Maximizing Shopper Identification: Halfway to Black Friday Cyber Monday
In our most recent Coffee & Commerce event, our own Liz Madsen tackled three subjects:
- Identification rates and transparency
- Maximizing capture sign-ups
- Opportunities for driving quick conversions
Bluecore saw most retailers experienced surges in traffic last BFCM, but were unable to identify 74% of that traffic. Once an unidentified visitor leaves, they are unreachable.
Let’s not have that happen in 2023. The goal is not just to drive a sale for that one visit, the goal is to start a long-lasting relationship with a shopper and that starts with identification.
We want retailers to maximize the number of shoppers they can identify on-site. When you identify someone, you can be smarter about messaging, offers and discounting to maximize your revenue.
The first question to answer is, “What is identification and what is an ID Rate?”
Ideally, identification means knowing a visitor’s email or phone number so that we can contact them again with additional messaging. Think about how many people come to your site where you can connect them to an email address or phone number – that’s your identification rate.
Below is a summary of the conversation. Read on for some identification best practices to help you increase your ID rate and drive higher customer revenue this holiday season!
How many retailers think about their identification rate?
Mike Russo, Product Manager, at Uncommon Goods noted that he shares KPIs with his entire marketing team, “We’re focused on demographic segmentation and in early stages of capturing email addresses. We do have a capture form on our site, but we’re new to the idea of identifying users.”
Amanda Harkins, Senior Marketing Manager of CRM and Email from Brilliant Earth shared that “ID rate is a very hot topic for us, having just switched to Bluecore from Wunderkind, growing our list is extremely important because when someone comes to purchase an engagement ring, we want to create retargeting campaigns and triggered behavioral sends. We also want to make sure we’re creating a great consumer experience and ID rate helps with that.”
Scott Frost, Director of Media & Retention at Chubbies said that his company sees identification as “step 2.” Currently, they are capturing as much CRM data as possible and being as clever as possible. With their CDP they are able to port information over and add new attributes to fill out customer profiles. The unidentified users feel like a black box with their current solution which makes it hard to know what to do next.
Amanda also chimed in that a customer personalization journey improves with identification. The concept of “progressive profiling” was shared, which means that personalization is possible before you know everything about someone, even before they are identified!
What makes an ID rate 10, 15, 60%?
Regardless of what your current ID rate is, there are opportunities to improve it through strategic and tactical efforts. Liz noted that a brand that sells mattresses generally sees a customer only every decade, and the majority of revenue comes from one-time buyers. Compare that to a makeup retailer with customers purchasing multiple times per year. The mattress retailer will likely have a much lower ID rate starting point, but still will have opportunities to maximize identity capture for potential buyers.
In contrast, a brand that sells apparel or makeup like Sephora, has so many repeat buyers, which means known shoppers are returning regularly. They not only identify more of their site visitors, they also create personalized programs and campaigns on top of that like triggered journeys and loyalty programs. Each visit might be less important because they will likely see that visitor again for Sephora, but they also can build a ton of value on top of identification.
On the other hand, if a shopper isn’t coming back repeatedly, like for a mattress retailer, or for any one-time purchase product, that makes retargeting more difficult.
It’s also important to consider marketing spend and the mix that you’re focused on. If you’re driving a lot of new traffic, it’s normal to have a lower ID rate, and that’s fine!
How do you create an experience where shoppers want to offer up their email and phone number?
Michelle Travis, Global Director of CRM & Loyalty from Skinceuticals (L’Oreal) asked an interesting question, “We want to combat consumer fatigue on these highly popular marketing channels. How can you earn trust on email when people don’t want a thousand emails? How can you send the right emails to become more effective?”
Scott Frost agreed that email fatigue is a hot topic. He shared, “We are trying to think through how to tier a loyalty program or create a much more valuable experience with our brand like a weekend together. We’re also looking to get into influencer marketing with meet-and-greets. While we also deal with email fatigue, we still work to get contact information whenever we can. If we can give them a promo code, what else can we give that’s not a discount? For example, a limited edition gift or an opportunity to enter a sweepstakes. We’re putting creative thought into this.”
Amanda Harkins noted that they use a “capsule series” based on what a visitor is interested in. We ask when they are looking to purchase. They create styled emails that are personalized and feel like they are from a stylist named “Gemma” or “Julie.” If they respond, they connect to a real rep and get a great experience and have a one-to-one communication to a person. While it’s no longer attributed to email channel revenue, it comes back to us as a higher value customer.
Amanda shared that Kyte Baby has an incredible loyalty program with tiers and great perks.
When someone lands on the site, how do you maximize your chance of identifying them?
Identifying via email capture is by no means the only or even the best way to identify a shopper. There are lots of barriers:
- The annoying popup!
- Newsletter fatigue
- Discount overuse
- Customers who will sign up with fake emails only to unsubscribe after receiving the discount
One absolute must is ensuring the tech you’re using will identify shoppers at all points possible on the site – not just via email capture pop-ups. Think account creation, account login, guest check out, etc. This means your tech needs to be smart enough to detect when your site changes (which happens a LOT), and adapt quickly to ensure you never miss out on a point of identification.
But when it comes to asking users to join the email list, which is of course necessary, there are so many ways to add value. Using the information gathered during the visit can create a much more personalized approach.
Miranda Loshin from Bluecore focuses on how to maximize identification for customers via personalized campaign strategy. Miranda notes that the email popup is a good thing, but it needs to be flexible and persistent. Providing a promo code right away can work, but not for everyone.
If someone closes the popup out, keep a minimized version of that email capture form going from page to page! Give them another chance to engage once they are ready. Test things like timing, placement, creative, copy, and offer. Look at personalized exit popups as a good option too!
Scott Frost said that his company is testing how many times they can ask for email before they turn off a visitor. “We are using NPS software to see if we are creating an off-putting experience looking at lift in an A/B test for pages that have email capture modals. The numbers look good from a conversion standpoint but we might be annoying.”
Bluecore CMO Jason Grunberg recommends testing by source. If someone is coming from search compared to a social channel, their intent might be different. See what resonates for different sources because they are likely to perform differently.
Mike Russo’s company looks at three tiers – capturing email, getting an account signup and signing up for the loyalty program. If someone checks out as a guest, they follow up with an email confirmation asking to create an account. “We have Uncommon Perks to incentivize users to sign up for the loyalty program that are over and above the account benefits.”
Is anyone testing different offers by segment?
Mike Russo is doing A/B testing for Perks members and bases those tests off of new members compared to multiple-purchase customers, but is not testing pure segments against one another.
The Bluecore team also shared the following best practices:
Predictive Lifetime Value: to make sure you’re only incentivizing unsubscribed shoppers with a high predictive value to sign up for your list so that someone doesn’t take advantage of a deep discount and then go cold again.
Product Recommendations & Targeting Rules: Surface a product they engaged with or put in their cart. Offer an incentive to get them to convert since they are already in the funnel. If they don’t have something in their cart, offer new criteria to the rules such as engagement across a number of product pages.
Discount Preference: Protect your margins by tailoring different offers and promotions to different audience groups, or withhold offers for full-priced shoppers
Personification in Onboarding: For “expert” brands where people do more product research, can you create an onboarding experience that delivers a custom journey.
Social Perks: Incorporate enticing opportunities such as being featured on social or engaging with influencers.
Search Inbound: Personalize creative based on ten most valuable search signals in those first sets of triggers. If a consumer came inbound via search on a specific search term, personalize your onboarding based on that signal for a low lift, but highly impactful form of personalization.
Michelle had an “aha” moment – “This is so inspiring for me to think about what personalization truly means. Use SEO territories in marketing materials, let’s make that more obvious to get them to opt in rather than having them self search on those same terms.”
Ultimately, what you want to think about is what makes your brand and buyers unique – and personalize based on that overlap. So if your brand is a marketplace highly driven by inbound search and your customers are hungry for new product discovery, think about using those inbound search signals to personalize. But if your brand is built on expertise and customers are coming to you as a trusted resource for that guidance, use that signal to focus your personalization efforts.
How Can You Make the Most of a Small Amount of Visitor Info?
Bluecore can predict, based only on a couple of page visits, what they are most likely to purchase. Our models are trained entirely on retail data and can quickly understand what is right for a visitor.
Take a visitor searching for mascara who comes to the site and then views other products before they become idle. Consider surfacing a pop-up modal with personalized recommendations that catch their attention to keep them shopping more on the site.
Similarly, if a product is sold out, share similar in-stock items that they may be interested in to keep them engaged and get them closer to purchase. Definitely jump on the opportunity to solicit their email by asking them to sign-up to be notified once the original product they viewed is back in stock to keep adding value, whether they purchase or not.
Social proof campaigns can be another strategy to get people to get closer to purchase. Show how many shoppers are looking at or purchasing the same product or when a product is selling fast /likely to sell out soon to increase the likelihood of your visitor making it to the next stage of their purchase journey
Scott enhances reviews and creates content using reviews to create social content that can resonate well with people and create deeper engagement.
Mike notes that highlighting best sellers and merchandising products creatively – for father’s day, “We cluster products by what kind of dad you have. Those personas help get people closer to products that they are more likely to buy.”
Michelle reminds everyone that a gift purchase requires a different follow-up experience than a purchase for yourself!
What identification issues do you deal with?
Segmentation can be tough at times. Brilliant Earth wants repeat purchasing, but often people will buy for someone else and unsubscribe only for that person to come back to get something else. “If a guy buys an engagement ring and then his fiance comes back to get the wedding bands, that’s a household, but it’s often difficult for us to recognize.”
Jason Grunberg shares that putting a specific offer together with a unique referral code can help tie purchases across different people in a household. For example, if that engagement ring purchase provided a code to share with their fiance to use, they can redeem the code and tie the two customers to a single household.
Creating a roadmap to increase identification rate can start today and make a big impact this holiday season. From email capture to personalized content experience, every retailer has opportunities to drive better customer revenue. We’re here to help!
