Connecting social media and community-building with multichannel retail

At this year's eTail West conference, I was lucky enough to be Track Chair for a series of presentations and panels, assembled under the headline  "Social Media, Community, and Customer Experience."

It was interesting to see how retailers are harnessing new techniques to engage with customers in their favorite online social networks. A quick scan of the companies operating Facebook Pages and Groups tells you a lot about how different brand managers approach this. The basic idea: use social media to build and expand your retail or product community; make it easy for consumers to feel part of your 'tribe'; enable them to evangelize your product to their network of friends; create desire and demand; drive new customers to your site. Since referral and recommendation from a trusted friend will always win out over advertising, it's easy to see how manufacturers and retailers of branded products are enthusiastically embracing these new media.

If you're aiming to boost demand for your product on social nets by engaging with consumers where they are hanging out on the web, then you need to place even more emphasis on enhancing customers' experience once they arrive at your online store. This is where you can seal the deal or scare a customer off for good.

While revamping the online store is undoubtedly important, it runs up against today’s inescapable budget pressures (‘doing more with less’ was a recurring theme at the conference) so quantifiable and measurable approaches to multichannel retailing are in order. This means 'convenience features' must connect with the bottom line. With no new money being allocated, budgets are being shifted to wherever dollars are most accountable. Matchbacks from one source (e.g., catalog or online) are being used to tie back to where redemption occurs (e.g., offline).

Home Depot's experience with this is illustrative. In order to meet their needs for a quality multichannel experience, they realized they needed to overhaul their approach to gift card redemption. Currently, gift cards can be purchased online or in-store, but can only be redeemed in-store — a major complaint from those who receive them. They're currently working on a fix (that will deploy later this year) to meet their customers' multichannel needs.

All this emphasis on social networks means etailers need to scrutinize how they handle multichannel retailing. This can be defined as online research that results in an offline purchase, and underscores how consumers are making different channels work for them. Greg Sterling over at Screenwerk recently discussed some interesting Nielsen data: 58% of users identifed the web as indispensable for researching consumer electronics products, yet only 4% wound up purchasing online.

This is not an online issue, or an offline issue; this is a sales issue. For retailers with a physical retail presence: you have spent a lot of time addressing your online shopping cart. Now it is time to work on your offline shopping cart.

For retailers without a physical presence: this is your chance to steal away the customer who is about to put a product into their offline shopping cart. Perhaps you previously thought your market was only the 4% of commerce that is transacted online; in fact, it is the other 96% as well, represented by the offline cart. The same statistic probably applies to those consumers who were influenced by a friend's recommendation on Facebook.

Back to customer experience… are you making it easy for your customers to complete the online 'purchase decision'—whether influenced by online reseach or an online friend—with an offline sale?