#AsiaeCommerceAwards spills: Shopify Plus on creating omnichannel customer experiences

Omnichannel enterprise platform Shopify Plus made a name of itself at the Asia eCommerce Awards 2020 when it came in as a finalist in the category of "Best eCommerce solution" amidst strong competition. This is unsurprisingly so, since most businesses were looking to sustain itself by pivoting onto digital platforms in the pandemic-hit year.

In an exclusive interview, Robin Marchant, head of marketing, APAC at Shopify Plus, told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that its merchants wanted to own more of the customer experience by having more control of their brand and their omnichannel experience, especially for the brands who is new to moving to D2C or to a marketplace. A tip that Marchant gave brands looking to remain top of mind of consumers, is that personalisation and communication are key.

"Communicate with your customers, let them know their package is coming and when it will arrive. If it’s delayed, let them know. Keep them informed. It comes down to that human connection with how your brand is going in, giving it a personality and a face," he said.

This interview is done as part of MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s winners and finalists’ interview series for Asia eCommerce Awards 2020. To find out more about the awards, click here.

What are some of the expectations your consumers now have for your brand?

Ecommerce sales are at an all-time high, which has fueled record ecommerce competition on a global scale. As brands build momentum to win over new digital audiences, customer acquisition costs are rising and brands are competing on customer experience more than ever before.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, 10 years of ecommerce growth happened in just 90 days, and in 2020, ecommerce accounted for 16.4% of total global retail sales. It is predicted that ecommerce as a percentage of total global retail sales will continue to grow over the next five years, as many brands shift more to a D2C approach.

This trend is not only a tailwind for digital brands, but also a headwind as the world of ecommerce becomes more crowded and competitive – even in product categories that have not traditionally been bought online like household essentials, health, and personal care. Those digital experiences are now everywhere, so you're competing with every brand, not just those in your segment.

As a result, at Shopify, our customers now expect us to help them rapidly adapt, help, support and guide them in this new journey. This is because for many brands, moving to D2C or moving to a marketplace is new for them. They've potentially had an online presence through a marketplace before, and then a physical presence, whereas now, that physical presence is moving online. In all of this, our merchants want to own more of the customer experience by having more control of their brand and their omnichannel experience - and they need our guidance and expertise to help them in this.

How has your marketing/your clients marketing plans shifted this year?

After a year of being disconnected from friends, family and the world at large due to stay at home orders and the travel bans, not to mention the encroachment of technology into every area of our lives, consumers have been left craving human interaction. In response, it’s going to be more important than ever before for businesses to invest in the human touch.

• 50% Of customers report spending more on convenience to get what they need*.

Brands better serve customers in 2021 by knowing customers crave convenience, immediacy, and simplicity. Every buyer touchpoint needs to be seamless - and more than half of us will pay more for convenience. Things like contactless shopping, on-demand fulfillment, and inventory availability. That's what people crave, and you'll lose customers and their loyalty if you skip that part.

• 17.5% expected growth in the global same-day delivery market*.

As for immediacy, the global ‘same day delivery’ market size is expected to grow by over 17% in 2021. Consumers have grown used to free same-day or next-day shipping, and now expect the same from every business they buy from.

• 60% Increase in searches for “easy ____” since last year*

Simplicity! This has become a lifeline for many of us during the pandemic. Google reported that searches for ‘easy’ and ‘step by step’ saw huge growth in the past year. And simplicity is even more important when you think about the number of customers shopping online for the first time in 2020—simplicity is key if you want to win those new, less tech savvy audiences.

Personalisation and communication is key here. Communicate with your customers, let them know their package is coming and when it will arrive. If it’s delayed, let them know. Keep them informed. It comes down to that human connection with how your brand is going in, giving it a personality and a face.

What are some of the trends you see carrying on post-pandemic, and how are you readying your workforce to be ready with these trends?

A key trend is omnichannel - and this may have been around for a while, but it is more important now. Marketplace is just one channel - it's about having more availability, being where your customers are, to create loyalty and connection with them. Retailers need to scale omnichannel strategies to create unified digital customer experiences. This means creating a single customer experience across your brand by unifying all sales and marketing channels.

First, identify the paths your customers are taking to find your brand, and which ones produce the most valuable customers. This is the foundation of your omnichannel strategy. Next on the path to omnichannel glory is go ‘all in’ under one roof, and unite online and offline seamless experiences for your customers. To do that, you need to know the influence each channel has on a sale.

Get it right and you’ll master your marketing mix and budgeting strategy. A good starting point is evaluating your attribution model, or a set of rules that determine how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to every touchpoint in a conversion path.

Another trend we’ll see in 2021 is turning physical experiences into digital ones. During the pandemic, 14% of buyers purchased a digital version of an experience that would normally be done in person, so retailers absolutely need to be factoring this in.

I think if 2020 taught us one thing - and that is we're all adaptive. We managed to shift our habits, workflow and lifestyle pretty quickly, in so many ways. And I think that adaptive mindset is going to continue on in marketing, because things are going to continue changing with a high frequency.

What do you think makes for great marketing these days?

Marketing doesn’t really ever change. It has been said the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing and this is still true. It comes down to knowing your customers, communicating with them, and delighting them.

Brands need to be more intentional with how they approach consumers, through better usage of data and insights that now exist at all our fingertips.

Focus on creating innovative digital experiences to make life easier for customers. Make time for human-to-human connection by automating repetitive tasks so your employees can spend more time with customers. As an example, workflow automation that puts complex business processes on autopilot, can allow employees to focus on growth and customer engagement rather than mundane, time-consuming tasks.

We’re seeing brands start to bring the digital and physical worlds together to create a truly blended shopping experience, which is great, but underpinning all of this is keeping in touch with your customers. Keep in touch with them and know what they're looking for in the first place. Be intentional with the things you do, the experiences you make and create, how they work, and how you track it.

Why would customers recommend your brand? What is it that we do differently, or we do better, and where could we improve? The answers to all these questions lie with your customers.

How are you planning for 2021?

Even though overall ad spend declined 20% last year, digital ad spend shot up by 13%, so there is a lot of competition for the same space.

It’s been a tough year of physical separation from friends and family, lockdowns, travel bans, and technology literally everywhere in our lives. So the way to deal with that is promoting more of this human interaction with brands, as I mentioned above.

A brand is the sum of every single experience a customer has with all of your touch points, not what fonts you choose or marketing collateral you create. This means everything, including your product, website, contact forms, and billing process, should be designed to make customers happy.

If ever you’re not sure your tactics are customer-focused, ask yourself one question: “Will it actually benefit your customers, or will it just boost sales because we need a jump at the end of the month?” Benefiting customers wins every time.

We've still got a huge part to play to keep educating, helping and supporting our merchants who wish to scale and grow in this new reality. And we’re now seeing new merchants who want to start fresh and from the beginning, and those who are wishing to switch to provide better experiences for customers.

So our role is to guide our merchants through all this change and competition, to enable them to scale, to grow, and to ultimately thrive. That means guiding them to leverage the various channels, providing more support, as well as amplifying the voices of a million merchants to support the next 10 million merchants. This is how we're going to keep supporting their growth, so we can keep ecommerce as an industry thriving beyond the pandemic.