Top 4 Customer Engagement Practices for Retail Mobile App Businesses
The realm of retail is evolving at a rapid pace. It’s no longer enough to simply build a mobile application and offer a great marketplace- the customers expect much more. In the diligent market with almost numerous opportunities, many retailers are focussing on refining the quality of their service. That’s why retail digital officers should follow the latest practices and trends to deliver excellent customer engagement through mobile apps.
Mobile Customer Engagement: What Does It Mean for the Retailers
Mobile customer engagement is all about the ways a business interacts with its end-users through mobile applications. While this sounds simple in fact, it’s a multifaceted practice. Customers don’t just prefer one retail app over another due to primitive aspects like a well-designed interface, accessibility, and user support.
The infusion of modern technologies and digital services in mobile apps delights users. Tech adoption can help retail businesses understand nuances in the app functionality and design that contribute to sales. Other benefits include:
- Greater Customer Satisfaction – By leveraging technologies like automation and data analytics, retailers can modernize connectivity, and communications, and cultivate lasting relationships.
- Maximize Customer Retention – The role of technology in user retention is to provide retailers with the data and tools they require to understand their customers profoundly, monitor customer journeys and streamline customer service processes
Learn more about how Data Analytics drive retail growth
Industry-Leading Practices to Drive Retail Customer Engagement
Investing in Geolocation Technologies
Geolocation should be considered as an opportunity to drive customer engagement and a more appropriate way of targeting. Geolocation incorporation is an optimal practice that helps retailers identify who their target audience is and understand their interests. This way, retailers can implement strategies to improve brand presence.
The most apparent advantage of the geolocation implementation during retail mobile app development is the ability to target prospective buyers at the moment they’re near the physical outlets. For instance, when a customer happens to be within a mile of a retail outlet, the mobile app equipped with geolocation functionalities can sense this and deliver customized notifications. Instead of sending humongous emails or messages to customers who aren’t in a condition to respond to a marketing campaign, a location-specific tailored notification can help retailers influence the audience at large.
Let’s look at a popular business case of geolocation incorporation in a retail mobile app:
Taco Bell – a multinational chain of fast food restaurants exclusive ‘Go Mobile’ app has incorporated geolocation technology and understands their customer interest including how they behave and what they value utmost.
The mobile experience manager at Taco Bell stated that “more than 60% of purchases in Go Mobile app are customized.” Taco Bell has also mentioned that geolocation-led marketing enables them to give their customers novel options to place and obtain their orders as soon as they arrive.
Add Livestream Options
Incorporating live video content in retail mobile apps facilitates two-way communication. Livestream commerce is an ideal way for retailers to turn brand viewers or listeners into customers rapidly. Customers can seamlessly buy or save featured products directly from the application, stimulating real-time engagement and a better connection with the business.
But the advantages of livestream commerce go beyond customer engagement. In a recent survey, retailers mentioned that the user conversion outcomes after implementing livestream effects are 10 times higher than conventional eCommerce. This approach is useful in creating a sense of urgency and intimacy with the retail mobile audience. Furthermore, retailers can tap into new audiences through exclusive discounts and make influencer partnerships with livestream commerce.
Creating Hyper-Personal Experiences With AI
Retailers with access to a massive volume of customer data can leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) to increase monthly retail purchases within the application. Integrating AI tools in retail mobile applications gives retailers more information about customers, recognizes buying patterns, and accelerates time-to-resolution. This subsequently reduces shopping cart abandonment rates and enables retailers to run data-driven campaigns, which guarantees a better profitability and a competitive edge.
A combination of AI and predictive analytics in retail mobile applications allow retailers to use historical data to forecast customer demands, uncover patterns, and discover risks and opportunities. Personalization plays a huge role in customer engagement. Modern consumers will only engage with app services if it is personalized to their requirements.
Beyond that, AI-powered retail mobile apps help in lessening customer churn rate. For example, after analyzing monthly retail purchases, retailers can use the insights acquired to influence and retain buyers who are more likely to turn into long-term regulars. This would lead to a significant reduction in churn rate and enable the retailers to enhance the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Consecutively, retailers can cut down on huge marketing expenses required to get new customers.
Setting Up Virtual Storefront With Metaverse
Customer senses play an important role in the retail mobile app experience. Indeed, improving customers’ senses is one of the practical effective ways to establish an immersive retail ecosystem. As it turns out, the Metaverse technology will play an even larger role in revolutionizing retail experiences than AR/VR due to its greater ability for delivering immersion.
By building retail marketplace applications with metaverse, retailers can deliver their audience with a real-world mall experience virtually. Hence, customers can interact with brands, transfer content, and make acquisitions through metaverse-powered marketplace apps.
In simple terms, the metaverse retail applications will act as a virtual storefront, where retailers can connect with the audience, establish a community, and help the users identify and acquire products or services based on their interests. At present, retailers are leveraging the metaverse largely to institute their brand presence in the virtual world. The key benefit of leveraging metaverse is virtual marketing, which means businesses advent into the digital environment to interact with the audience, aiming to encourage them to purchase their physical product.
Closing Thoughts
Applications with personalized user interaction mechanisms help retailers drive brand presence and loyalty. Retail brands that want to succeed in the flooded market should try out the above-said customer engagement strategies. When the whole user journey is personalized end to end, retailers can provide dynamic services and reap the benefits.
