Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed (read: survived) the holiday season, and that all your gifts were met with love and appreciation. Those gifts you purchased for your loved ones were bought with care and extreme thought. Not to mention all your hard work shopping for those gifts was done under the watchful eye of the store you were at. Sound too much like a conspiracy theory? Well it’s not.
We all know that online retailers can keep a watchful eye on your buying needs, your wants, and to some degree how much you will pay for an item (all with the lovely invention of the cookie). Now what if I were to tell you that your favorite brick and mortar store was able to track your every movement in their store?
Over the years retailers have created ways to get their customers to be repeat customers through loyalty cards, direct mail and by registering purchased items through warranty programs. Some retail stores have stepped their game up by tracking customers’ in-store movements through location tracking on their cell phone. Some retailers are pushing their own on-line apps and offering Wi-Fi in their stores. This gives the retail store an opportunity to send discounts or a special offer if they turn on the app in the store.
So how does customer experience come into play? I love music (I still buy CDs) and I love shopping at Target because I can get everything I want in one store. If Target is tracking my buying behavior through their app and I buy a CD online, they can offer me a special deal on another CD purchase when I’m buying groceries on Saturday. I just saved myself another trip to another store, and I’m ecstatic because I hate driving. I win because Target saved me driving to another store, and Target wins because I’m more loyal to them because they make my life more convenient.
There are many pros and cons to tracking customers that walk into a retail store. Some see it as too invasive; others see it as an opportunity to get good deals. Retail stores see it as an opportunity to send customers a reminder of the item they may have forgotten about.
How to use this Information
You don’t have to “hack” in to your customer’s cell phones to create amazing experiences. Call Webolutions (your Denver Internet marketing company) today at 303-300-2640 to learn more about experiential marketing and how it can work with your Internet marketing plan.
If you are creating amazing experiences for your employees and your customers, please share how you are doing this in the comments area below.
