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Beyond the payment transaction: How retailers can maximise sales

payment transaction

The impact of technologies such as mobility, mobile wallet, and the Internet of Things goes far beyond the payment transaction. Today’s end-to-end experience allows retailers to integrate themselves into the everyday lives of both online and offline shoppers. And at the core of it all there’s customer information – lots and lots of customer information – accumulated through countless interactions, across multiple customer touch points.

David Atherton, Business Development Manager at NoBlue, works with companies in a variety of sectors who are seeking to streamline their business processes, provide excellent customer service, and ultimately grow their business.

His experience in working with retailers has allowed him to identify the factors that are vital to success. One such factor is data – whether that’s pertaining to an individual customer or across an entire business as a whole – and the technologies necessary to maximise sales and optimise management and operations.

Retailers can benefit from conducting a review of their total operations, from the factory where raw materials are processed to the final product in the consumer’s hands. Operations include labor management, customer service, and total loss reduction plus in stock, inventory, supply chain, and delivery – all of which present opportunities to improve efficiency and lower costs.

Personalised preferences, inventory management and the re-marketing model

Retailers have been using data analytics for years. But the availability of more powerful business intelligence tools and increased accessibility to information outside and inside of the store is enabling retailers to make high value decisions better than ever before.

Key benefits include:

  • Increase sales per visit by promoting complementary products customers are likely to purchase.
  • Ensure sufficient complementary product stock is on-hand to avoid lost sales.
  • Get customers to try something new by providing them information on new products of interest.

Through omnichannel marketing, retailers can capture customer information pertaining to an individual – across multiple marketing channels – and create an accurate profile of their shopping preferences, stored within a master CRM system.

Linking this master CRM with other key areas such as inventory and marketing allows retailers to engage customers outside of that payment transaction moment; whether that’s introducing similar or related products during the point of sale – when the motivation to buy is at its highest – or after the initial sale.

Before the beyond the payment transaction

Another valuable tool for capturing sales is re-marketing, whereby previously browsed products and items placed within an eCommerce basket are actively marketed to the customer outside of the retailer’s website. This could be in the form of an SMS, an email, or targeted advertisement.

It’s very likely that you’ve already experienced re-marketing before, even if you don’t know what the process involves. If you’ve ever browsed an product on an eCommerce site, perhaps even going as far as to put it into your basket, and then abandoned the site before purchasing then you’ve probably noticed all those visual ads following you around; reminding you of the product, the price, and where to get it.

Re-marketing gives retailers an extra avenue to market to customers who may have slipped through the net, but it requires cost management, which is why it’s important to cultivate customer information accurately so each profile can be marketed to accordingly.

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