Americans are placing an even greater premium on quality customer service this year. Seven in 10 Americans (70 percent) are willing to spend an average of 13 percent more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service. This is up substantially from 2010, when six in 10 Americans (58 percent) said they would spend an average of 9 percent more with companies that deliver great service.
Straight out of the blocks for iPad 2 is the new “Magic Mirror” Augmented Reality iPad App using advanced facial tracking and user recognition features to deliver the magic mirror experience. While this demo presents a totally playful experience, it’s the tech smarts combined with the iPad 2′s features that will be quite exciting for brands and agencies to harness commercially.
Retailers surveyed by RIS News and IHL Group in November 2010 were considering getting in on the location-based game in one form or another: 24% were thinking about partnering with shopkick or a similar service over the next two years, while 43% planned to join up with a service like foursquare.
According to shopkick data on its users, the app may be a better bet for many retailers than check-in apps with a more social core. Not only are mobile users more likely to use a location-aware shopping app than a social location-sharing service, but the demographics of shopkick may also be more attractive. shopkick users are 55% female, vs. the overwhelmingly male user base of location-sharing services, and the age breakdown is less skewed toward younger users.
The presentation, titled "The Best Experiences in the World and What Makes Them Work," shows how looking at a business from the customer's point of view yields a better understanding of how to design experiences that lead to raving fans and a better bottom line.
1. Know the customer
Companies know a lot more about their customers than one might think. They have a record of all their purchases and relevant customer support conversations, which gives them a baseline of useful information. Using real-time marketing, data can be augmented with other information available from third-party vendors — If they own a house or rent, where they work and approximately how much they make, what they have recently bought from other vendors and so forth. In utilizing all of this information, a customer can encounter an instantaneous, unique, one-to-one shopping experience.2. Propose a relevant offer
If a customer has ever been turned off by cross-selling or upselling, it’s because the offer was not pertinent to their specific interests or recent behaviors. Real-time marketing takes into consideration information specific to THAT customer, to create an offer or message in which they can very personally relate.3. Consider a variety of channels
Today’s retail marketers are often focused on leveraging email, direct mail, and in more instances today, social media. There are several untapped channels to interact with current and prospective clients, however, especially in the mobile space. What about your customer support channel? Retailers can and should be extending customer service agents as sales agents, providing them the necessary tools to effectively upsell and cross-sell depending on the customer’s particular circumstance.4. Enhance the customer experience
The overarching goal of a marketer is to reach customers in a way that is significant and engaging, creating an enhanced overall experience for that customer. If customers feel like they’re being heard, they will be more receptive to offers, suggestions and messages — which will ultimately drive more bottom-line profits.5. Maintain sophistication
As technology and marketing strategies continue to demand more collaboration, marketers must not forget the tried and true database marketing principles. This includes control groups, A/B testing and experimental designs that lead to accurate incremental sales equations. Launching real-time marketing strategies doesn’t mean the intelligence behind those strategies has to disappear simply because they are associated with a new technology or channel.
STRATACACHE CEO Chris Riegel said the translucent display, intended for retail, grocery and c-store environments, is new to the marketplace but also a signpost for the direction digital signage needs to head.
PrimaSee showcases high-definition, dynamic video advertisements embedded in a see-through glass panel. These translucent promotional videos would correspond with products visible behind the displays, say in a grocer's freezer aisle, to convey point-of-purchase or point-of-decision brand messages.
“Mike, when my consumer walks into a supermarket, I’ve got 90 seconds to convince them to purchase my cold/flu product over my competitors”, explained an overwhelmed pharma client, “they’re affluent and armed with smart phones and I know how capture their attention before and after they arrive, but how in those 90 seconds how can I grab their attention at retail? Do I need another iPhone app?”
