Practically everyone has a smartphone these days, a notion backed up by Pew Research Center, who found that 72 percent of Americans now own one of these multi-functional machines.
Not only does that mean more mobile calling, but a lot more mobile everything—from Facebooking to researching products and even using these digital Swiss army knives to pay for purchases in shops.
Your customers have gone mobile and it’s high time you use their favorite technology to reconnect with them. It might seem like a monumental task to catch up if you’ve fallen behind the mobile technology game, but with the right bits of tech, you’ll remind those customers of what they loved about your business in the first place.
New Ways to Connect to Customers with Mobile
Your customers’ mobile devices can be your best salespeople if you let them. Those shoppers are used to these systems trying to help them shop, as well as popping up messages to guide them through their day, so your sales messages can fit in seamlessly.
Beacons, geofencing and mobile apps go a long way to increasing in-store sales with mobile if your budget supports them. Even if you’re on a shoestring, a solid app that allows customers to check in-store inventory, request order fulfillment to your store or their homes using products from your warehouse, or that speeds up check-out and offers coupons can be a great way to catch the attention of your shoppers.
Every retail location is a little different, what works for your shop may not work for your neighbor’s store. However, understanding that mobile phones are a deeply personal technology that allows you to reach into your customers’ lives and truly get to know them and their wants is vital to using the tech properly. After all, why show the same ad at every person who walks in your shoe store when you can segment your audiences and push BOGO offers for back to school shoes to parents while you’re also flashing information about your newest running shoes to single men who own Fitbits?
The power of mobile is immense and it’s only getting bigger. By giving retailers the ability to truly predict what shoppers want and what products might solve real problems they’re having, mobile can create brand loyalty in a way that your shoppers have never experienced it before. With the right application of old-fashioned customer care married to new technologies, your order fulfillment can catch fire simply by taking advantage of the tiny computer in every shopper’s pocket.
