if the address is clearly displayed and it’s easy to get to, you’ll find it. 

Think of your search presence the same way. If it’s not optimized, your customers can’t find you to start their journey with you. Make sure your search presence is optimized with these key elements. 

Google Business Profile

If you don’t have this set up, you should — and fast. 87% of consumers used Google in 2022 to look for and evaluate local businesses, and Google also holds the title of being the most trusted review platform. 

With a Google Business Profile, you can easily communicate with your customers. In addition to sharing basic company information, you can also showcase products and services. (And your customers can even message you directly.) 

A complete Google Business Profile helps you appear in local search results and Google Maps, which is essential if you have brick-and-mortar locations too by the way. One of the best perks? Customers can easily leave you reviews. If you’re managing your relationships with them, that means 5-star reviews that anyone who’s browsing can see.

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of any online presence and impacts multiple digital touchpoints. It’s optimizing a website to make it more visible in search engine results. SEO helps make it easier for customers to find your website, which helps drive organic traffic to your website. (And that’s the kind of traffic you want to have — unlike a holiday-weekend backup on I-95.) 

SEO also helps improve the quality of the traffic, as it attracts leads who are already interested in the products or services you offer. To optimize your site, you’ll need to:

• Research relevant keywords. Identify keywords and phrases that potential customers are likely to use when they’re looking for your products or services
• Optimize your content. Use those keywords and phrases in the text on your website, including titles, headings, body copy, and meta tags 
• Obtain quality backlinks. Build links to your site from other quality websites, like blogs and other websites related to your industry
• Monitor your progress. Track your rankings for the keywords you are targeting and analyze your website’s traffic so you can identify which of those keywords are bringing in the most qualified traffic

Paid search ads

If you have the budget, build a paid search campaign. People don’t usually scroll too far through the search results, so they’re more likely to see you if you’re paying for a top position. For the best experience, you need to determine who you’d like to reach with your paid search ads and then tailor your campaign to their needs. 

Choose keywords that are relevant to your audience and your business that send visitors to landing pages on your website that correspond to those keywords. If someone clicks on your ad, you want them to see content that relates to what they were searching for, or else they’ll click away. 

Always monitor your campaign so you can make adjustments when needed. It’s also a good idea to A/B test different ad formats by switching your verbiage around to see which ones resonate with your audience. Keep optimizing your paid ads campaign to make sure you get the best possible ROI.

2. Social media

Another place people look for items to purchase is social media — over half of shoppers have been inspired by social media to make a purchase, making it an essential digital touchpoint on your customer’s journey.

Think about your target audience and where they’re most active. Are you selling to Gen Z, who are most likely to find you on TikTok? Or are you marketing to millennials? (In which case, you’d want to focus on Facebook and Instagram.)

No matter what platform you use, you need to post content that both promotes your product and resonates with your target audience. To reach even more people, use hashtags that relate to your posts. For example, if you sell board games that would appeal to people who play Dungeons and Dragons, you could use hashtags like #dnd or #tabletopgames. 

Another effective social media strategy is to encourage people to post their own content related to your brand, referred to as user-generated content (UGC). Interact with people who post UGC, as well as the people who comment. And be sure to answer any messages you get in your inbox so customers know you value their feedback.

3. Your website and product pages

If you stop at a convenience store on a road trip and the inside is dirty and the bathrooms are out of toilet paper, that probably isn’t going to be a great experience. It’s the same for your digital touchpoints. You want your website to make a good impression on your visitors. To do that, follow some of these best practices.

Make your site user-friendly

Your site should be intuitive and user-friendly. Don’t make your visitors hunt for the resources they need. Present the information with a clear, visually appealing design that’s easy to navigate.

Also, make sure the site is optimized for mobile devices. 91% of Americans 49 and under say they use phones to shop, so if your site doesn’t load properly on their phones, you won’t impress those users very much. 

Display your calls-to-action (CTAs) clearly, too, to help guide visitors to the next step. Make the button a different color, bold the text, or make the CTA button interactive, as Fly by Jing does.

Post relevant, up-to-date content

If your site is full of content that your target audience can relate to, you’re more likely to keep them engaged. Old, outdated content will lead your site visitors to think your site isn’t current and not keeping up with recent trends, and they’ll bounce. 

Post content regularly, like new blogs, product tutorials from your customer support team, or recent customer reviews with a tool like Ratings and Reviews. 

Along with new content, share information related to your brand and your customers’ pain points with an FAQs page. Give your site users everything they need in one place so they aren’t hunting for answers. 

Optimize your product pages

Each of your product pages should be optimized too. Provide detailed and informative product descriptions that accurately portray your products’ features, benefits, and overall value (and hit those important keywords!). Use professional, high-quality photos of your product from multiple angles to give customers a better understanding of what they are buying.

Or if you have any UGC available, feature that as well. Leverage those customer videos and reviews so you can use the power of social proof and drive your page visitors toward buying your products. 

4. Online reviews

Online reviews — whether they’re on your site, social media, or Google Business Profile — are important for people looking to purchase, but it’s also a vital digital touchpoint for you. Interact with your reviewers. Thank customers who leave positive reviews, and respond to negative reviews by assuring them you appreciate their feedback and are addressing any issues.

Responding to and engaging with your reviewers shows you care about customer experience. That helps build trust in your brand. Considering that 88% of customers use reviews to discover and evaluate products across the customer journey, it’s a good idea to make these customer interactions a priority.

5. Email marketing

If you’ve ever taken a trip between Atlanta, GA, and Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, TN, you’ve seen billboard after billboard that says “See Ruby Falls” advertising this natural phenomenon. The idea is to pique your curiosity enough to get you to take a small detour to visit the attraction.

Think of your email campaigns like that very specific reference. You’re sending your customer different “billboards” to advertise your products and services throughout their digital journey. And each email needs to present a compelling reason why your customer should continue working with you or purchasing your products. Build up their curiosity and FOMO along the way.

Your emails are powerful, important digital touchpoints. If you already have their email address, it means they interacted with you at some point. Not only that, but they volunteered to receive emails from you.

Email marketing is also a good opportunity to personalize the customer experience — something today’s shoppers want. Types of emails you can send include:

• Welcome emails. When a new customer signs up to get email updates from you, they likely did it to get a discount. Send them that discount code in this email and thank them for choosing your brand
• Newsletters. Don’t just let customer email addresses sit there unused. Send regular newsletters sharing information about your products, highlighting new blog posts, or promoting upcoming sales
• Product updates: If you make major updates to a product, let customers know so they aren’t surprised. For example, say you sell tumblers and have made a change to the accompanying lids. Letting your customers know will not only prevent confusion, it will also help them feel valued and “in the loop”
• Post-purchase emails. Any time someone makes a purchase from your site, send them a thank-you email. But don’t just leave it at that — give them a reason to come back. Offer some kind of discount code on their next purchase 
• Upselling/cross-selling. Say someone buys a tumbler from your company. Send them a cross-selling email promoting your related products like stainless steel straws or extra lids. Or, if they bought a 20-ounce tumbler, try and upsell them with an email about your 30-ounce tumbler
• Sales and special offers. It’s nice to send your customers holiday greetings — it’s also an opportunity to advertise your sales and special promotions. Whether it’s a Black Friday sale or a Fourth of July blowout, send emails to make sure your current customers are the first to know
• Feedback surveys. Measuring customer sentiment is important for managing your reputation. You want to know how customers are feeling after they buy something from you, right? Send them a survey requesting their feedback and sweeten the deal a little by offering them some kind of perk for completing the survey, like a discount code

6. Conversational commerce

Imagine: You’re on your road trip, jamming out to your ’80s playlist when someone calls you, interrupting your flow. That’s exactly why 75% of millennials avoid phone calls (plus, they think they’re too time-consuming). And, tbh, many phone calls could be texts instead.

Think of your customer service in the same light. Talking to someone on the phone does take a while, and no one likes to be on hold (unless your hold music is full of awesome ’80s bangers). That’s where utilizing conversational commerce comes in. Offering live chat on your site is a great way to relate to consumers who just want to get their questions resolved quickly.

Choose a reliable live chat provider (like Talkative) that can handle your live chat, and create a list of answers to frequently asked questions so your live chat agent has those on hand to respond quickly. If you think you may have high volumes of chat requests, you can also use chatbots, which are AI-powered bots that can resolve basic customer issues and escalate the more complex questions to your staff. 

You can also proactively offer assistance with a chat pop-up so customers know that the resource is available if they need it. (While we’re at it: it’s also a good idea to also use live chat in your mobile app if you have one.) 

7. Mobile apps

Speaking of mobile apps… We all live with our smartphones in our pockets. Or, more likely, our hands (but not while we’re driving, of course!). A mobile app makes for a perfect digital touchpoint because they can help you reach your customers where they are. 

You’ll want to design your app so it’s easy to use and compatible with both iOS and Android. Make sure to test for any bugs before launching and before sending out any updates — you don’t want your page on the Apple and Google Play stores to be flooded with negative reviews because an update affected your app’s functionality.

Use push notifications to your advantage and inform people about any special offers, product updates, or discount codes.

8. SMS messaging

Ever been friends with an over-texter? They send messages again and again and again (which can get super annoying if you’re hooked up to Apple CarPlay). Don’t be that person if a customer signs up to receive text updates from you. 

Instead, make sure your SMS marketing messages are thoughtfully planned out and only inform customers of important info — like sales and promotional offers. 

9. Loyalty programs

Do you have that one friend who is always down to road trip with you? They’re your #rideordie — that’s how you should think of your most loyal customers, too. Reward those awesome people with a customer loyalty program that includes tons of perks and exclusive discounts. 

Consider using a point-based system, which increases your sales and motivates customers to buy. If they reach a certain point level, then they get to redeem it for some kind of free merchandise or a huge discount on their next order.

Take your customers for a smooth ride at every digital touchpoint

Interacting with your customers and providing them with a seamless experience across all digital touchpoints across the entire customer journey from beginning to end requires the right tools.

Use Bazaarvoice to get insights and reports about your marketing so that you can continually optimize your digital (and physical) touchpoints to prevent your customers from goin’ on the road again — to a different store.

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Masterclass: How to engage with your consumers at every stage of the buyer’s journey

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Your product page is your new storefront.

But there’s more to offering a great digital experience than an intuitive checkout process or generous return policies or some nice clipart of puppies. Today’s consumers expect only the best from the brands they support. And they’re willing to pay for it.

What is a digital experience?

A digital experience is an interaction between a user (like a customer or partner) and a business that’s made possible thanks to digital technologies (like AI or a website).

If you want to provide an excellent e-commerce experience and meet shoppers where they are, you’ll need to invest in your digital experience.

How to create a digital experience for your customers

In a recent survey by Adobe, 73% of consumers said positive experiences play a major role in their brand loyalties and 42% said they would pay more for friendlier, more welcoming brand encounters.

To meet the needs of these shoppers, e-commerce brands and retailers can look to their brick-and-mortar channels (or their brick-and-mortar competition) for inspiration.

Bring the social proof of brick-and-mortar shopping online 

Perhaps the biggest benefit brick-and-mortar stores have over e-commerce retailers is the sheer amount of social proof inherent to the in-store shopping experience.

What is social proof? When we’re in a store, we can see what other people have in their carts. If we’re feeling chatty, we might even ask another shopper what they think about a product. Shop assistants are also on-hand to answer questions and offer recommendations.

The best way to bring that social proof to your omnichannel experience is to pack your website and product pages with user-generated content (UGC). By sharing photos, reviews, and ratings from other customers, you’re giving shoppers authentic, honest information they might otherwise not find in a typical product description.

You’re also building trust. Almost 80% of customers say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions. When compared to other forms of social proof, advice from other customers is considered more trustworthy. In one survey, 78% of consumers said they trust online reviews as much as a recommendation from their friends and family. 

E-commerce giant Hairhouse revamped its reviews strategy by featuring customer reviews across its digital touchpoints. Since implementing the new strategy, the brand’s web pages containing reviews have seen a 35% lift in conversion and a 15% increase in average order value compared to those with no reviews.

This social proof doesn’t just bring the perks of in-store shopping online. It also provides important data and insights that can help you improve your omnichannel experience.

Use technology to replicate the brick-and-mortar experience

Another (major) perk to brick-and-mortar shopping is the ability to experience a product before buying it. Pick it up. Touch it. Feel it. Smell it (for you scented candle lovers). But new tech has made it easier for innovative e-commerce retailers to give their online shoppers a more immersive digital experience.

Emerging techs like generative AI and augmented reality bring the physical world to the digital world. Several eyewear brands, for example, now let shoppers virtually “try on” their glasses and furniture stores are also using augmented reality to let shoppers reimagine their living rooms.

Shoe brand TOMS, who donate a pair of shoes for every purchase, take it a step further and enable shoppers to meet a child who received a pair of shoes using VR technology. 

And everyone from luxury handbag brands to outdoor kitchen manufacturers is offering 3D product tours. Several early adopters of 3D product tours have reported a 12% increase in conversions. Even a simple video demo can increase conversions by as much as 85%.

The bottom line is, the more confident you can make a shopper feel about an item, the more likely they are to add it to their cart. You can even use VR and AR in-store to drive traffic to your digital channels. 98% of consumers value experience over price — so give them one.

Make browsing easier for online shoppers

It’s no secret to brick-and-mortars that browsing often leads to impulse purchases. The “treat yoself” mentality. That’s why gum and magazines are such staples of the in-store checkout experience. 

But with the majority of today’s impulse purchases happening online, e-commerce brands also need to optimize their digital aisles.

One way to encourage browsing is to promote related products and product categories. For example, if a shopper is perusing vegan cheeses, chances are they’ll also be interested in meat alternatives and cruelty-free products. 

How you organize your online store can also make it easy for customers to explore your product line. If you’re a home improvement brand, consider grouping products by project — for example, “bathroom renovations.” You could also target customers by their expertise. Give weekend warriors their own landing page while encouraging accomplished tradespeople to explore bigger, more difficult projects. 

But by far, the best way to encourage browsing is to make your site easy to use. Give customers filtering tools to help them find the exact items they need. Make your navigation as intuitive as possible. Ensure your search bar is easy to find. 

Make the digital experience more personal

In a normal world, your in-store shoppers would be welcomed by a friendly sales associate who knows their name, greets them with a warm smile, and makes recommendations based on past purchases. Thanks to all the data you’re able to capture about your customers, you can now offer this exact experience online.

You don’t need an expensive tech stack to understand who your shoppers are and what motivates them. Integrating cookies into your site can reveal powerful insights and create a more personalized experience for repeat visitors. 

Data from your email list, in-store transactions, and point-of-sale systems can also help you find new opportunities to make online customers feel seen and appreciated. (Happy birthday discounts, anyone?)

The extra effort is worth it. One study found that nearly 90% of customers reported feeling more positive about brands that offer personalized user experiences. And 40% said they bought something more expensive because their shopping experience was so expertly customized to their needs. 

Raising the bar on the digital experience

By pairing the perks of visiting a brick-and-mortar with the convenience of online shopping, you can create the best omnichannel experience for your customers — and drive significant long-term revenue for your company.

The shift in consumer shopping habits has really raised the bar for e-commerce brands and retailers. E-commerce giants like Walmart are offering the best, most personalized digital experiences to ensure they’re the ones that thrive in the months and years ahead.

See how Walmart is doing it in our on-demand masterclass: Foundations for omnichannel success on Walmart.com.

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The state of omnichannel retail

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This guide will walk through the best tactics to retain customers (and win over new ones) to supercharge your retail growth in 2023.

Chapters:

1. Deliver an exceptional customer experience
2. Implement a customer loyalty program
3. Personalize the shopper journey
4. Build a private label strategy
5. Supercharge retail growth with retailer loyalty

Mass merchants and other retailers have an uphill battle in the world of retail. In addition to today’s challenges like shifting consumer shopping behavior and rapid technology advancements, it’s particularly challenging for retailers, like Walmart, Lowe’s, or any grocery chain, to compete for customer loyalty.

Every retailer wants consumers to consistently make purchases from their business, rather than from their competitors’. However, many retailers often sell the same products, so consumers could really shop anywhere. For example, you can buy Crest toothpaste at a very long list of retailers like Target, Kroger, or Amazon. When it comes to retailers, consumers are often loyal to the overall shopping experience, rather than the products a retailer sells.

Retailers can foster customer loyalty by approaching shoppers with a number of different tactics. From private label brands to retail partnerships to offering unique experiences, today’s leading retailers are framing a retail revolution. So, how exactly are they staying innovative and differentiating themselves from competitors and how can you do the same? Here’s how.

Deliver an exceptional customer experience

The term “customer experience” gets thrown around a lot in the retail industry, so much so that it has started to lose meaning. But it’s imperative for today’s retailers to provide a positive, seamless end-to-end shopping experience. That means that digital and physical worlds should be integrated, and retailers should be able to track consumers across every touch point at every stage in the buyer journey.

For many companies this is easier said than done. But there are those who are ahead of the pack. Here’s three tangible ways retailers are working to improve the customer experience and keep customers coming back for more.

i) In-store

For all the benefits of online shopping, the major downside is the inability to see, feel, and try a product before purchase. Shoppers must go in-store for that. In an effort to bring the convenience and efficiency of online into the brick-and-mortar experience, many retailers have changed the way they design and run their stores. The main goal: to make the in-store experience as smooth and easy to navigate as possible.

In our recent research, nearly half of shoppers reported that it is important or very important for retailers to provide digital in-store experiences like auto-checkout, online ordering, and mobile offers, all of which make shopping easier and quicker. The biggest example of this is the adoption of buy online, pick up in-store services (BOPUS).

According to eMarketer, more than half of North American retailers offer BOPUS service. This option lets consumers make a purchase online and pick it up in a local store of their choosing. Consumers save on shipping fees and, if necessary, can return or exchange products right away. Retailers also benefit from saved shipping expenses and from getting consumers in-store, where they are likely to make additional purchases.

Similarly, major retailers have rolled out mobile checkout. Nothing deters consumers from making a purchase like a crowded store with a slow moving checkout line. Mobile checkout lets customers make their purchases quickly, often through a retailer app, without having to wait in line or interact with store employees. Mobile checkout was slowly adopted by smaller retailers over the last five years, but now mass merchants like Nordstrom, Macy’s, Kohl’s, and Target are catching on.

ii) E-commerce

These are just a few examples of the way that retailers are adjusting their in-store strategy. By making the in-store customer experience easy, quick, and pleasant, retailers are able to draw shoppers back to brick-and-mortar stores. But what about the 30% of shoppers who shop online once or more a week?

Over half of consumers would have less loyalty toward a retailer if the e-commerce experience isn’t as enjoyable as in-person. Site speed, UX, and product page design are all important but retailers who practice proactive customer service and implement on their e-commerce sites will stand out amongst competitors.

That’s because outstanding customer service is one of the leading drivers of retailer loyalty and there’s many methods of implementing it into your online presence. Live chat, FAQ pages, and questions & answers all improve customer acquisition and loyalty. Q&A functions on product pages especially deliver, with conversion rates increasing by as much as 98%.

Your shoppers expect an exceptional shopping experience wherever they shop, across every touch point. To retain the loyalty of these shoppers, you need to focus on an omnichannel retail strategy and meet shoppers wherever they are.

According to our own global research, 64% of consumers shop a hybrid of online and in-store. Ensuring you deliver exceptional customer service on both channels will ensure you retain the retailer loyalty of your customers.

Implement a retailer customer loyalty program

Once you delight consumers with your shopping experience, there’s additional ways to keep them coming back. One of the best methods is through a loyalty program. These programs track and incentivize purchasing behavior and engagement, rewarding customers for their retailer loyalty.

The more a customer shops, spends, and engages with a retailer, the more they receive in return — 80% of shoppers have spent more money with a brand to unlock a reward. Loyalty programs should incorporate customer touchpoints from across all channels, so that both retailers and users can see a full picture of the customer relationship.

Today, loyalty programs are a dime a dozen. According to The Loyalty Report, the average North American consumer is enrolled in 14 different loyalty programs. And a study from L2 showed that more than half of the brands surveyed had implemented programs. Despite their prevalence, traditional rewards programs are seeing declining engagement. For these programs to succeed today, they need to be more about relationships than about transactions.

Retailer loyalty programs still have a place in the customer experience, with 83% of consumers saying they make them more likely to continue doing business with a brand. Retailers must improve upon traditional models to create a program that both incentivizes and connects with customers.

It’s much easier and more profitable to convert existing customers than new ones, so driving loyalty remains extremely important for retailers. Retailer loyalty programs that are confusing, inconvenient, or just plain unexciting will not encourage repeat purchases from customers, and they may even lose you customers in this age of infinite choices.

They should be easy to use, include non-monetary rewards, and targeted to users’ preferences. Here’s a few examples for inspiration.

Simple: Sephora

Sephora’s Beauty Insider program gives members one point for every dollar spent, and those points are redeemed for cosmetic products at varying price points. The point system and program tiers are easy to understand, and the redemption process, done at the register in-store or at checkout online, is straightforward.

In addition to points-based rewards, Sephora also offers makeovers, handpicked gifts, seasonal discounts, and more to their most loyal customers. The more money you spend, the more rewards you are able to access.

Experiential: REI

For today’s shoppers, it’s not all about money. Consumers want to be able to connect with brands on an emotional level. A great example of a retailer that has a values-based rewards program is outdoor outfitter REI.

REI offers a traditional co-op model in which members receive discounts and special pricing, but they also have preferred access to camps, outdoor training, and equipment rentals. In addition to these experiences, money from the REI co-op program is used to support various non-profits that protect the outdoors.

The REI loyalty program is a prime example of using a combination of monetary and experiential rewards to build retailer loyalty.  

Personal: Nordstrom

Once a consumer makes an initial connection or purchase, they want to feel known and understood by a retailer. With more retailers and loyalty programs competing for their attention, consumers expect personalized and shared interactions across the loyalty ecosystem. To provide personalized discounts, rewards, and events to customers, retailers need to gather customer data from across all touchpoints.

Nordstrom, for example, uses its app to collect data and then push out personalized communications and offers based on that data. Users can save items to a wish list and then get a reminder about specific items when they are near a Nordstrom store that carries them.

The retailer also made an acquisition that will allow in-store associates to communicate with shoppers via text or within the app — bridging the gap between website and in-store recommendations.

Personalize the shopper journey

Personalization should extend beyond a retailer’s rewards program and be used across the entire consumer shopping journey. It improves the customer experience by making it easier for consumers to find products they want quickly. In addition, shoppers feel like the retailer understands who they are.

In a study we conducted, 50% of respondents said that personalization is very useful and improves the shopping experience. Online, this might look like product recommendations or curated home pages. In-store, it looks like digital fitting rooms, product customization, or store associates that can pull up information on previous purchases or saved items.

Successful personalization comes down to consumer data. While many retailers are investing in this area, challenges remain. In the same study, 81% of brands and retailers say using consumer data and machine learning to make personalized recommendations on their websites is a focus in the coming 12 to 18 months.

However, almost across the board, brands and retailers say they are behind in collecting actionable shopper data. Just 3% of brands and retailers say they are excelling in acquiring — and using — third-party data, and 58% say they are behind in developing a single view of the shopper across all of their touchpoints.

Personalize with data

Consumers want personalized experiences, and retailers are trying to deliver. Retailers must integrate three different types of data to be able to see a holistic view of a consumer and provide them with tailored experiences. Successful personalization relies on a combination of transaction and website interaction data, demographic data, and holistic buying journey data. It’s this last type, which requires high quality data about shopping behavior beyond their own websites, that is the most challenging for retailers to gather and put to good use.

Despite these challenges, major retailers are prioritizing personalization because according to Jeff Rosenfeld, VP of Customer Insight and Analytics for Neiman Marcus, “personalization is the new loyalty.”

Home Depot for example personalizes its website pages and app with different offerings depending on users’ locations and season. For example, a shopper looking for gardening equipment would get a different set of suggestions if they were in Florida than if they were in Maine.

And Walmart underwent a complete website redesign, with personalization featured heavily in the user experience. Effective personalization helps retailers stand out from competition by providing a customer experience that is easy to navigate and feels customized to each individual shopper.

But beware. A survey of 500 brands revealed that while nearly three quarters of retailers believe they offer personalization in their marketing, 66% of customers disagree with them.

Areas of opportunity for retailers to combat this include:

1. Re-examining personalization efforts to better align with shopper preferences
2. Focusing on your content supply chain to deliver the right content at every customer touchpoint
3. Using tailored offerings and purchasing incentives, like discounts, in exchange for personal data

Focus on your private label strategy

While exceptional, personalized shopping experiences are a main factor in retailer customer loyalty, consumer preferences and expectations are always moving. The experience you offer your shoppers is still greatly important, but offering unique, private label brands they can purchase only at your store is now key to keeping customers coming back for more. 

Private label brands no longer conjure up thoughts of plain, uninspired packaging with the label “generic.” Instead of serving as a less desirable, low cost option, some private label brands have evolved to be seen as equal to, if not better than, national brands. A whopping 90% of consumers currently purchase private label brands.

Not only do store owned brands increase revenue, but they’ve become a key driver of retailer loyalty in the past few years. 

The top two reasons shoppers choose private labels are also the two most common reasons customers become loyal to retailers — they love them and the products are well-priced. This loyalty leads to retention which leads to increased sales. So much so in fact, that across U.S. outlets, private label sales have increased by nearly $14 billion since 2015.

From newcomers like Brandless to established giants like Amazon, retailers of all sizes are investing in private label brands. Private label brands allow retailers to control everything from pricing and packaging to marketing and display, all while driving brand recognition amongst consumers.

While there’s no singular right approach to private label, one thing is clear — retailers should treat them with a similar strategy and resources as a national brand would treat its products. 

Here are a few examples of the way retail giants have incorporated to make private label part of their overall brand strategy.

Trader Joe’s

Grocery chain Trader Joe’s has shown the power of private label since its inception. The retailer has no e-commerce presence, and, unlike any other grocery retailer, over 80% of Trader Joe’s products are private label. In the company’s podcast, “Inside Trader Joe’s”, they explain that their strategy is a big part of what keeps their prices so low. Trader Joe’s has ranked in the top three grocery chains for overall customer satisfaction for many years running, and customers (aka me) are maniacally loyal to its products. 

Amazon

Amazon has circa 150 private label brands ranging from organic baby food and furniture to electronics and clothing. The retailer launched its first three exclusive brands in 2009 and didn’t introduce any additional private label lines until it rolled out 11 more between 2014 and 2016. And then in 2017, when Amazon unleashed a staggering 66 private label brands to the market. How has the retailer been able to successfully launch so many brands in such a short period of time? 

Due to its massive customer base, Amazon has access to an equally massive amount of consumer data on shopping behavior. By analyzing trends within its own data, the online retailer could be able to see what shoppers are searching for, categories and products that sell well, and what features customers like and dislike.

Amazon tests and tests private label brands and products before a full-scale launch. To do this, the retailer releases a handful of various sample products within a product line to market and watches their performance closely. These initial releases are often only available to Amazon Prime members, so that the retailer can test products and collect feedback from a smaller audience. 

Once Amazon has tested a product line and determines its top performing items, it rolls these products out to the full market — and makes sure they perform well. Amazon even changed its search results to boost more profitable products, which is said to often have the effect of boosting their own products in search listings.

Whole Foods

Even before it was acquired by Amazon, Whole Foods built a strong private label strategy and continues to experiment with its owned products. The grocery chain’s private label brand, 365 Everyday Value, sold $10 million in products on Amazon in the first four months alone following the acquisition.

The 365 Everyday Value brand helped solve a main consumer complaint against the chain: high prices. But they don’t sacrifice quality for price. Food products are certified organic or enrolled in the Non-GMO Project, and health and wellness products have a similar standard of quality. In 2015, Whole Foods announced the next iteration of its private label strategy with its 365 by Whole Foods Market stores, which solely sells the retailer’s private label products.

The stores, in addition to selling lower cost products, are smaller in format, and incorporate more technology into the in-store experience, all characteristics that appeal to younger demographics.

Walmart and Sam’s Club

Walmart has long understood the value of private label — their first foray, dog food brand Ol’ Roy, launched in 1983. Today, 84% of Walmart customers purchase private brands from the retailer. As their CEO Doug McMillon said, private label brands play a big role in their strategy for driving loyalty: “If we have engineered our specs so that you really love our granola, then there’s a loyalty there that passes not just through the store but into the e-commerce business as well. Product-driven loyalty becomes even more important than it was in the past.”

In the last 10 years, Walmart ramped up its launch and production of private label brand products in an effort to stay competitive amidst the changing landscape of retail. In 2009, Great Value, its owned food brand, was relaunched with more products, improved ingredients, and consistent packaging. Since then, the retail giant has released private label lines in everything from clothing to technology and furniture.  

Walmart’s investment in private label extends even further to its subsidiary retailers, like Sam’s Club. In 2017, Sam’s Club announced that it had both consolidated all of its private label products under a single brand, Member’s Mark, and launched 300 new products. With one label, rather than its original 20+ lines, the retailer hopes to drive stronger brand recognition and loyalty.  

Aldi and Lidl

Although the private label industry is making leaps and bounds of progress in the US, it still has a way to go to catch up with the European market. In the UK, Germany, Belgium and Portugal, the market share for the private label sector is over 40%, while in the US, it’s still around 18%. Two great examples from Europe are Aldi and Lidl, who keep their prices low by limiting their stock to almost entirely private label brands. Both companies are enjoying explosive growth and today Aldi has a 7.5% market share, while Lidl sits at 5.3%. The two stores are opening an average of one new location every week.

Supercharge retail growth with retailer loyalty

Without a positive customer experience, it’s next to impossible for retailers to build retailer loyalty amongst their customer bases. In-store innovations, modern loyalty programs, and personalization are just a few of the ways in which retailers are improving the shopping experience for consumers.

And retailers can’t afford to let their private label strategy go stale. Traditional retailers must acknowledge that private label is not just an opportunity for increasing revenue but also for driving retailer loyalty, reaching new audiences, and staying competitive. 

There’s a number of ways to measure retailer loyalty, from customer satisfaction surveys to reward program members to repeat buyers. But the easiest way is to work with a full-funnel platform who can track analytics for you, and work alongside you to supercharge retail growth.

To understand more about what today’s consumers want, we asked 10,000 global shoppers the experiences they expect from brands and retailers. Find out what they said below.

FEATURED RESOURCE

Shopper Preference Report

Read here

Chapters:

1. What is the digital shelf?
2. Why the digital shelf is key to attracting more customers
3. Best practices for your digital shelf strategy
4. Expand your brand’s digital shelf with user-generated content

Picture the glossy shelves at Sephora, showcasing lipsticks, eyeshadow palettes, face masks, perfumes, and hair accessories to entice shoppers as they browse the store. They’re typically grouped by product category, and brand displays feature essential product information. Plus customer favorites and suggested product bundles. When brands compete with each other in stores, they need to use the limited real estate of a retail shelf to get their customers’ attention fast.

The same applies to the digital shelf. Trade the well-lit displays at Sephora’s physical store for their sleek website design, where image carousels highlight best-selling products, gift sets, and special offers. The strategy is pretty much the same: capture consumers’ attention, teach them about the brand and its products, and convince them to make a purchase — and come back for more.

What is the digital shelf?

The digital shelf is the intersection of all the channels and touchpoints where people discover, learn, and buy from your brand online, that impacts in-store sales too. Rather than browsing store shelves, comparing similar products, and heading to the checkout lane, shoppers can use the digital shelf to complete the customer journey online.

It’s how people discover your brand online (and in-store)

When shoppers want to look for products online, they turn to the digital shelf to start browsing their options.

Consumers typically begin their online shopping journey with a simple search on Google or their preferred online retailer. But they’re also doing it on their phones while in-store as well. Like a store associate in a brick-and-mortar retail store, search engines direct consumers to what they’re looking for online. Whether someone is browsing a general product category or searching for something specific, the search results page will turn up a range of relevant products.

Other channels where consumers can find your products on the digital shelf include:

• Product pages and descriptions
• Social media
• Third-party marketplaces

Unlike the physical retail shelf, the digital shelf can be customized to each shopper’s needs. By analyzing customer data, you can deliver highly personalized marketing messages, like product recommendations and special offers, that are more likely to convert.

It’s how consumers research your products

After finding your brand, shoppers use the digital shelf to learn more by analyzing your products and comparing you and your competitors.

The digital shelf can’t fully replicate the brick-and-mortar shopping experience, but it offers valuable content to make your brand stand out. For instance, a shopper in a store can physically feel or test out a product, but they have limited information. On the digital shelf, they can watch a video where an expert highlights the product’s key features and shows its multiple uses.

People can also learn about your products through:

• Ratings and reviews
• Customer Q&As
• Thought leadership
• Influencers

To facilitate your customers’ research, include essential information about your brand and products on your website and your retail partners’ product pages. This streamlines the consideration process as shoppers narrow down their options.

It’s how customers purchase your products online

Finally, the digital shelf is where shoppers decide to buy — or to walk away — from your brand’s website or another online retailer.

Selling directly to your customers on your website gives you complete control over how they perceive and interact with your brand. But retail partnerships — both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar — are the key to unlocking revenue growth. A 2019 survey found that 55% of brands saw increased sales and revenue from their retailer partner programs.

Customers can also purchase from your brand via:

• Social commerce
• Digital ads
• Promotions

Most consumers already have a preferred retailer, online and in person, so they probably won’t buy directly from your brand unless they’re already loyal customers. Selling your products through other platforms makes it easier for shoppers to buy from your brand.

Why the digital shelf is key to attracting more customers

In an increasingly competitive e-commerce market, retailers must fight for the spotlight. Digital shelves don’t suffer from the same space constraints that physical shelves do — the main challenge lies in winning a shopper’s attention and buy-in so they don’t turn to your competition.

Your brand’s presence on the digital shelf drives online and in-store performance. Recent data shows that 66% of consumers prefer a hybrid of in-store and online shopping. Plus, 63% of shoppers use their phone in-store to research products online. Even if customers ultimately purchase an item in person, the digital shelf impacts how they find your brand in the first place.

So how does the digital shelf unlock customer growth? Through two key aspects: visibility and credibility. Digital marketing, influencer marketing, retail partners, and ads make your brand more visible to your target audience. Then, by enhancing your brand’s credibility through ratings, reviews, and other user-generated content (UGC), you will inspire trust in your products and attract more customers.

Take Land O’Lakes as an example. By syndicating over 30,000 reviews to online retailers, the leading food company expanded its digital shelf space to drive sales and improve customer engagement and satisfaction. After distributing their reviews to other retail sites, they were able to reach customers where a majority of them prefer to shop and win their trust.

8 best practices for your omnichannel digital shelf strategy

If you want to stand out and win customers on the digital shelf, you need to provide an unparalleled shopping experience across all platforms. Let’s dive into the top eight tactics for building a successful omnichannel digital shelf.

1. Optimize product visibility in search results

Shoppers typically discover your digital shelf through a web search, so your brand needs to appear in search results to get in front of customers. Today, 64% of online shoppers use a search engine while researching products. If you’re not showing up on the first page of Google, then consumers probably won’t come across your brand.

When designing product pages, consider how search engines will find your website. Include relevant keywords in your product title and description, especially long-tail keywords, to capture more specific searches. But don’t go overboard and pack too many keywords on the page, or it will decrease the quality of your product copy. Balance is key.

For example, beauty brand Biossance tapped into the power of search engine optimization (SEO) to get in front of its customers. They identified keywords specific to their products, like ingredients, and integrated them into product names and descriptions. These pages are more likely to appear on the first page of search results for shoppers looking for rose oil or products with squalane or vitamin C.

2. Build user-generated content into the shopping experience

User-generated content helps customers build trust and confidence in their purchasing decision while they learn more about your products. In a 2021 survey of over 11,000 brands and retailers, customer engagement with UGC was linked to:

• 144% lift in conversions
• 162% increase in revenue per visitor
• 13% increase in average order value

E-commerce tools display visual and social content from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and more on your product pages. By showcasing content created by real customers, your brand gives potential buyers a chance to get authentic feedback from people they trust.

Global fashion brand River Island is a prime example of how to turn UGC into a tool for revenue growth. The brand sources images of its customers wearing their clothes from social media to put social content at the forefront of its marketing campaigns.

After featuring inspiring visual UGC from social media on their homepage and product pages, River Island saw conversions increase by 184%. Their product pages also include a “Shop the look” feature that enables customers to add specific items in UGC to their wish list and create a more seamless shopping experience.

3. Regularly update product descriptions based on customer feedback

By proactively listening to customer feedback, you’ll improve your product pages before customers complain, request returns, or decide not to buy.

Ratings and reviews help you learn what features customers love most or how to improve a product. Plus, customer questions & answers enable you to identify communication gaps between your brand and your customers.

To incorporate customer feedback onto your product pages, comb through UGC — like photos, reviews, and customer Q&As — for valuable insights into what customers like, dislike, or don’t know about your products. Then adjust your product descriptions accordingly. Say lots of reviews mention how easy to use your product is. That’s a great feature to highlight in your product copy and images.

And if you’re soft launching a new product, customer feedback can also help you fine-tune it before its official release.

Lemi Shine, a family-owned manufacturer of household cleaning products, dove into their customer feedback after sending samples to its Club Clean Freak sampling community. After analyzing the reviews, they were able to adjust messaging and even change products before the public launch to deliver the information and value that shoppers wanted.

4. Use multiple avenues to collect ratings and reviews

Ratings and reviews bolster your brand’s digital shelf presence and consumer trust, but convincing customers to submit feedback can be challenging.

According to 66% of survey respondents, shoppers trust consumer reviews more than other formats like social and paid search ads. That’s because ratings and reviews feature current, authentic content from real users, which helps customers feel confident about their purchases.

So how can you collect as many of these invaluable reviews as possible? Don’t just wait and hope inspiration will strike and a customer will write a review months after their purchase. Leverage multiple communications channels to request reviews, such as:

• General email requests: Schedule automated emails between 14 and 21 days after purchase to thank customers for their orders and ask for feedback
• Review request emails: Invite customers to post reviews on your website after purchasing a product, registering a product warranty, or subscribing to your newsletter
• Product packaging: Include calls for reviews on product packaging or inserts, and consider offering a small discount on their next purchase to add more incentive for customers
• Social media giveaways: Create a social media hashtag campaign where people share UGC online for the chance to win free products
• Sampling programs: Get authentic feedback by sending free product samples to your most loyal customers in exchange for honest reviews

The apparel brand MeUndies overhauled its review collection strategy to increase review volume and engagement for new product launches. From adding a simple “Write a Review” button to product pages to sending follow-up review requests to customers who hadn’t responded to the first email, MeUndies saw a 218% increase in review collection. Over a third of those reviews came from follow-up review requests.

5. Invest in social commerce tools

Social commerce enables your brand to reach new customers and supports the delivery of a seamless shopping experience. Over half of shoppers say they’re more likely to buy a product on social media if they can click the post and get product info directly from their favorite platform.

To maximize your social channels’ impact on your digital shelf, turn your social media into a shoppable storefront to leverage UGC and drive traffic and revenue. Like2Buy is the leading social commerce solution that transforms your Instagram feed into a sales channel so your followers can read your blog, browse products, make purchases, and more.

Urban Barn, a furniture and décor company, leveraged UGC across social media platforms to push traffic to their website. Consumers were redirected to Urban Barn’s website, where they could shop their favorites from the brand’s Instagram feed, resulting in a 59% lift in conversion and a 29% increase in average order value.

6. Be strategic about special offers and online promotions

Not all promotions and special offers are made equal. While one-time deals and promotions will help you win new customers, recurring or future discounts will ensure they come back over and over again. When designing your promotional campaigns to maximize their impact, keep your customer segments in mind.

Each type of online promotion offers unique benefits to attract specific customers. Here’s some special offers to consider when building your digital shelf strategy:

• Dollar and quantity threshold deals: Win more new customers by offering them more bang for their buck
• New customer deals: First-time customer discounts will convince hesitant shoppers to make a purchase they would have otherwise abandoned
• Discount on next purchase: Once a customer has completed their purchase, entice them to shop with you again with a coupon for their next order
• Subscription discounts: Offer a small discount for recurring orders to nurture brand loyalty in new and returning customers

Amazon Subscribe & Save leads the pack when it comes to growing revenue through recurring subscription orders. One subscription results in a discount of up to 10%, while customers who add five or more eligible items to their subscription save 15%. The e-commerce giant unlocked new suggestive selling opportunities to drive sales through the combination of convenience and savings.

7. Create a sampling program for upcoming product releases

Let a small, controlled group test your new products before releasing them to a broader audience. A sampling program enables you to launch new products with reviews on day one and expand your digital shelf. Samples can also help you uncover potential problems and tweak your product or messaging before new items hit a wider market.

To launch a product sampling campaign, offer samples to your most loyal customers in exchange for reviews to boost review volume before publicly launching new products. By offering free products to customers, you’ll encourage them to post a positive review on social media as a thank you for the sample. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee positive reviews, but even negative reviews will add authenticity to your brand.

Burt’s Bees, a leading provider of natural health and beauty care products, leveraged its customer loyalty program, Hive Helpers, in an early launch of its new cosmetics category. Only two weeks after Burt’s Bees sent pre-released products to customers, 94% of those who received a sample submitted a review, resulting in over 300 reviews with a 4.48 average star rating.

8. Leverage the power of retail media networks

By advertising on a retail media network (RMN), your brand shows up on an online retailer’s digital shelf, further increasing your visibility to shoppers. RMNs expand your digital shelf across all the channels consumers use — from web and mobile to social media — while providing valuable first-party customer data to create highly personalized ads.

When partnering with a retail media network, start by syndicating your content to link reviews from your brand’s websites to your retail partners’ sites. Then incorporate this content in your retail ads to show why customers love your products and inspire trust in your brand.

The cybersecurity leader Webroot had a loyal customer base and many glowing reviews, but these reviews were limited to the brand’s native site. After syndicating reviews to retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, and Staples, Webroot’s review volume exploded by over 9,000%. The Webroot team also reached a response rate of nearly 100%, enabling them to quickly resolve any issues and retain customers.

Expand your brand’s digital shelf with user-generated content

Let’s be clear: a strong digital shelf requires strong, branded content. But to really unlock the full revenue potential of your digital shelf, lean on the people your customers trust the most: their fellow shoppers.

As more brands discover the value of user-generated content, even household names like Dole Packaged Foods are amplifying their customers’ perspectives to boost sales. After building a UGC program from scratch, Dole saw 2.3k new reviews and a 64% increase in conversions among shoppers who engaged with UGC.

The right end-to-end user-generated content platform can manage all aspects of your digital shelf strategy for you, from building brand awareness to increasing sales, and all the way to customer analysis.

To understand UGC’s impact on your brand’s revenue, conversion rate, and online and in-store sales, try our free UGC Value Calculator.

FEATURED RESOURCE

How to stand out and win customers on the digital shelf

Learn more here

According to our 2022 Shopper Experience Index, 64% of respondents said they enjoy a “hybrid” shopping experience in which they buy products online as well as in-store. Globally, 30% of consumers say they now shop online at least once a week. 

To appeal to today’s shoppers, brands big and small must offer a high-quality omnichannel experience, which HubSpot defines as, “a seamless and consistent experience across channels, while factoring in the different devices that consumers are using to interact with your business.”

The pandemic isn’t the only factor driving this trend. Technology continues to evolve and incorporate itself in our daily lives. The number of smartphone users has almost doubled since 2016, from 3,668 million to 6,567 million in 2022. By 2027, that number is expected to rise to 7,690 million users.

Between COVID-19 and the increased access and exposure to technology, shoppers’ needs and expectations have changed. Today, as many as 50% of consumers are using multiple channels to complete a purchase. We’re now living in a phygital era.

Retailers and brands that meet these shoppers’ needs by offering an omnichannel experience are more likely to reap the rewards — and profits.  According to a data analysis of 130,000-plus Omnisend campaigns, marketers who used three or more channels to promote a campaign achieved a 494% higher average order value than those who only used a single channel.

In addition, Harvard Business Review found that, on average, customers who interacted with companies on 4+ channels spent 9% more when compared to those who used only a single touchpoint.

Ready to offer your customers a more holistic omnichannel experience? Here’s how to get started.

Omnichannel 101

The hallmarks of a successful omnichannel experience are cohesion and consistency. Every interaction a customer has with your brand, no matter the touchpoint, needs to build upon and strengthen the one before. 

From your website to your window decorations, the customer experience should feel seamless. The voice and visuals you use in your email should match the signage in your stores. The clothing staff wears to events should complement the style of your in-store associates. 

Give your customers what they want, not what you think they want 

To offer the best omnichannel experience, you need to understand who your customers are and how you can create experiences that best serve them. 

How do you find out what customers want? Listen to them. User-generated content (UGC) like reviews, social media comments, and customer blog posts can highlight opportunities to improve every aspect of the omnichannel shopping experience.

Doing so will put you in good company, according to our Shopper Experience Index:

• 75% of consumers say they rely on UGC feedback to improve their customer service
• 66% say they use it to improve products
• 50% say customer reviews help guide their marketing and messaging strategy

For example, when developing product page descriptions of a new cosmetic line, our client Burt’s Bees turned to their reviews. Here, they learned that customers were having trouble picking out a foundation that would work with their skin tone.

To make it easier for customers to find the right product, Burt’s Bees created a foundation shade finder guide. A tool like this could be used online or in-store to increase customer confidence and deliver the best product.

Use loyalty programs to drive your omnichannel experience

To understand your customers’ needs, you need data. One of the most powerful ways to collect those insights — while strengthening your relationship with shoppers — is offering a customer loyalty program.

Most online shoppers understand that the sites they visit capture information about them, ranging from their email to their job and relationship status. And they’re happy to share that data if it means a better shopping experience. According to McKinsey, ​71% of consumers expect companies to personalize their customer interactions. And over 75% of consumers say they get frustrated when brands don’t. 

Once you have the data, you can leverage it to find opportunities to improve your omnichannel experience, customize promotions and deals, and increase brand loyalty. 

Encourage customers to use their phones while shopping in-store

If you’ve noticed an increase of customers using their phones while perusing your display racks, you’re not alone. According to Google, a striking 70% of smartphone users who bought something in a store first turned to their phone for information about that purchase.

And if they like what they see, they’re willing to spend. Google also found that 35% of people who searched on their phone spent more than they expected in the store. To meet the needs of these curious consumers, we recommend offering a robust collection of UGC on your mobile site. 

Even better, leverage all of that UGC into your in-store promotions. When we asked consumers what technologies they’d like to see integrated into the brick-and-mortar shopping experience, 36% said they’d like to see virtual displays of reviews and customer photos. 34% said they wish brands offered a QR code they could scan to read reviews about an item. 

Make it easy for shoppers to learn more about your products, and you’re better positioned to close the sale.  

Be consistent with communication

From email and text to social media posts and in-store signage, there’s multiple ways to communicate with your customers. Whichever avenue you choose, you want to ensure your messaging and experience are the same across all channels.

Make sure your brand colors and imagery are the same across all platforms, and your choice of language is similar. Not only will this help strengthen brand identity, but this level of consistency can help solidify your messaging in your customer’s mind.

For digital communication with trackable metrics (open rate, link clicks, etc.), identify which messages resonated with your customers by looking at these metrics. Lean into the channels that are successful for communication, and mirror other communications off of those. This consistent messaging experience will be appreciated by your customers.

Brand examples

For inspiration, check out these brands that have mastered the omnichannel experience.

Sephora

Sephora has created an omnichannel experience that’s delightful for online and in-store shoppers. The brand offers QR codes and other search tools to help brick-and-mortar shoppers browse Sephora’s extensive selection of beauty products. 

Online, customers can use virtual reality to see what products will look like once applied. And the store’s chat function instantly connects shoppers with a beauty advisor who can answer any questions they have about a product.

Finally, the brand’s Beauty Insider loyalty program is a smart way to gather and store rich first-party customer data while providing personalized offers and messaging. 

Timberland

The outdoor apparel brand Timberland was an early adopter of the omnichannel experience. 

In 2016, the store offered in-store shoppers tablets that they can use to learn more about products. Customers can find information similar to what they’d expect from the store’s product pages. They can also view related items and recommendations and save items to a wishlist.

Pride Socks

In addition to their online shop, Texas-based Pride Socks turned to social media to drive conversations and sell more apparel that spreads, “love, pride, respect, and inclusion.” 

The brand’s rainbow tube socks were a hit on Instagram and Facebook. Pride Socks saw a 36% increase in sales from Instagram Checkout and the integration with Facebook.

Topshop

As part of its London Fashion Week marketing campaign, the fashion brand Topshop launched several digital billboards throughout the United Kingdom.

When someone on Twitter used the hashtag “#LFW,” the billboards displayed the tweet along with a corresponding Topshop product. The billboards were all located within a 10-minute walk from the company’s stores, making it easy for shoppers to learn about — and purchase — the latest Fashion Week trends. 

In closing, retailers that embrace omnichannel are positioned to not only succeed, but also offer their shoppers the best brand experience and highest quality of customer service.

To learn more about how to successfully create an omnichannel experience, check out our guide Omnichannel commerce: How to do it successfully (and why).

UGC is a blanket term that covers any and all content created and shared voluntarily by customers — separate from paid influencers and brand advocates. This includes social media, blog posts, product reviews, unboxing, and first-time-use videos. An almost limitless array of formats. Now, as customers return to more hybrid shopping on and offline, UGC can be a linchpin in a brand’s omnichannel strategy.

“Phygital” bridges the gap between the physical world and the digital

In this “phygital” environment, retailers need to combine the best of digital and in-store experiences. UGC helps promote the customer’s voice in an authentic, relatable, and real-life way that no traditional marketing strategy can typically deliver. So how can in-store and online UGC promotion create a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship for retailers and customers? 

We’ll share a handful of tactics you can try yourself, with a few examples of how others are making it work.

1. Scan QR codes for product reviews

A study by Yes Marketing found that customers shop in-store because they want to see things in person. But when they’re in-store and can’t find information about a product they’re considering, they won’t hesitate to pull out their phones for on-the-spot searching. One of the best tools for the phygital world is the humble QR code.

You likely know that smartphone cameras function as built-in QR scanners, but we bet you didn’t know that the “QR” in QR codes stands for “Quick Response.” QR codes are a cost-effective and highly versatile tool for instantly providing detailed information in a quick but high-value interaction.

Though retailers might have initially viewed their digital and physical shopping experiences as mutually exclusive, the reality is that they supplement one another. So it’s time to jump on the phygital bandwagon.

Customers are already well aware of the vast content available at their fingertips to inform their shopping decisions. Real customer reviews are a powerful form of UGC that shoppers rely on to make confident purchases. Why not make it even easier for them to access these reviews in the moment?

Add strategically placed and visually prominent QR codes to your product displays so that shoppers can quickly scan them and find the reviews they’re looking for. Keep in mind that any page where users are being directed needs to be optimized for mobile.

QR codes can also be a helpful driver for creating UGC. Printing codes on product packaging or price tags can make it easier to encourage customers to leave a review with a single scan.

2. Show real-time star ratings and review counts

Electronic shelf labels (ESLs) are a fairly low-tech but high-impact way of letting retailers display live star ratings alongside products in-store. Leveraging basic e-ink displays, ESLs make it easy for retailers to wirelessly update live counts of ratings, reviews, and dynamic pricing. Among other inventory management benefits. When Amazon launched its brick-and-mortar Fresh grocery stores, it introduced ESLs. This is a prime (pun intended) example of the phygital era in action.

According to Grocery Dive, this move was a subtly differentiating power play that contained Amazon’s secret sauce: an enormous volume of customer ratings. “With the exception of produce, just about every other item in the store, including center store consumables and even fresh seafood, prominently display UGC generated by Amazon’s shoppers. Now shoppers can both physically handle the product and see in the ESL display that other consumers have tried the product and liked it.”

This also helped Amazon gather useful data about which of its private label brands could stand up to the perceived quality and popularity of name brands.

3. Create visual UGC displays

One incredibly straightforward way of introducing UGC in-store is to install visual displays. This could mean leveraging visual UGC in printed brand and marketing assets, like promotional banners, posters, stickers, and window displays. But it can also mean digital installations, like “social screens” that feature curated feeds of branded hashtags.

These displays can bring a vitality that printed materials cannot, but their effectiveness is limited. Christine Russo, Principal at Retail Creative and Consulting Agency, says, “I believe putting screens into a retail environment when people carry their own screens does not really move the needle.”

Retailers might instead consider flipping the script and envisioning in-store displays that inspire customers to actively contribute to creating UGC. In McKinsey’s recent report on technology and the future of shopping, senior partner Kelsey Robinson asks, “Is a store just about a transaction? Or is it a place where I can offer community and experiences that are aligned with my brand — everything from a fitness class to meeting local talent or local bands?”

For the launch of his cosmetics brand, Pleasing, pop star Harry Styles opened pop-up stores in multiple cities that drew substantial crowds. Eager fans waited in line for hours to pose for selfies in front of beautifully designed branded backdrops. Product displays were staged so that customers could capture and share first-look photos of the stylish packaging.

British retailer Boohoo “created a shoppable showroom where customers could try on looks, and post them to social media,” not only gaining exposure and reach but also gleaning insights into key trends and audience demographics.

The phygital era

Now that product transactions are frequently carried out online and fulfillment facilitated offsite, in-store traffic will inevitably continue to be lower than before. While retailers want to avoid becoming glorified pick-up locations, and convenience is no longer the driver of a customer’s choice to venture out to a shop, there’s an opportunity to reposition stores as places of brand discovery and education.

In the words of Alessandro Camaioni, Strategy Director, Momentum Worldwide: “If people can effectively shop anywhere, anytime, a store’s role is less about ‘product-in-hand’ and more about engaging people with valuable sensory, emotional and ultimately memorable propositions.”

This strategy invites new expertise to the table, i.e. experience architecture, according to Brian Solis, Global Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce. In his view, bringing more technology into physical retail environments needs to, “just be in the background. It’s about creating magic.”

With UGC as a powerful catalyst at multiple stages of the customer journey, retailers need to consider how customer content and feedback can engender a more playful, engaging, and even immersive experience. Both online and in-store. It’s time to get phygital.

Said Google Canada’s Head of Marketing, Fab Dolan, “The brands that are winning are the ones that understand and own the fundamental interplay between experiential and transactional.”

To start your foray into the phygital world, you first need to collect the UGC needed to get you started. Bazaarvoice can help you with that.

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Shopper Experience Index 2022

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But the irony is, buzzwords crop up so much that no one actually bothers to learn what they mean. It’s a bit like the safety video on airplanes. We never really watch it because we’ve seen it multiple times before. But if we were in an emergency would we actually know what do to?

The same goes for omnichannel commerce. We all know the term, but have we actually bothered to understand what it means, and learned the benefits of an omnichannel commerce strategy? Unlikely. But if you want to succeed at e-commerce, it’s time to.

Chapters:

1. What is omnichannel commerce?
2. Why should you practice omnichannel commerce?
3. How to implement an omnichannel commerce strategy
4. Omnichannel commerce examples
5. Join the omnichannel revolution

Let’s say you’re the e-commerce manager for a digitally native consumer brand. You sell your products on the same few channels you’ve relied on for a while: your website and digital retail marketplaces like Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram. Those reliable sources pull in decent sales. But they only make up a small fraction of what you could capture with a wider net.

The fact is your customers no longer have just a handful of access points to shop. They’re shopping wherever they can, both digitally and in-store, and their options are vast. There’s more platforms, features, payment options, and communication methods than ever before. So imagine how much more revenue you could earn if you expanded to include:

• TikTok
• Pinterest
• Email
• Chatbots
• Text messages
• A mobile app
• A brick-and-mortar location

This is the crux of omnichannel commerce. Reaching your customers on any and every channel where they discover and shop. Omnichannel commerce has surpassed the novelty stage to become a new industry standard. Brands that embrace it will be top competitors in their space and meet consumer demand and expectations.

It’s time to learn why omnichannel commerce matters, how it can benefit your brand, and how to implement a successful omnichannel strategy.

What is omnichannel commerce?

Omnichannel commerce, or omnichannel retail, provides a seamless shopping experience by marketing and selling on all the channels where customers are active. It creates a holistic campaign across all customer touchpoints that links each channel together to support the full customer journey. Omnichannel commerce reinforces consistent branding on every channel.

As with any good marketing these days, an omnichannel commerce strategy starts with data. Data provides intelligence, and how you apply it is your strategy. That data will reveal the channels you need to focus on and what types of content, messaging, and fulfillment options to produce for each channel.

Why should you practice omnichannel commerce?

Simply put, omnichannel commerce gives your brand more exposure and more chances to win sales. You’re reaching customers at any and every point in their journey.

Gartner research reveals that only half of brands have unified their customer engagement channels in 2022, “resulting in a disjointed and siloed customer experience that lacks context.” Their proposed solution? Omnichannel commerce.

An omnichannel approach gives shoppers more options for where and how they purchase products and the ability to easily switch between different channels throughout their exploration and engagement with your brand.

Your brand can join the group currently practicing omnichannel commerce for an advantage over the half that aren’t. Not only will you be ahead of those not yet in the omnichannel race, but you can also set out to do it better than the ones who are. Research how your competitors are playing the omnichannel game to inform how you can provide better value for your audience.

In Skai’s 2022 State of Retail Media survey, 163 leading global brands, retailers, and agencies shared the level of their omnichannel presence and how well connected their various channels are to each other. Out of the responses, 44.5% said their digital retail channels are “somewhat coordinated,” followed by 30.3% who say they’re “a bit coordinated,” and only 16.8% who claim they’re “very coordinated.”

That leaves a lot of opportunities for new challengers on the playing field. But brands and retailers will need to act fast to stay competitive. According to Klarna’s Owning Omnichannel report, 73% of retailers surveyed expect to increase their investment in omnichannel this year.

Most importantly, your customers expect and seek out an omnichannel shopping experience. The Klarna report reveals that 75% of shoppers surveyed expect to have access to a brand’s products across multiple channels. This includes a physical store, brand website, retail marketplace, and social media.

Furthermore, 64% expect an integrated experience when toggling between a retailer’s different channels. And you can bet shoppers are there on each channel. Nine in 10 shoppers surveyed reported using multiple channels to search and make purchases.

It’s really simple. If your competitors make their products and services available on five channels, and yours are only available on one, you’re going to lose out on business.

How does omnichannel commerce benefit brands?

If it’s concrete results you’re looking for, omnichannel commerce delivers. This strategy boosts several different key performance indicators, according to data analysis from 2 billion Omnisend campaigns, including the following:

• Marketing campaigns spanning three or more channels earn 250% higher engagement and purchase rates compared to single-channel campaigns.
• Retention rates for customers interacting with three or more channels are 66% compared to almost 35% for customers only using one channel, which is a 90% increase.
• The average order value (AOV) is 13% higher when customers interact with three or more channels compared to those who didn’t.
• Campaigns with three or more channels receive nearly 19% average engagement rates compared to 5.4% for single-channel campaigns.

Additionally, a Harvard Business Review study found that multiple digital channels improve in-store performance as well. The results showed that customers who used more than four of a brand’s channels spent 9% more on in-store purchases.

And when we look at Bazaarvoice’s own annual ROBO (research online, buy offline) benchmark data, you can see that between 25% and 50% of consumers are using multiple channels when it comes to making a purchase, across all industries.

All of these results signal that omnichannel commerce and marketing are what shoppers want. So by providing them with an omnichannel experience, you can boost customer satisfaction, consumer sentiment, and brand loyalty.

A bonus benefit for brands and retailers is better, more comprehensive data collection. With an omnichannel approach, brands can track consumer data on each and every customer touchpoint, providing more general and channel-specific insights. This will allow brands to improve their omnichannel marketing strategy. Not to mention, provide the data needed to start a first-party data strategy.

How to implement an omnichannel commerce strategy

Developing and executing an omnichannel commerce strategy requires you to look at the big picture. You need to take inventory of all your marketing and sales channels, which ones are most relevant for your business and customers, which ones aren’t producing results, and the ones you aren’t using but should be.

Then you need to establish how they can work in tandem to support each other. A big part of accomplishing an omnichannel strategy is planning and research. Then you can put it all to use.

Step 1: Define your omnichannel strategy goals

Omni literally means “all,” something we probably should’ve clarified in the introduction. Omnichannel commerce may seem overwhelming since it implies your brand needs to be everywhere. To make a potentially daunting task manageable, set goals that are specific to your business needs and audience to guide your strategy. This will ensure you spend your time and budget most effectively.

We’re in the era of customer-centricity. Putting the needs of your customers first and forming authentic relationships with them is essential for mutually beneficial outcomes. What will provide the most value to your customers should be your north star when developing your omnichannel strategy.

So, what do customers want? According to our latest Shopper Experience Index, they want authentic recommendations from other shoppers in the form of user-generated content like reviews and visual social media content. For brands in the Bazaarvoice Network, for every $1 of revenue influenced online, UGC influences $3.91 in-store. At least according to a recent Total Economic Impact^TM Study of Bazaarvoice.

Another top criterion is a smooth and convenient discovery and purchase experience. Customers also expect marketing that is personalized to their needs and interests, which leads to increased revenue and customer retention for brands.

Obviously there’s other trends, but we don’t want to spoil the whole Index for you.

Knowing what your customers don’t want is also important when setting goals for your omnichannel strategy. That way you can solve problems and eliminate frustrations. The main online shopping complaints identified by the Klarna shoppers surveyed include:

• Brand websites not optimized for mobile
• Glitchy checkouts
• Getting emails they don’t remember signing up for
• Poor delivery process
• Unclear or poorly displayed product descriptions
• Limited payment options at checkout

In-store shopping complaints include online items not available in-store, long fitting and checkout lines, difficulty locating items, a messy shop floor, and unhelpful or unknowledgeable staff.

Your data and insights on your customers’ engagement and shopping behavior will be a valuable tool to determine what attracts and satisfies your customers.

Step 2: Organize customers by segment

To craft a refined and impactful omnichannel strategy, you need to use your first-party data to create segments for your existing and prospective customers. Organizing your customers into purposeful groups will allow you to engineer tailored outreach instead of one blanket marketing push to the masses. Plus, it pays off. Omnisend found that their segmented campaigns receive higher open rates and 26.5% more orders compared to non-segmented campaigns.

Targeted campaigns will inform what channels, messaging, and offers to use based on the unique qualities and needs of each segment. Some ways you can categorize your audience might include:

• Income range or spending amount
• Age range
• Product interests
• Engagement level
• Occupation
• Geographic location
• Customer sentiment
• Customer pain points

Once you’ve identified the most valuable customer segments for your business, determine the best channels and campaigns that will align with their interests. Launching targeted campaigns based on your customer segments will ensure your audience receives relevant messages that compel them to engage.

Keep in mind that you may need to modify, add, or pause segments as your strategy and business evolve over time.

Step 3: Determine what channels your customers use and how they use them

Now that you’ve established your customer segments, research the channels associated with each, so you can focus your omnichannel strategy and not waste efforts on irrelevant channels. There are several ways you can identify what channels correspond with each customer group. That can include industry reports, asking your audience directly with surveys, and online research sources like Statista and Forrester.

The channels your customers are most active on and engage with the most might include:

• Retailer and brand e-commerce sites
• Google
• Social media platforms
• Mobile apps
• Online retail marketplaces
• Email
• Text
• Brick-and-mortar storefronts

Beyond the digital marketplace, it might make sense for your brand to expand to brick-and-mortar to reach new audiences, like direct-to-consumer brands Casper and Warby Parker did. This could be a good move if consumer and competitor data shows that your target audience shops just as much or more at physical stores as they do online.

Define the focus and needs for each channel

After you discover the channels to focus on, research consumer behavior on each channel to plan how you’ll leverage each one to connect with your audience. For example, some channels like social media might serve primarily as a source of discovery. Whereas marketplaces like Amazon and Target might be mostly for transactions.

With your distribution channels and their purposes for your audience in mind, you can begin to plan the specific content and campaigns for each one. So if your audience uses Google to research brands and products, you could implement an SEO content strategy to drive traffic for relevant search terms. If your audience on social media engages the most with short-form video content, you could leverage TikTok and Instagram Reels.

Or to use reviews to drive the most conversions on your retail partner sites, you should focus on generating more quality reviews to syndicate. If your e-commerce product pages that feature customer photos generate the most sales, you can encourage shoppers to post photos of their purchases to display in visual UGC galleries.

Determining the most effective and relevant uses of each channel will inform what you offer and how you communicate on each. The main factors to consider for each channel are your messaging, content types, partnerships, collaborations, and fulfillment options. While certain elements may vary, like content types and partnerships, one hallmark of a quality omnichannel strategy is consistent messaging.

Your messaging should always reflect your overall brand presentation and identity to create a cohesive experience on all of your channels.

Step 4: Execute the ongoing strategy on each channel

Now it’s time to start putting your omnichannel commerce strategy into action. Plan your content, messaging, offers, CTAs, influencer and retail partnerships, UGC campaigns, and other features for each of the channels that are most valuable to your business and audience. Tailor your activity on each channel to align with the data and insights you’ve gathered so far.

Just like consistent brand messaging, personalization should be integrated throughout your omnichannel strategy. Think of how you can provide a personalized experience on each channel for your customers.

For email, this can include abandoned cart emails and emails featuring reviews and photos of products customers previously viewed on your website. On apps and websites, this can include personalized product recommendations or virtual try-ons or demos. It can also include chatbots or live customer support chats that provide customized communication and solutions for each user.

Brands in a variety of industries can learn a lot from Sephora, a leader in personalized marketing. With in-app messaging, personalized text notifications, online bookings for in-store services, app AI features like their Virtual Artist product try-ons, customized emails according to purchase history, and more, Sephora has all angles of personalization covered.

Sephora’s Beauty Insider loyalty program is a smart way to gather and store rich first-party customer data while providing personalized offers and messaging. It’s also one of the power sources for their omnichannel strategy. Their data management systems also show how well their omnichannel strategy performs.

By comparing their customers’ online and offline search and purchasing behavior, Sephora discovered that in-store AOVs increased by 13% for customers who visited the website within the previous 24 hours. This shows the relationship between two of their primary channels and how they work together effectively along the customer journey.

Step 5: Connect each channel to complete the omnichannel commerce experience

This is the crucial step that cements the omnichannel commerce strategy and separates it from multichannel commerce, which utilizes multiple channels without necessarily connecting them. Omnichannel takes the extra step to link each channel for a cohesive, streamlined experience.

Marketing automation can be a powerful tool for performing an omnichannel strategy. Marketing automation uses technology to deliver campaigns and content to customers based on their interactions with your brand. This could be personalized, automated emails like welcome or abandoned cart emails. Or it could be a retargeted social media ad for a product a customer viewed on your e-commerce site. Marketing automation allows you to efficiently serve your audience content based on their behaviors on the different channels they use, in effect, connecting each channel.

Social commerce is a great example of omnichannel commerce at work. It combines the engaging and inspirational elements of social media content with the conversion-oriented components of a product page. Social commerce essentially makes your social media content shoppable. It shows social proof with customer photos and it entertains your audience with videos or interactive quizzes and polls, while tagging them with products.

Shoppers can click on the tagged products to learn more on your website or make a purchase directly in the app.

In this example, Fy! shares a photo from one of their customers and prompts their followers to add their home decor tips. They make the post shoppable by tagging the product featured in the photo. Their audience learns about their brand, engages with their brand, gains inspiration, and has the chance to purchase a product from their e-commerce site.

Omnichannel commerce is all about guiding and providing value for customers at every stage of their journey, be it from discovery to transaction or transaction to loyalty. Once they’ve made a purchase, you can encourage loyalty by prompting them to follow social accounts where you deliver authentic and interactive content.

You can encourage in-store shoppers to make a purchase by allowing them to scan items to see product reviews on their mobile devices. And you can reinforce your brand and provide customer service on retail marketplaces by displaying reviews and offering a Q&A feature, so customers can ask questions that you can directly respond to.

Step 6: Harmonic retail

Now you know how to implement a full omnichannel strategy, it’s time to think about the future. While omnichannel commerce is what’s going to make you succeed today, what about in 5 or 10 years from now? That future belongs to harmonic retail.

Chris Walton, CEO and Co-founder of Red Archer Retail explains, “Harmonized retail is really the blend of digital, physical, and human experience design. It is never tech for tech’s sake.”

While a traditional omnichannel strategy combines all channels to create a single experience, harmonic retail focuses on meeting the customer, regardless of where they are — the customer is the channel.

It’s a combination of products or services from a brick-and-mortar, with the aid of digital technology, and customer centricity. By combining these, you’ll have the best chance to offer seamless experiences to your shoppers, and future-proof your omnichannel commerce strategy.

Omnichannel commerce examples

These brands demonstrate how to implement effective omnichannel strategies that align with their unique business goals and audience expectations. Let the pros show how it’s done.

Best Buy

Best Buy continues to evolve and innovate by connecting the features of their in-store and online products and services. They offer at-home virtual consultations with in-store purchases. Customers can scan barcodes in catalogs and curbside products on their mobile app to purchase for delivery or in-store pickup. They also have a popular Total Tech Support membership that provides 24/7 tech support online on the phone or in-store.

At its launch in 2018, Total Tech Support had 200,000 members, which increased to two million the following year.

rag & bone

The apparel brand rag & bone brought their specialized in-store experience to their online audience, resulting in a huge boost in online performance. For rag & bone, part of their omnichannel strategy is to give their shoppers the option to virtually shop with one of their stylists via chat, text, and video. This takes customer support and chatbots to the next level and solves a particular barrier to purchase for online shoppers: uncertainty about the sizing and fit of clothing items.

rag & bone’s strategy resulted in an 8.5x conversion increase, 97% AOV lift, a 4.5 out of 5 customer satisfaction rating, and an increase in in-store traffic.

Walmart

Walmart is making big moves when it comes to omnichannel retail experiments and investments. In 2020, they launched four test stores that double as fulfillment centers for their online store. One of the goals for these physical locations was to offer more of their in-store products on their e-commerce site. They are adding “hard to manage” product categories to their online store to gauge the customer response.

Staff at these new locations fulfill the online orders, and by doing so, they improve the in-store shopping and customer service experience because employees become more familiar with products that are typically difficult to locate.

Be on the right side of the omnichannel revolution

Omnichannel commerce is another marketing buzzword that’s been thrown around the last few years. Same with omnichannel retail, omnichannel marketing, harmonic retail, etc. Like a lot of buzzwords, people don’t always know what they actually mean, which may be the reason why many brands haven’t fully explored the concept.

But now that we’ve demystified omnichannel commerce, you can be one of those brands that are leading the industry forward by creating tailored content for all of your channels, all working in harmony with each other.

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