In the face of ongoing macroeconomic pressures such as elevated inflation, Australian consumers are being more picky with discretionary spending, forcing retailers to find new ways of demonstrating value to engage customers and secure sales.

The latest release of Shopify’s Australian Retail Report reveals 79 percent of Australians are cutting down on spending to save money, with 54 percent actively seeking the best value – whether through lower prices or higher quality products or experiences. 

When it comes to what customers value, quality is important, but so is a seamless shopping experience. This has become a truly differentiating factor for retailers as the market landscape witnesses a growing preference among shoppers to discover and buy items in any number of channels – both online and offline. 

This applies to retailer’s marketing efforts too. When it comes to what customers value, a seamless experience is a differentiating factor not linked to price that retailers can weave into their ongoing marketing, promotion and engagement activities. 

This is important. According to Shopify’s research, close to a third (32 percent) of shoppers would be more loyal to a brand if they were offered a seamless user experience, making it a serious differentiator for brands looking for market share in a tight market.

Serving up seamless experiences to secure sales

In a multichannel sales environment, a seamless shopping experience means a personalised shopping experience, with every interaction tailored to the individual. Customers may want to engage with a brand anywhere and anytime during their shopping journey, and retailers have to be ready for them.  

For instance, offering customers relevant products at the right time can drive customer acquisition and secure customer retention, leading to greater sales. But knowing what to offer, and when, requires an in-depth understanding of that specific customer.  

Here’s where the secret sauce of personalised engagement comes in: first-party data. This is perhaps the most valuable resource retailers have at their disposal to drive the personalisation needed to successfully deliver a seamless customer experience across multiple channels.  

Simply put, first-party data gives retailers the ability to gain a full picture of the customer across all sales and marketing channels. However, getting the right data about customers across all channels can be a challenging proposition, especially when different legs of the sales journey are managed by different solutions.

That’s why sales platforms with unified commerce capabilities come in handy. Such solutions can help capture and consolidate customer information from all channels and every single touchpoint in the buyer’s journey, both online and in-store, to drive true personalisation. With the right data, retailers can market the right offers to the right customers at the right time. 

Making marketing efforts hit their target

When tied into consumer marketing and engagement activities, first-party data can be a highly potent lever. One of the more effective ways top brands get the data they need to ensure a personalised experience for customers is through loyalty programs.

 A great example outlined in Shopify’s Australian Retail Report is JB Hi-Fi’s Perks membership program, which has attracted more than 1.4 million members with a series of special events, special deals and more. Moreover, it is a key personalisation driver for the iconic retailer that also fosters retention.  

The added upshot of initiatives like this is that the customer benefits provided by loyalty programs are in themselves, loyalty drivers. According to Shopify research, 45 percent of consumers cite loyalty points or rewards as an effective way to foster loyalty, while 25 percent cite exclusive members-only experiences.

However, given that 43 percent of Australian consumers prefer shopping in stores and more than a quarter (26 percent) like both in-store and online shopping equally, it’s important for retailers to ensure loyalty programs work seamlessly across all channels – something that can be achieved with unified commerce infrastructure.

The data garnered from a unified loyalty program can be used by marketing teams to inform anything from highly-targeted product recommendations, reminders about upcoming sales, alerts about new products that individual customers may love, special offers and more. This is just one example of the ways a unified approach to commerce can drive marketing efforts. 

The tech driving personalised engagement

Given the clear need for unified commerce and the data it provides, close to half (49 percent) of retailers are planning to increase investment in their omnichannel experience in the next year. To make sense of the data needed to enable such unified experiences, 65 percent of retailers are increasing their technology investment in business intelligence over the coming year.

When built into a unified commerce platform, business intelligence can be a very powerful tool for marketing teams to target customers with fine-grained precision, delivering personalised messaging at the right time. That’s one of the reasons why Shopify recently rebuilt its dashboard, giving retailers unified analytics, with real-time data across every channel.  

The business intelligence delivered by unified analytics in turn underpins complementary technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, which can give marketers the ability to create an extra level of personalisation to customer engagement at scale.

Engagement tactics like AI-powered messaging advertising new products or offers that clearly suit individual customers’ personal preferences can improve the customer experience enormously because they show shoppers that a retailer truly understands them. 

And, when it comes down to it, we all just want to know that people see us for who we are. First-party data and unified analytics can help retailers and their marketing teams get to know each customer better, providing a more personalised and seamless experience in the process.

Shaun Broughton is the managing director of Shopify for APAC and Japan, where he leads a dynamic team responsible for product and revenue go-to-market strategies, retention and growth across the region. He has played a key role in opening markets in ANZ, Japan, China, Southeast Asia and India for multiple Shopify products, and oversees acquisition, marketing, partnerships, customer success, launch engineering and support functions, driving Shopify’s expansion and success across diverse markets.

Also, read Intuit Mailchimp’s report that reveals the greatest influence on purchases.