Our digital first culture is shaping expectations – for personalised experiences that delight and engage – whether we’re chatting to family and friends or booking a restaurant, rescheduling a delivery, or making an online purchase.
Our smartphones are beside us constantly – and we expect businesses to let us choose exactly where, how, and at what pace to engage with them. We also want to make our digital transactions as simple and as efficient as possible.
This means that the pressure is on for organisations of all sizes and across all sectors to move from one-way interactions to the seamless, two-way personalised experiences we have all come to expect.
As retailers gear up for Black Friday, what can they do to deliver a great customer experience and encourage sales?
Finding new ways to engage with customers on mobile — particularly through chat via text/SMS or rich messaging apps such as WhatsApp — needs to be a critical part of any Black Friday strategy.
According to our research, which saw us pollover 4,000 people globally, 81% of consumers would consider purchasing a product from a company as a result of a marketing message received via text/SMS or WhatsApp, with notifications of a sale, one-time discount or a back in stock alert being the most likely messages to attract attention.
In addition, 48% would prefer to contact customer service via text/SMS or WhatsApp, which highlights the need for businesses to adopt a full multi channel presence.
With current research also suggesting that 48% of people are on their phone between four and eight hours a day, with seven in 10 of us checking any unread notifications in less than five minutes, WhatsApp and other rich messaging channels offer one of the quickest ways to engage with customers.
Just as brands have worked to make emails personalised, they can now create highly targeted Black Friday experiences through messaging. Rather than simply sending out a generic discount code to everyone, consider sending images of products your customer has browsed recently, offering the same discount based on their personal preferences.
In the quest to enhance brand awareness and convert average customers to engaged customers that keep coming back for more, bringing their friends, and recommending you to others, text/SMS and other rich messaging can really shift the dial.
Deliver and delight with an excellent retail customer experience
Black Friday 2022 and the holiday shopping beyond will once again prove testing for many retailers. Those that move from reaction mode to focus on customer engagement across multiple channels, using customer data to inform an on-demand and frictionless customer experience, have a very real chance of standing out from the digital crowd.
Download our eBook to capitalise on the biggest shopping day of the year and drive increased traffic and sales.
Prachi Bametha
Marketing Coordinator, Esendex Australia