According to a survey among retailers, over 80% of marketers believe they understand and know the type of engagement their customers like, but almost half of consumers disagree.

This is a shocking fact: it highlights the gap between what companies, retailers, offer and the experience that customers draw from it.

Retail is a difficult environment, especially considering the huge price pressure, the presence of discount stores to compare with and the transparency – also online – of the costs of the products. This affects strategies such as promotional, as easily imitated and replicable.

But you can emerge through the creation of custom approaches, where retailers are able to build unique paths for individual customers.

Personalized customer experiences not only create greater engagement for the consumer, increasing loyalty and the top line, but are also difficult to imitate from the competition, since they are based on the proprietary database.

Not only contacts, but travel

Taking a customer on a journey to take action can be a unique and memorable experience. However, the journey is not strictly linear: customers move back and forth along the route according to their personal needs at that time. In fact, there is no unique or ideal path. Some end with the purchase, others do not, but for this reason are not to be considered a failure.

Imprinting an emotion or a positive feeling, generates an unmistakable image that remains in the head of the customer for a long time. This means that you could very well turn into brand loyalty.

Why? Imagine yourself living a beautiful experience, that satisfies you: you will want to repeat it, to continue practicing a basic action like buying a shopping with serenity. As a result this satisfaction will create for the customer a thread with the retailer, building a kind of trust, advocacy, which will make it more difficult to purchase from competitors.

Not only.

The customer is not only loyal to the retailer, but becomes a promoter of the same. Advocacy is a powerful growth engine, especially when expertly combined with apps and social media. Sharing positive experiences with friends and family can increase sales.

We cannot underestimate him, far from it.

Now imagine consumer engagement as a conversation that continuously sends out valuable impulses and feedback, allowing the retailer to hold customers by the hand. In addition to all the benefits listed in this article, it will make it easier to identify when something is wrong, so make corrections and improvements as soon as possible. With a new view, retailers can tackle problems and proactively address them, thereby minimizing consumer frustration and enabling a seamless experience.

Let’s get back to the title of our study: how retailers meet customer expectations. But how to create a personalized path, an approach that allows you to build connections and cultivate them over time? The answer is simple: through data.

Leveraging information assets allows you to develop seamless customer journeys, customer-centric journeys and experiences, and succeed in today’s ruthless competitive landscape.