Council Post: The New Retail Reality: 5 Trends Retail Marketers Need To Know (2024)

Richard Jones is Chief Revenue Officer of Wunderkind, helping brands adapt to modern trends amid any ever-evolving customer landscape.

Marketing is about adaptation. The landscape is constantly changing with new technologies, shifting rules and regulations, evolving customer expectations and more. So, if there’s one skill that separates the good marketers from the great, it’s adaptability.

The trick to applying that skill is knowing what’s on the horizon and choosing where and how to adjust. That means collecting data—not just any data but new data. Because yesterday’s data is too late to be of any use. We need to look around the corner, not over the shoulder.

With that in mind, here are the trends I see on the immediate horizon that retail marketers can prepare for and address today. These are based on my experience as the CRO of a company that helps brands adapt to modern trends, as well as based on research, including our company's recently released 2024 Consumer Insights Report.

Understand your online audience.

Digital shopping is certainly not a new trend, but it’s worth noting how ingrained it’s become, particularly across generations. Overall, nearly a third of consumers we surveyed buy via e-commerce on a weekly basis, and over 25% of respondents plan to increase online shopping over the course of the next year.

Perhaps not surprisingly, younger shoppers over-index on both points, with those in the 25- to 34-year-old group ranking highest. eMarketer projects that Gen-Z consumers will surpass Gen-X shoppers online by next year. However, how strongly this holds depends on what they buy. So, make sure to dig into your data and understand who your customers are.

Incentivize direct-from-site sales.

Amazon’s convenience, credibility and ubiquity make it a powerful platform for selling goods. But brands get better margins selling directly from their site, not to mention collecting more customer data. So, to convince direct-from-site sales, brands need to give a compelling reason for doing so. Persuade consumers to buy directly from your site by offering more attractive prices. This can come in the form of discount codes, loyalty program offers or by implementing price changes on items viewed. Other recommendations would be offering free shipping and ensuring a quick turnaround time on delivery.

Invest in your email strategy.

Whether it’s receiving offers or learning about deals and sales, email is the channel many consumers prefer brands communicate with them. This is great news for brands, as email is also free of the uncertainty of social algorithms and the costs of third-party advertising. In other words, it’s not only free and controllable; it also can be more effective.

There is some variance here among age groups, though. While consumers across age strata favor email over all other channels, we've learned the preference becomes stronger as age increases, peaking at a massive 65% for consumers aged 65 to 74.

Of course, it helps to know what kind of information shoppers on your site are looking for. Abandoned cart reminders, for instance, get far higher engagement than blind marketing text. That's why it's important to leverage identifying resolution capabilities to know who's shopping for what at any time.

Lean into personalization.

Sending consumers messages highlighting the exact products they recently viewed (on brand sites) is either very or somewhat likely to result in a purchase with 83% of the consumers we surveyed. In fact, McKinsey found that companies that excel at personalization bring in 40% more revenue than average. But to do so, brands need to identify who is on their site browsing for products. If anonymous visitors browse and leave, that’s a big missed opportunity if there are no identity resolution capabilities to provide that follow-up message.

Among the activities that can trigger such messages are:

Product Abandonment: Based on what they browsed for most, with or without having added to a cart.

Category Abandonment: Expanding past the specific products to recommending other options within that category that consumers may have overlooked.

Cart Abandonment: Carts are abandoned at a high frequency, making this a prime area for personalized re-engagement.

Again, the key to sending such messages is knowing who is on your site and what products they are viewing or adding to their cart. This requires working with an identity resolution provider that can recognize consumer devices and match them to shopper profiles.

Consider YouTube ads.

While Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok and X get all the press, YouTube remains one of the most influential channels for advertising. According to our survey, it's the most influential compared to other popular social media platforms.

Contributing to YouTube’s dominance is its cross-generational appeal. While TikTok, for instance, is cited as being highly influential by the majority of 18- to 24-year-olds, that drops by large increments for each age group that follows.

Conclusion

Whether it be the ups and downs of economic fluctuations or a trek toward a more privacy-centric future without third-party cookies, there’s no shortage of challenges for modern brands to navigate. But for savvy marketers, these current consumer sentiments present ripe opportunities for growth. Email remains a preferred marketing channel. The desire for personalization is clear. A multitude of strategies are effective at inspiring consumers to opt-in to marketing communications.

A well-executed identity resolution strategy addresses them all. The ability to know who is visiting your site, what they’ve shopped for and how to reach them after they leave with hyper-personalized offers turns anonymous traffic into revenue opportunities. What’s more, if implemented properly, these messages will be welcomed as valuable and helpful rather than interruptive or creepy. It’s just a matter of knowing what’s coming and adjusting your stance accordingly.

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Council Post: The New Retail Reality: 5 Trends Retail Marketers Need To Know (2024)

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