Macy's, Target, Kohl's Rely On Personalized Marketing For Customer Connection
By Megan Zielinski, contributing writer
Each consumer is different and unique when making a purchasing decision, and companies are recognizing this when it comes to effective advertising. By incorporating personalization and analytics into digital and in-store marketing, retailers can target each category of shoppers while avoiding the discouragement of others.
There are four main groups of customers that retailers must pay attention to — competitive, spontaneous, methodical, and humanistic. Competitive shoppers make fast, rational purchases of the most innovative, top-of-the-line devices, unconcerned of its price — key words “newest” and “greatest” appeal to these shoppers. Spontaneous customers are most-likely to make impulse buys, responding to trending products and items listed as limited-time offers. Customers that take time to decide before purchases, researching fine details and comparing expenses, is a methodical shopper — these customers rely on reputable reviews from expert and users. Humanistic consumers take opinions and advice from others into consideration before making a purchase, creating wish lists and asking around before buying.
With more sales occurring digitally compared to in-store, companies are advertising products by including a variety of eye-catching, bold announcements, geared toward each specific group. Highest globally-ranked wireless carrier, Verizon, uses key words “latest deals,” and “limited offer on free tablet,” attracting those who react to on-the-spot purchases, the spontaneous shopper. The Verizon webpage introduces the newest innovative device available, listing all of its greatest features, reaching out to those who want the hottest item, the competitive shopper. Methodical and humanistic customers are presented with impressive results from studies, revealing that Verizon received #1 in Overall Network Performance, giving the customer reassurance that the service and products are approved by others. Highlighted promotions such as, “best deal on smartphones,” and “50 percent off,” catches the attention of shoppers in these two categories. When companies such as Verizon implements diverse marketing on one page, customers only pay attention to what draws their interest, overlooking (not being turned-off) by what attracts others.
With analytic technology, retailers track when customers scroll through products, sending detailed offers to registered customers based on their style of browsing, and using this information for future guidance on development of campaigns. Macy’s online customers can filter their search by sorting through clothing labeled as featured items, customer’s top-rated, best sellers, newest arrivals and items priced lowest-highest, and highest-lowest. By refining their search, Macy’s recognizes what the customer is looking for, sending emails including clothing recommendations according to what category they were searching under.
Major retailers, such as Target and Kohl’s, incorporate digital signage into its stores, providing customers with a customized in-store experience. These unique kiosk networks enables the shopper to surf through all products that are narrowed down to a customized search, locate the items in the store, view product reviews, and even allows shoppers to send product information to their mobile device or email. According to studies, digital signage motivates 1 in 5 customers to make unplanned purchases. Digital signage drives brand awareness by nearly 50 percent. Purchase amounts grow by 29.5 percent. Sales, in-store traffic and repeat buyers increase by 31.8 percent. Digital content in public locations influences more Americans each month than online videos and social media ads —70 percent for digital signage, 43 percent for online media, and 41 percent through Facebook.
Marketing is starting to become even more particular—long gone are the watered-down, basic forms of ads. Customers want to feel a connection with the retailer they are purchasing from. Digital signage allows for companies to make very precise targeting strategies, even down to gender and age specific. Digital signage is more effective than TV, radio, online banners, social media, newspapers, magazines, and billboards. As a result, over 24 percent of companies plan to spend more than $1 million on digital signage and increase their digital signage budgets.