an online retailers be doing better to capture and enhance their customer engagement? Chris Stolke: Online retail is an opportunity to deliver an expertly executed, deeply personal experience for the customer – in a way that can’t be achieved consistently in-store. Brands that deliver a memorable and high standard experience through every single touch point, across all channels, set themselves up for easy success and unwavering loyalty. To achieve this, retailers need to take advantage of the real-time insights they have about what their customers want. Successful businesses in Australia are using highly intelligent CRM technology integrated with business intelligence (BI) software to make this process a ‘science’. As a result, these retailers are able to personalise promotions based on a customer’s past order history, gender – and going a step further, offer them products or services relevant to what they’re researching online or engaging with on social media platforms. Despite what many claim, consumers will share information if retailers demonstrate that doing so will give them better value and make their life easier. If I bought a pair of shoes, ask me if I would like to know when something similar goes on sale or when the designer launches a new style – show me the value and I’ll give you my data. Many retailers already have access to incredibly valuable information about their customers based on previous transactions – including how much they’d be willing to spend and their preferred communication channel. Regrettably many don’t use this information to make shopping easier for customers – or to personalise the experience and make it memorable. A retailer’s back-office CRM data is a gold mine and leading businesses ensure their teams diligently complete intelligent testing of planned and potential promotions. They leverage these insights they have gathered to design targeted promotions and are then ready to make further adjustments based on real-time customer behaviour. This is how you create a win for your customers and your business. IR: How can a great digital strategy increase sales? CS: With retailers having to take such an omni-channel approach to connecting with customers – email, apps, in-store Wi-Fi, online stores, bricks and mortar stores, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, to name just a few – there’s an avalanche of data being created and many are failing to derive value from it. All this data gives a business accurate information about what is bought and how the transaction occurs – including when and where. This enables the retailer to create a digital strategy relevant to very specific channels and customers, as well as one that is focussed on delivering stronger results. Retailers can also use the data to guide and improve engagement with the customer.  If a brand’s target consumer can’t access an online store via their social network of choice, or if the online experience is much less personal than the experience in-store, the digital strategy has not yet been nailed. Sales conversions via online only happen if you go where your customer is – and woo them with your wares. To better understand your target consumer’s online behaviour, survey them and research the topics and themes of interest to this demographic. Find out what makes them tick, which influential personalities they follow and understand the nuances in their language, tone and in how they communicate. For example, do they communicate in memes and video more than animations and graphics? Following a comprehensive audit such as this, the brand’s online marketing strategy needs to reflect and leverage on these insights, to create authentic and effective appeal among the target market. Further, contextual commerce is becoming a game-changing concept allowing retailers to integrate purchasing opportunities into everyday activities, disrupting the traditional customer-merchant relationship. Some strategies include ‘Buy’ buttons being added to Facebook and Pinterest sponsored posts. Retailers are also able to automate the delivery of text messages showcasing promotions to those connected to their in-store Wi-Fi, or perhaps in a specific, relevant location. We’ll see the use of contextual commerce tactics such as these grow in 2018 and beyond – becoming a key part of an effective digital sales strategy for retailers. IR: What e-commerce trends are you seeing as we move into 2018? CS: A hot trend for the coming year is social selling. This is the use of social networks to locate, connect with, understand and nurture sales opportunities. By automating the ‘eavesdropping’ to what’s relevant to you, sales and customer service teams can accelerate both lead generation and sales as these targets are already engaged and therefore more likely to be interested in the information you’d like to share. Your offers and promotions can become incredibly personalised to reflect the customer’s specific needs. We’ll also see a growth in uptake of the Facebook Store among retailers next year. By adding a Facebook Store to a Facebook business page, brands can showcase their entire product catalogue automatically, which also enables product discovery via users’ news feeds. The tool allows for an end-to-end and seamless experience for both the customer and retailer, as brands can sell directly from their page, manage orders, as well as run Facebook ads to promote items and also receive insights. Further, as chatbot functionality increases, more retailers will make use of this as a channel for economical and automated interaction. I believe we’ll reach a point where chatbot communications become highly specific to the individual customer, i.e. responses based on knowing the purchase and interaction history of the specific customer. We’ll also see more personalised interactions that are highly automated. As more retailers embrace best-of-breed Customer Communications Management functionality connected to intelligent CRM technology, we’ll see more brands acting on individual consumer behaviours in an automated fashion. This will include alerting them via Email, SMS, or Facebook Messenger, based on what they’ve just searched online or which store they’ve just walked into. Finally as automation increases, retailers are looking to maintain all their touchpoints via a single integrated platform. Whether you’re interacting with your customer on-line or offline you should have access to every bit of data you have gathered – that’s how you deliver on the promise to exceed expectations. Think of your best retail experience and chances are there were two key ingredients – a great product and excellent service delivered by someone who really listened and understood your needs. IR: What are the threats and opportunities marketing and digital managers are facing, particularly in the wake of Amazon’s arrival? CS: Many retailers are feeling threatened with the arrival of Amazon, and the threat is real. Assuming the threat is not real, is a threat in itself. Statistics from other nations where Amazon has launched show that they grab market share very quickly – for instance, 43 per cent of all online retails sales in the US went through Amazon in 2016, up from 33 per cent from the prior year. Amazon is a trendsetter when it comes to digital retail strategy, and brands that partner with the platform will capitalise on their expertise and industry leading guarantees – from highly targeted and broad reaching marketing, to rapid order delivery times. In a fiercely competitive retail environment, Australian retailers need to explore and maximise Amazon’s presence here. Retailers can begin by testing their systems and working out the parameters that suit them. As in any relationship, you start by understanding how to work with the other party to meet both your needs.