Revolutionizing the commerce experience:Five key benefits of integrating content and commerce

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White paper // Revolutionizing the commerce experience

Contents

Intoduction ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 2

Tactic 1: Automate the abandoned cart ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3

Tactic 2: Contextualize marketing to personalize the experience ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 4

Tactic 3: Utilize pricing engine capabilities ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 4

Tactic 4: Develop targeted promotions ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5

Tactic 5: Implement end-to-end engagement tools ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 6

Next steps ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 6

About Sitecore �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 7

Published 10/2016� © 2016 Sitecore Corporation A/S� All rights reserved� Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S in the U�S� and other countries� All other brand and product names are the property of their respective owners� This Sitecore copy guidelines document may not, in whole or in part, be copied, reproduced, translated, or used in any other form without prior written consent from Sitecore� Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Sitecore�

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White paper // Revolutionizing the commerce experience

Introduction In a market where 78% of consumers abandon a transaction or purchase because of poor service, businesses need to personalize and customize their interactions with customers to remain competitive� 1 A truly personalized customer experience, framed in the context of the consumer’s previous buying patterns and behaviors as well as their current interactions, can mean the difference between engaged, loyal customers or lost business for your company�

However, while many brands are aware of the need for more relevant and contextual customer experiences, most are failing to deliver, with only one in three consumers believing that their favorite companies understand them�3 Disconnected marketing and commerce systems make it difficult for marketers to have a clear view and knowledge of purchase events—they can promote products, but may not know which have already been purchased or are of interest to various audience segments� Even those brands using best-in-class digital experience platforms and commerce systems are missing out� It’s the integration between those two platforms and the data they house that allows marketers to promote products with a complete view of who might be receptive�

A natively integrated digital content and commerce platform allows you to manage all customer data and content in one central repository, and gives both systems access to the same product information� This allows your marketing department to gain insight into the data-rich inventories and catalog information that’s generated by the commerce system, and leverage that information to target consumers from the digital content platform on a deeper and more customized level throughout the customer journey� Rather than being bound to a marketing process that either ends at or is blind to purchases, a combined content-commerce platform allows your marketing and commerce teams to redefine the customer experience as one that happens before, during, and after the purchase�

What the customer experiences is a more seamless connection between marketing content, product information, and the purchase transaction� And because the marketer’s web content management or email system has access to their purchase data, the customer won’t have to experience the frustrating déjà vu of an email promoting something they just bought�

A natively integrated solution is one that many organizations need; Gleanster Research found that the average retail organization deploys three to five different technologies to support multichannel execution, with top performers using five to seven technologies� “The pace of innovation in digital channels exceeds the rate at which large retail organizations can adopt new technologies to embrace the change� As a result, retail organizations must invest in a fragmented and disconnected array of technologies to address emerging channels like social, mobile, tablets, and web personalization�”4

“By identifying a specific audience through deep insight courtesy of natively integrated data and smart analytics, businesses can target people they want to attract and turn passive customers into loyal ones. Crucially, your customer experience management needs to be about ‘who,’ rather than ‘what.’ It means shifting the focus from ‘product X was also purchased with product Y,’ to ‘customers like you also bought product Z.’ This means finding out who your customers are, what they care about, and what their needs are.”

1 Help Scout2 Accenture3 Sprinklr 4 Gleanster

What’s the opportunity?

Increased customer switching—when a consumer abandons a product or service in favor of a competitor—has put an estimated $6 trillion in revenue up for grabs globally�2 Integrating content and commerce platforms is one way to improve the purchase experience for an impatient, always-on consumer�

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White paper // Revolutionizing the commerce experience

So how can your marketing and merchandising efforts benefit from a connected content-commerce platform? How does it really change how you operate and interact with customers before and after the sale? Read on to discover five examples of how a natively integrated content and commerce platform delivers a far superior commerce experience for your customer, your marketing and commerce departments, and your brand overall�

1� Automate the abandoned cartWhen marketing and business teams talk about customer retention and brand loyalty, they are generally referring to repeat purchases� What’s often overlooked is the customer’s journey—all those intermediate touchpoints across devices and channels that, when added together, lead to a purchase� By understanding your customer’s journey better—and discovering why potential customers are failing to complete transactions—you can optimize your conversions to minimize shopping cart abandonment�

Many brand merchandisers do not have a strategy for abandoned cart situations� According to Business Insider, 63% of abandoned carts could be recoverable by savvy online retailers�6 Others operate with manual and ad-hoc systems that lack any contextual customer data, resulting in the high likelihood of another abandoned cart�

But consider what happens when content and commerce systems are integrated: your marketer could define a rule in the digital content system that automatically sends an email with discounted shipping to visitors within 24 hours after they leave items in their shopping carts�

The merchandiser can choose from a range of different abandoned cart rules appropriate to the targeted customer, using both real-time and historical data that has been collected on the individual, together with predictions about their current and future buying behavior� This way, when the customer receives an automated reminder email, it’s more likely to arrive at a moment when they are most receptive to it�

The average online shopping cart abandonment rate currently sits at 68.63%.7

This “contextual intelligence” on customer interactions addresses a common challenge for many merchandisers: how do you know the optimal time to send the message, which channel is best for each shopper, and whether the discount or the free shipping is most relevant to the individual? This is where the integration of content and commerce begins to shine�

Contextual intelligence gives your business the power to collect data about how an individual is interacting with your brand using the system’s built-in customer analytics, and target and personalize your communications with that individual� This works in tandem with omnichannel automation, which allows you to deliver the right content, on the right channel, at the right moment� This moves beyond simply personalizing emails and web landing pages� A combined content-commerce platform can map profiles and the real-time behaviors of customers to support on-the-spot customization of the experience across all touchpoints�

By automating and extending these marketing communications into commerce, your business can effectively target customers and improve the customer experience, which means fewer abandoned carts and a boost to your bottom line�

Did you know?

It is six to seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one�5

5 Help Scout6 Business Insider7 Baymard Institute

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White paper // Revolutionizing the commerce experience

2� Contextualize marketing to personalize the experienceSavvy brands and retailers understand that their content must be tailored to the needs of their audience� As summarized in the recent Forrester Consulting and PwC study, The Power of Personalization, “personalization is critical for marketers seeking to enhance customer centricity and engagement�”8

Marketing in context of how customers are interacting with your brand is key to personalization and will become an important competitive advantage for brands� While many brands have already started personalizing their communications, few offer a holistic, end-to-end contextualized customer experience, one that extends from pre-sale communications to messaging during the buying stage and into the post-sale, long-term loyalty stage�

The barrier for many businesses lies in implementing this holistic approach across the entire organization� Siloed departments, separate systems that house relevant data, differing goals and objectives, and internal politics, where people pursue their own agendas at the detriment of the business or team, can all stop companies from implementing true, effective change� Trying to achieve this change through the manual integration of separate systems, disparate data, and business units can be an insurmountable task�

Forrester found that 61% of survey respondents were working to unify their fragmented brand marketing and commerce sites, with the report stating: “For many brands and manufacturers, this is no easy feat as segregation between the e-commerce team and the digital marketing teams often means they have historically used different tools� Further complicating the unification of brand experience onto a single site is that many

firms operate different digital experience tools across brands, divisions, and international markets�”

Only 17% of respondents said their company had fully integrated their customer data across all areas of the organization.10

Address these systematic, organizational, and technological issues by integrating your web content systems with your commerce engines� Through a natively integrated content and commerce platform, you can track a customer’s journey across all devices and channels, both historically and in real time, to deliver unique, personal, and relevant content at exactly the right time�

For example, if you know a customer has recently browsed on their mobile device for laptop accessories and read an article on your blog about the different merits of certain headphones, when they next visit your site you can deliver a highly personal experience to them with additional information on the headphone line or discounts specifically for that category of products� It shows the consumer that you know them, their interests, and their preferences, and it gives your brand the opportunity to shape their context-driven commerce journey in real time�

3� Utilize pricing engine capabilitiesTraditional pricing tactics tend to focus on inventory, rather than individual customer preferences, failing to consider the rich customer data that marketers can offer their merchandisers� As a result of these business siloes, merchandisers don’t consult marketers and simply offer blanket discounts to customers based on simple demand-supply algorithms, such as a need to clear out excess inventory� However, sending out an across-the-board pricing offer to all customers could result in significant financial losses� Without using a customer’s context, you’ve most certainly sent a discount to someone who wasn’t looking for one� The short-term effect is, of course, a lower purchase price, but there are long-term risks� Doing this too often can “train” your customers to hesitate on future purchases until you send them a discount� And if you miss that timing, you may lose the purchase (or the customer) altogether�

When merchandisers and marketers work together and leverage the power of an integrated commerce and content platform, marketers are able to offer different prices to specific target groups� These persona-based pricing offers are based not just on

8 PricewaterhouseCoopers9 Gigya10 Kapost

Did you know? 

40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across channels�9

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White paper // Revolutionizing the commerce experience

inventory considerations, but also on inputs such as time of year, current and predicted events, units purchased, and individual customer purchase history� For instance, three months after a customer has purchased boots, they can be “alerted” that winter is on its way—with a link to a video or helpful content showing they can enjoy their boots for a lifetime with proper care—and including an offer for waterproofing spray�

In traditional pricing systems where a stock keeping unit (SKU) is associated with a fixed quantity of inventory, creating highly contextual offers often entails many hours of manual price tagging and poring over customer data� When commerce is integrated with content across devices and channels, merchandisers are able to implement pricing tactics that extend well beyond SKU-based rules�

This natively integrated platform utilizes a flexible pricing engine that offers the merchandiser:

■ Tiered and discounted pricing based on how many items are purchased�

■ Campaign-based pricing, where offers can be programmed to begin on a specific date�

■ Promotion-based, rather than SKU-based, price tagging�

■ Targeted promotions, such as discounts to dormant customers�

A contextual pricing engine goes hand-in-hand with personalization� It allows marketers to capture more sales opportunities and improve their margins, while offering the omnichannel, seamless experience that consumers love� Move beyond siloed departments and help your marketers and merchandisers work together to deliver this next evolution in customer experience�

4� Develop targeted promotionsBy identifying a specific audience through deep insight courtesy of natively integrated data and smart analytics, businesses can target people they want to attract and turn passive customers into loyal ones� Crucially, your customer experience management needs to be about “who” rather than “what�” It means shifting the focus from “product X was also purchased with product Y,” to “customers like you also bought product Z�” This means finding out who your customers are, what they care about, and what their needs are�

Identifying and building these personas is a critical component in developing personalized customer experiences� You need to know who your customers are before you can communicate effectively with them� And this starts with collecting your customer data from both your commerce and content systems into a single repository, where you can accurately analyze their behaviors, preferences, and needs�

With a natively integrated content and commerce platform, this centralized repository can immediately use or capitalize on your content for each and every experience your customer enjoys across any channel� Capturing and adding each individual shopper’s timeline from their profile, and using it in those “inventory algorithms” mentioned earlier, you start building a more relevant and engaging relationship with customers� You can serve relevant, up-to-date content to your customers by organizing and attributing content to specific personas and customer behaviors within your integrated system�

A company using this tactic is Thule, the leader in sports utility in transportation� Each time customers interact with its online store—through a mobile app, email, or website—they build upon a more personalized relationship with the Thule brand�

Thule recognized that its customers have different lifestyles, from the outdoor activities they are passionate about to the kinds of vehicles they use to travel to new destinations� Thule’s FitGuide allows consumers to shop on their own terms and uses information about the individual’s sports interests and travel needs to deliver a best-in-class contextual commerce experience�

A natively integrated content and commerce system allows you to continually learn the tendencies and interests of each shopper� One customer might prefer fast shipping, another low prices�

11 Outbrain

Did you know?

76% of marketers have failed to use behavioral data in segmentation analysis and targeting execution�11

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White paper // Revolutionizing the commerce experience

The majority of consumers actually expect brands to be sensitive to their preferences� According to a 2016 Sitecore study conducted in conjunction with research firm Vanson Bourne, 62% of consumers are willing to share online activity and preferences to varying degrees, in order to receive a more personalized customer experience�12

The key benefit of two-way engagement is the 360-degree view of the customer it provides� A comprehensive customer profile informed by both commerce and content interactions enables your brand to find the right balance between knowing customers’ existing needs and predicting what they’ll need next�

5� Implement end-to-end engagement toolsTo stay ahead of your competition, your business needs to understand that customer engagement and communications must continue after a purchase is made� In fact, the point-of-sale should be regarded as the midpoint of the customer life cycle� This holistic view of the customer experience represents a paradigm shift in the way companies and customers interact�

Before omnichannel, the customer journey followed a relatively linear path that ended with a purchase, and perhaps a customer support agreement� Today, we have the always-on customer who is constantly in touch with the brand through a range of different channels, in both the online and offline worlds�

97% of companies say they plan to invest in omnichannel, and 23% of companies are already doing multichannel communication well.13

This dramatically changes your brand’s number-one concern from “how many customers do I have?” to “how engaged are my customers?” It means you need the right engagement tools at hand—tools that help you boost sales and build brand loyalty through deep personalization, the contextualization of content, and a highly interactive digital experience at every customer touchpoint�

A great example is global cosmetics company Revlon, which wanted to leverage its values of glamour, excitement, and innovation into more meaningful relationships with it’s customers�14 The Revlon website, currently powered by the Sitecore® Experience Platform™, is an important connection point with consumers� The site’s visitors get more than a simple overview of Revlon’s product lines—there is also a “virtual makeover” tool where visitors can upload a photo of themselves

and experiment with different makeup combinations� Deep engagement and personalization take place before the customer spends a single dollar on Revlon products�

Post-purchase, Revlon automatically sends an email to check that the delivery arrived on time� The company then reaches out to the customer to explain how each product should be used, and recommend complementary products� To the customer, this highly relevant, contextual experience is like having their own virtual beauty consultant� For Revlon, the result can be a customer for life—a relationship that started from customer’s very first engagement with the brand�

How these five tactics could benefit your business

Tactic Benefit

Automate the abandoned cart Delivers fewer abandoned carts and a boost to your bottom line

Contextualize marketing to personalize the experience

Shows the consumer that you know them

Utilize pricing engine capabilities

Offers customers a seamless, omnichannel experience

Develop targeted promotions Provides a 360-view of the customer

Implement end-to-end engagement tools

Harnesses a customer for life

Next stepsThese five key tactics, which have the potential to radically transform your customer experience, are within your organization’s reach� Your customers won’t want to wait for you to manually make separate systems work together for your business� Instead, invest in an integrated content and commerce platform that will allow you to collate, analyze, and act on the wealth of rich, real-time customer data at your fingertips�

As the number-one leader in customer experience management, only Sitecore has the technology to deliver relevant content to the right person, in the right place, and at the right time� Find out how Sitecore commerce solutions, along with our Sitecore Experience Platform and its market-leading web content management system, can help you deliver natively connected shopping experiences that create customers for life� Download the Sitecore Commerce brochure today�

13 Huffington Post14 Sitecore

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White paper // Revolutionizing the commerce experience

About Sitecore Sitecore is the global leader in experience management software that enables context marketing� The Sitecore® Experience Platform™ manages content, supplies contextual intelligence, and automates communications, at scale� It empowers marketers to deliver content in context of how customers have engaged with their brand, across every channel, in real time� More than 4,600 customers—including American Express, Carnival Cruise Lines, easyJet, and L’Oréal—trust Sitecore for context marketing to deliver the personalized interactions that delight audiences, build loyalty, and drive revenue�

Visit us at sitecore�net�