Top 7 Retention Strategies for Retail: The Role of Cloud EPoS

Seven Ways To Keep Customers Happy, Engaged And With You In The Modern Age Of Retail

Customer loyalty, extended engagement and long-term happy shoppers are top priorities for retailers small and large. What worked yesterday isn’t always going to succeed in the modern retail jungle of digital innovation, consumer hunger for instore experience, prolific rise of new hybrid retail models and the steep and tough heights of customer expectations.

Keeping customers happy is requiring a new type of system foundation to integrate every element of the retail operation in real time and with a new level of live data intelligence previously not required.

With the explosion of smartphone adoption, Apps and Cloud EPoS, retailers, small and large, are rolling out new strategies to improve their customer experience and engagement instore, online and out of store, in the drive to compete successfully and win new customers and critically, retain them.

Meeting new heights in customer expectations and keeping them happy, excited, engaged and interested with us, is constant, time consuming and difficult without the right software system foundation and integration.

A new system architecture to provide the robust, reliable and intelligent hub to integrate every element of the operation, transaction and retention now and in the future is often required to meet the pressures of the new hybrid model represented by multi-channel retailing.

Improving retention rates of first-time shoppers is essential whatever channel or channel combination is chosen to sell through. The more brand engagement you can build, the more loyalty you create. The greater loyalty you have, the stronger the duration of your customer relationship.

Whilst this is not a new revelation for any of us, the big question is how to win over and magnetise this digital savvy, transitional customer whose attention to loyalty is diminishing? As multi-channel hoppers, these shoppers can be hard to strike up a long-term and engaging relationship and keep pace with their ever-changing shopping expectations.

Opportunities are abundant in this new world of shopping but creating the essential omni-channel experience for retention is a big challenge for many with legacy systems which have become cumbersome, costly and often no longer fit for purpose. Depending on their size, shape and structure, many retailers are migrating to new all-in-one cloud platforms or combining APIs into this type of retail system cloud data hub to meet the challenges of multi-channel engagement and transaction, and importantly, loyalty and retention.

When investing in any form of marketing whether that is events, Groupon, launch offers, advertising, getting the one-time or first time shopper to come back is the critical point. Having the infrastructure to support your initiatives to avoid lost sales, customer service issues, frustration and consequent detachment is fundamental.

Lifetime customer value is not just based on increased shopping frequency but larger transactions and both of these elements stem from trust and loyalty. For customer loyalty to occur, it requires retention and for retention to occur it requires knowing how to engage with your customers whilst having the tools to seamlessly do so across all channels to grow a true omni-channel customer experience.

This is where the importance of Cloud EPoS and retail management systems comes into play.

1. Trust – Engagement
2. Commitment – Retention
3. Response – Loyalty

Today’s retail game is not just about sales numbers. The winners are those who constantly evolve strong brands and experiences and have the ability to build high-value and long-lasting relationships. As we move into a merged digital and physical retail world where consumers crave more and more interactivity, information, choice and personalisation online and offline, it’s time to reinvent EPoS and retail management tools and systems from every touch point including every promotion, event, loyalty program and receipt.

The big challenge to achieving these critical goals of customer trust, engagement and loyalty is the multi-channel retail phenomena and the perceived costs of overcoming the operational and profit challenges of this new hybrid model.
The answer lies in Cloud EPoS with built in cross-channel Promotions; Loyalty; CRM; Mobile PoS; e-Receipts; Click and Collect; Ecommerce; eBay and Amazon; Warehousing and Merchandising.

Not only has Cloud technology opened the doors to new and easier possibilities because of its scalability and anywhere access but importantly it’s unlocked the perceived cost barrier for independent retailers, removing steep investment costs and IT resources to enable them to play on a level playing field with national retailers and Brands.

Retailer Retention Strategies

1. Mobile Matters
Our love affair with the smartphone only grows stronger and its increasingly interactive and addictive nature is paving the way to new levels of engagement, retention and instore experience interaction. The mobile experience, information convenience and role in the decision making process is a deal-breaker our shoppers today. If the retail shop is a destination in an experience, the omni-channel touch points make your brand relevant (or not) to the consumer.

The initial smartphone threat to instore sales as shoppers browsed and compared product and price elsewhere, is now beginning to turn on its head and be the catalyst and central facilitator for physical stores to incorporate the digital online environment, merge the experience, add value and extend instore product aisles.

Successful instore mobile engagement and retention demands inventory visibility of online stores, helping mobile native shoppers to engage more with the instore shopping experience. Stores then become fulfilment centres of a customer journey where the shopping experience climaxes.

Loyalty programs, e-Receipts, Apple Pay and Contactless streamlines the mobile experience of the store experience, since the majority of shoppers are using their smartphones while at the store itself.

2. Click and Collect
Offering your customers a way to browse your products online and pick them up in store is essential. In fact, it is used by 72% of UK shoppers and with the right cloud EPoS and management platform, the service is simple and trouble free to roll out and can give you total stock room organisation, product tracking and unified visibility across all cross-channel touch points.

3. Create Events, Community and Engaging Social Content
The modern consumer wants experiences that are engaging and drive product inspiration and curiosity. Connecting your retail experience with rewarding experiences and events, which are relevant and topical for your customers or related to the local community and good causes, always works well to keep your customers attracted to you and enable further extension of your brand and persona.

Creating ticked events from your EPoS and retail management system enables you to link everything up from your CRM, loyalty programs and social media. Not only are events great for footfall but they can also be a great way of making “special” customers feel special.

Creating engaging and appealing content to tell your brand story on social media can be an important part of customer engagement and retention. Successful social engagement relies on the sharing of content that is valuable, relevant and interesting to your audience.

It can be a great way to promote events in a fun way, facilitate word of mouth through “Likes”, “Shares”, “Retweets” etc. and extend the life of an event with post–event “tagging” and photo sharing incentives. Social media can also help you sell clearance stock with integrated plugins directly into your website and offer special offers and VIP Cards exclusive to your social media followers.

4. e-Receipts The Missing Link?
Every time a customer buys from you, the opportunity is there to offer an e-Receipt to facilitate and expand retention, whilst providing your customers with a more efficient way to manage their receipts.

Not only are you offering shoppers a choice to go digital and contributing to an improved transaction experience that’s environmental friendly but you can build email data into your CRM and introduce post sale value incentives to make your customer feel valued and draw them back instore.

5. Email Seasonal “Must Have” Campaigns
Sending timely emails of value to your customers is an art. Establishing a personal approach for offers and promotion is the essence of email campaign success and having it built into your EPoS or retail management system is a big advantage.

Knowing what your customers’ purchase histories are, identifying customer groups and orchestrating relevant and timely seasonal email campaigns delivers a much higher level of ROI, engagement and retention. It’s often just a case of having the right tools for the job to make it all quick, simple and effective.

6. Loyalty Programs
Customers love loyalty rewards and cards but it’s a competitive game now and you need to keep your program valued and not lost and abandoned to competitors. Having a seamless loyalty program that can run and be available across all sales channels, at any service point and in real time, is essential.

Whether buying online, instore or out of store, the customer perceives one business, one brand and expects one continuous stream of experience, accuracy and consistency. The loyalty programs of today must be able to work universally across all current and future needs and be agile enough to accommodate new ideas and innovations.

7. Free Product Giveaway on a Loyalty Points Accelerator Day
Pairing multiple goals in a given event is always a good idea. A free product giveaway to your loyal customers can boost up-selling while the added traffic can improve opt-in to your loyalty rewards program. The customer retention and engagement, not just the boost to sales is the key here.

Having a flexible loyalty rewards program that allows for a time-limited event where transaction earn more loyalty points, is an easy incentive to promote a new product and a more economic method of liquidating old stock instead of a high discount.
The value to free product giveaways for the consumer is a good reason to come back and visit your store, giving them a reason to opt-in to your loyalty program, so making it as easy as possible should be a priority.

Modern Retailer Retention in a Nutshell
While there is a wide variety of selling tactics retailers can use, taking loyalty and retention marketing for a hybrid retail model to the next level requires strategy, investment and the ability to deliver value and convenience at every step for their shoppers.

It’s all about thinking smarter, thinking bigger and universally to remove perceived channel barriers. It demands the creation of a holistic and powerful marketing, sales and retention machine, founded on a cohesive, highly integrated and agile software platform to act as a hybrid engine to fuel and coordinate every channel and aspect of the multi-channel sales, engagement and retention process.

Download “Multi-Channel Efficiency. What are you doing?” your guide to the right answer: http://www.retailstore.co.uk/multi-channel-efficiency/