Endless Aisle: How Can You Implement Real-Time Inventory Visibility In Your Retail Business
Feb 15, 2022
10 min read
Retaining loyal customers to sustain a profitable business becomes crucial with the changing marketing landscape. But sometimes, it gets difficult for retailers to manage their inventory, which affects their sales and brand reputation.
If customers find that the product is out of stock in a retail store, the chances are that they might go further to a competitor's store, which is not a good sign. A report reveals that 7% of small businesses don't track their inventory. And that's why they are struggling to boost their sales.
There might be many reasons why your physical inventory might not have the products your customers want, but asking them to wait for a few days is not viable.
Are you also facing the same problem? Don't worry.
There is a solution to this problem, i.e., Endless Aisle.
It helps businesses provide more flexibility and room to showcase products that are usually not in inventory or out of stock but can be arranged to be delivered.
It allows retailers to provide their customers an opportunity to browse through your entire offline and online inventory and purchase the products they want virtually.
Read on to know how Endless Aisle can help you increase your inventory without actually spending lots of bucks on their purchase and storage.
What is an endless aisle?
Endless aisle is a strategy that many offline retail stores often use to expand their inventory without physically maintaining it. It combines virtual as well as offline inventory present in the store.
Once a customer walks inside a store, they can browse through the physical inventory and virtual inventory using a kiosk or tablet, or a mobile device and choose what they want and order the merchandise presented in the form of virtual products.
Source: Unsplash
This way, instead of shopping bags in hand, customers would leave stores with delivery tracking details and receive the products from the stores!
Endless aisle helps retailers enhance customer experience by delivering a hybrid of online and offline shopping experiences. It allows businesses to provide customers with the opportunity to purchase products that are currently not available in their stores. It offers an easy selection of products, and provides quick services to customers.
Firms can also plan and schedule deliveries aptly and keep track of shopping trends through an endless aisle strategy. Also, it allows organizations and retailers to reduce their physical inventory to save floor space.
Take an example of car showrooms: When you go to a car dealership to purchase a car, the customer assistant will show you a car through a virtual medium that is out of stock. And then they will ask you to book your car in advance.
What are the advantages of the endless aisle?
Source: Unsplash
Enhance customer experience and service
By incorporating Endless Aisle in your brick-and-mortar business, you can give your customers the freedom to choose from your entire product selection and catalog. This reduces the challenge of retaining customers and increases the possibility of purchase.
If your customers find the product they are looking for in your store, they might always choose you for the same product line.
With Endless Aisle, upselling and cross-selling get better.
The Endless Aisle allows retailers to sell additional accessories to the primary intended purchase. You can give them an array of options virtually.
Since the Endless Aisle strategy allows you to always have full shelves, you don't have to worry about in-store stock. This will make purchasing and selling tasks easier for you and your customers.
Increase your inventory without increasing the floor space
Usually, if you want to have a large inventory, you need to rent additional floor and shelf space to accommodate the stock.
With Endless Aisle, you can expand your inventory by adding your products to digital platforms .That means no need for additional space and expenses.
Give your better customers insights.
One of the essential things that every retailer needs is customer data, which helps them know what their target audience likes and what new item is trending in the market. The data helps you understand your customer's requirements and gives you an edge over your competitors.
Endless Aisle helps you capture real-time customer data as they scroll through your virtual platform. You can determine what your customers want to buy to arrange your virtual inventory accordingly. Also, it helps you provide a more improved customer experience.
Implementing an Endless Aisle in your store
The most common way of implementing endless aisles is Kiosks. You can also choose smartphones and tablets based on your daily customer traffic and business requirements.
Add the entire product range of your store to your digital platform to showcase your customers. The kiosks should be handled by store reps and distributed across your store. Ensure that kiosks have a search bar and accessible listing of your products to provide your customers with a hassle-free shopping experience.
With these kiosks, your customers are not overly dependent on in-store assistants to help them find what they are looking for. Since your customers can easily get all your products through kiosks, the possibility of purchase also increases.
Use a powerful POS (point-of-sale) software that enables customers to browse through your catalog. The POS software is cloud-based that helps you centralize your inventory. It allows you to showcase your entire product-range on a single platform. It also helps the cashier keep a tab on the stock at other locations and place an order accordingly.
Takeaway!
Endless Aisle is an efficient marketing and sales technique that enables retailers to provide their customers with the option of purchasing products that are out of stock and not commonly found. This helps retailers save huge bucks, which they might spend on renting large warehouses.
If you are also planning to incorporate an endless aisle strategy in your retail business, reach out to us. Our team will give you a glimpse of our services and help you combine offline and online inventory to maximize customer retention and revenue. Contact us now!
Everything You Need To Know About Small Businesses Benefiting From Marketing Automation Tools
Marketing is the blood of business- it decides how your customers react to your offered products and services, how long your business can survive, and what your customers expect from you. Whether you invest in a high-profile marketing campaign or sell out adverts in the local newspapers, marketing functions can apply in many ways for a small or a large-scale business. Moreover, with the introduction of technology into the business world, marketing tools have become wide open for you to secure and enhance the ever-growing relationship with your existing and prospective customers. Digital marketing has turned out to be a critical part of modern consumerism. Source: Pexels There is a rather beneficial concept for your business when we speak of technology, known as marketing automation. It significantly focuses on implementing technology and automation to function the marketing activities of your business. Digital media is booming! According to a recent survey, 77% of the CMOS say that they have experienced a massive rise in digital engagement. The same report also states that one in every five businesses drives 30-40% sales through the digital medium. For a small business, marketing automation is an essential aspect in enhancing the relevance of its customer base and transforming itself into a demand-specific entity. Marketing automation is a way to positively affect your sales and bring realistic campaigns with the help of online tools and high-tech marketing software. As it allows your business to be omnipresent at various channels, the purpose of targeting the right audience at the right time with the right products is achieved by marketing automation. As per the reports published on Business Insider, 59% of CMOs have infused marketing automation tools in their business. 20% of CMOs have said that they'll adopt them soon. The rest of the 11% CMOs shall adopt automation tools by end of this year. Source: Pexels Reasons Marketing Automation is imperative for small-scale businesses Per Salesforce's State Of Marketing Report, around 67% of marketing leaders are incredibly dependent on marketing automation. Almost 82% of the marketers agree that marketing automation has offered them a positive return on investment (ROI). Although every business has a different and unique strategy to handle its marketing functions, the automation tools are pretty helpful for small businesses to boost their return on investments, especially when they require it the most. Here are a few other reasons to justify that - Compounding Customer Data Under One Head Managing the vital information of your customer base is quite a task. When it comes to compiling that information for report analysis, nothing better than marketing automation tools can ease the process for you. With the latest software, you can overview the data of your entire business' customer base in a single view, which makes it easy for you to prepare detailed data reports. Moreover, marketing automation provides your business with a wide array of opportunities to study customer engagement and activity over your platform. by acquiring such user-driven information, you can get to the bottom of a customer's mind and what type of by-product interests them. ROI Is The Real Deal For every business, time and money are two crucial components that aim to save the most with the way they function their business operations. by making the most of marketing automation, your business can spend less time and effort on routine marketing chores that are repetitive and can be monitored via tech tools. It also minimizes several operational costs. It allows you to focus better on your business's core operations and contribute substantially to sales. Consolidate Sales and Marketing Functions When you start applying marketing automation tips to solidify your business operations, it becomes easy for your sales and marketing departments to work as one team towards the growth of your business. For instance, once the marketing team puts forward marketing automation strategies to generate quality leads, the sales team must pitch product or service sales to those leads. Also, lead generation attains lead score; sales pitch becomes much easier as the sales team understands lead prioritization. Fulfilling Customer Expectations With the customers' ever-growing expectations, your business must live up to them. One of the prime expectations of every customer is efficient communication- getting an immediate response for a product query is what they look forward to. And marketing automation, email communication, chatbots, and autoresponder tools can help nurture the lead and keep it engaged. because customers now can switch to your business rivals any minute, marketing automation enables you to focus on customer service, which is crucial in these times. Source: Pexels Four ways to eap advantages From marketing automation by deploying technology in fulfilling your marketing solutions, here are a few benefits that you can provide your business - Automated Greeting Program Most customers subscribe to the email newsletter of a business firm, and it then establishes a buyer-consumer relationship. For creating a lasting connection, your business must ensure a welcome program. It could include a simple email informing the customer about the brand's products/services and gaining details about its expectations from the brand. You can accomplish that with a welcome program that could introduce surveys about customer interests and basis the data. Your business can proceed with customized services and communication with the customer. Having that said, marketing automation can effectively act upon these programs, and with the help of data-driven tools, your initial greeting service can become a huge success. Retention Of Loyal Customers As marketing automation offers retention cues to your business in the form of transforming leads from abandoned carts or while they're on your website, it can be concluded as a critical element in increasing business profits. Increasing the rate of customer retention and lead generation can trigger the sales of any business. Along with that, marketing automation aims at communicating with your customers with product-relevant messaging strategies that can encourage customer engagement. Personalization According to Gartner, 63% of digital marketing leaders are struggling to provide personalized experiences to their consumers. Customers do not like to be considered merely as a headcount; they expect personalized recognition. Therefore, marketing automation provides you numerous ways to categorize priority customers based on their purchase and interests profiles to better target them with what they aspire to. Once a customer's profile is created with the help of automated software, your business can stay updated with the customers' needs and plan its marketing actions basis the reports. It also lessens the burden off your marketing team's shoulders as they are not confined to research and analyze such an awful lot of information. 84% of digital marketing leaders say that AI/ML tools can elevate their marketing abilities by allowing them to deliver real-time, personalized experiences. Optimize Marketing Actions Finally, one ideal way that marketing automation helps a small business is to provide quite a few opportunities to your business to alter and amend brand communications, email types, and marketing memorandums, depending upon the customer type. Instead of manually updating every bit of information, your business can optimize content and execute only the updated viewpoint effectively. Saffron Edge provides you with the opportunity to transform your business' marketing strategies by linking technology with them that positively affects your lead generation actions and customer retention. Our end-to-end, highly optimized marketing solutions enrich our clients with a professional experience. Email marketing and retargeting, advertisement analytics and research, launching marketing campaigns are a few services. To know more, give us a call now! ...
read more
How Omnichannel Presence Creates a Seamless Customer Journey
Not long ago, the debate revolved around the terminology and correctness of using ‘multichannel’ and ‘omnichannel’ interchangeably. The difference, though subtle, holds a lot of significance now. To understand the difference between these similar-sounding terms, let’s unpack their meaning first. Gone are the days when brick-and-mortar stores were the only option. Nowadays, customers expect brands to offer multiple channels of contact, including online stores, social media, and even chatbots. But is it enough to simply be "multichannel," or should we strive for something more? This is where omnichannel retailing comes in. Yes, it may sound like just another buzzword in the ever-evolving marketing world, but omnichannel presence is so much more than having multiple channels of contact. It's about providing a seamless and consistent customer experience across all channels, from the physical store to the website and everything in between. In this article, we'll dive deep into the world of omnichannel presence and explore how it can make all the difference when it comes to building customer loyalty and satisfaction. What is an omnichannel presence? A brand's omnichannel strategy strives to offer customers a seamless and integrated experience across a variety of touchpoints or channels. E-commerce channels that might fall under this category include social media, email, websites, apps, mobile SMS, phone/call centers, and physical storefronts. Businesses can increase customer happiness and loyalty by offering a consistent experience across all channels. For instance, a consumer who searches for fashion advice on Instagram, goes shopping in person, and then purchases something online wants the same degree of support and assistance throughout the process. The consumer is more likely to feel appreciated and satisfied if a company can do that. Furthermore, delivering a great client experience requires a seamless transition between channels. Regardless of their channel to communicate with a company, customers anticipate their interactions will continue where they left off. For instance, if a customer adds an item to their online cart but chooses to finish the transaction in person, they anticipate finding the identical item in their basket when they get there. Therefore, an effective omnichannel strategy should strive to deliver a seamless and uniform experience across all touchpoints, encompassing both online and offline channels. Businesses can use this to promote client loyalty and happiness, increasing sales and revenue. Starbucks and its Amazing Omnichannel Strategies In 2018, Starbucks had 60 million monthly customers who had no connection to the brand online. In March 2018, the business made the decision to gate free Wi-Fi as a response. Customers first have to register with an email account in order to access the internet. In exchange for free Wi-Fi, Starbucks was able to obtain consent to reach customers via a new channel (email). Customers who had entered their email but had not yet registered for Starbucks Rewards (SR) were referred to as "digitally registered customers" internally. Since launching this category, Starbucks has added 10 million new digitally registered customers to its database. Starbucks developed exclusive discounts and experiences specifically for Rewards members to encourage channel adoption further. For instance, Starbucks Rewards members who order a handmade beverage in advance through the app (grande or larger) receive a coupon for a free drink that can be used within a week. Customers are encouraged to use the Starbucks app as part of this promotion, which calls for them to be signed up for Starbucks Rewards. Starbucks provides Rewards Members more than just one-of-a-kind deals. They frequently design whole experiences for their customer base. For instance, during their yearly "Starbucks for Life" promotion, Rewards members can amass game pieces by purchasing particular goods. Starbucks for Life is one of the rewards, along with $500 gift cards , Bose earbuds, and more! Starbucks has been successful in creating a digital relationship with clients through the use of these methods, converting them into devoted patrons who use the app to place orders in advance and pay for their drinks. This is an illustration of how Starbucks expanded its omnichannel retailing strategy through incentives and forced channel adoption and how other eCommerce companies might benefit from their technique. Steps to the Best Omnichannel Strategy Making sure that a customer's experience is seamless and consistent across all devices, channels, and platforms is a key component of implementing an omnichannel strategy. Providing a comprehensive view of the customer journey necessitates integrating and synchronizing several touchpoints, including social media, websites, mobile apps, email, chatbots, and in-store interactions. Starbucks is just one example of the multiple businesses that have expanded the capabilities of what their company can achieve by adopting a great omnichannel presence strategy. Here is a short guide on how you can build yours. 1. Analytics Don't worry. You're not the only one that struggles to give your customers a seamless buying experience across all platforms. The good news is that a solution is available in the form of omnichannel marketing analytics. For this to work, you'll need to set up a cutting-edge data and analytics tech stack. Fortunately, many external tools and solutions, including Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), can assist you in determining how efficient your sales and marketing initiatives are. Using data visualization, you can monitor all marketing initiatives made across all platforms, ascertain what is actually happening on various platforms, and immediately take necessary action. However, with 65% of marketers having issues with data centralization, data silos, and centralization are the second-biggest obstacles to a well-rounded omnichannel marketing plan. The first step is collecting information on who is visiting your website or other touchpoints, how they got there, and if they convert. ETL, or "extract, transform, load," is the procedure you must go through in order to examine this data. This entails gathering data from many sources, repurposing it, and placing it in a data warehouse. After you have all of this information, you can create the ideal omnichannel strategy by combining the following four elements: Prediction: More often than not, you should be able to anticipate what will happen next. For instance, you can expect that presenting consumers who are browsing a certain product page with comparable products will enhance conversions if you discover that they convert more frequently. Real time monitoring: Dashboards should enable you to keep an eye on your marketing and consumer interactions in real time. For instance, you can act right away to look into the issue and make improvements if you see a dramatic decline in website traffic or email open rates. Customer information: You should be able to Extract customers' historical and profile-related data as well as their current behavioral data from your website and app, email campaigns, social media, customer reviews, comments, and ratings, support tickets, or claims. You may then customize your marketing initiatives by developing a thorough understanding of each customer's journey. Cohorts, segments, and workflow: Create cohorts, segments, and workflows that enable you to identify accomplishments and issues quickly and take immediate corrective action. For instance, you may establish a cohort of clients who have made several transactions over the past year and extend a loyalty program to them in an effort to keep them coming back. 2. Trace the Customer's Journey Building an effective omnichannel strategy that grabs your consumers' attention, resonates with them, and turns them into repeat customers requires a thorough understanding of the customer journey. To do this, you must figure out where your clients are currently present and what platforms they frequently use, as well as information about their purchasing patterns, preferred social media sites, and events that catch their attention. Yet, simply knowing where your clients are is insufficient. You must comprehend their path from discovery to purchase, as well as their Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT), or the point at which they decide whether or not to buy your product after doing some research. This frequently happens before consumers ever reach your website, emphasizing the value of being present across a variety of platforms and touchpoints. You must map your customers' pre-purchase journey using analytics in order to determine the best conversion paths. You will gain knowledge of their interactions with your brand and the most effective touchpoints as a result. Using this information, you can design an omnichannel purchasing process that converts every digital touchpoint into a customer action. Making each touchpoint interact with your clients in an integrated and personalized way is essential to attaining this goal. This can be accomplished by directing your clients toward conversion with the help of targeted advertising, email campaigns, social media involvement, and tailored suggestions. In the end, developing a successful omnichannel strategy necessitates ongoing investigation, evaluation, and development. You can design a purchasing experience that thrills and inspires your customers by understanding their requirements, interests, and behaviors. This will foster long-term loyalty and success for your company. 3. Make Every touchpoint count Customers today want a smooth purchasing experience, which necessitates making every touchpoint shoppable. So, exactly what does that mean? It implies that every time a customer engages with your brand, they need to be able to make a purchase easily and smoothly. Consider a scenario in which a client visits your website and adds a product to their shopping basket. Later, while they peruse their social media stream, they come across an advertisement for your company that features the very same item they were debating. When they click the advertisement, they are immediately redirected to your website, where the item is already waiting for them in their shopping basket. This is an illustration of a shoppable touchpoint that promotes customer loyalty to your business and eventually results in a sale. Email is yet another illustration of a shoppable touchpoint. It's possible that a consumer added items to their cart but decided against making the purchase before checking out. Sending them a reminder email with a quick link to their shopping basket allows them to quickly resume where they left off and complete the transaction. In conclusion, establishing a seamless customer experience that reduces friction and increases sales potential entails making every touchpoint shoppable. It all comes down to giving customers a convenient and tailored purchasing experience that satisfies their demands and encourages repeat business. In Conclusion Finding their strongest consumer touchpoint and providing clear incentives for channel adoption are crucial for eCommerce stores aiming to extend their omnichannel shopping strategy. Saffron Edge's portfolio of products and services, which are intended to increase consumer engagement and boost revenue, can assist eCommerce organizations in achieving this. Visit our website right away to find out more about how we can assist your eCommerce company in developing a digital interaction with clients and in enhancing your omnichannel retailing strategy. ...
read more
Boost Dental Marketing ROI With Effective Adwords Management
When search engines drive 93 percent of all website traffic, it's easy to see why advertising on Google Ads is the most effective way of generating leads for your dental practice. Google reports that 5 percent of all queries on their search engine are health-related. With a conservative estimate putting daily Google searches at over 3.5 billion, the numbers are too big to ignore. Google Trends shows that interest in "dentist near me" has more than quadrupled over the past five years. This holds a great opportunity for dentists to target online users that are actively searching for dental services. Let's look at how you can maximize your online presence and start generating leads for your dental practice. Keyword Targeting Finding the best keywords to use is a significant part of setting up an ad campaign because you will be placing your ads in front of internet users who are actively searching for these terms. Choosing the right keywords to use is as important as the ones you choose to exclude. This is called using "negative keywords" and will make sure that your ad will not appear for certain words and phrases. For instance, keywords that do not signal buyer intent should be included in your campaign as negative keywords. These normally include keywords that show the user is looking for free information or for a service that you do not or cannot offer. For instance, if you do not provide service to patients without dental insurance, you can include a negative keyword like "dentist without insurance." Your keyword optimization should also incorporate the proper localization strategy. Consider using keywords such as "dentist near me" and words that will trigger your ad for the locations you serve. An experienced dental marketing services provider can help you implement the best keyword strategy so that you capture clicks from users within the radius you designate. Landing Pages that Convert You can drive as much traffic to your website as you want through ads but you cannot turn a search engine user into a lead if you don't have a landing page that converts. Creating an effective ad campaign is half the battle. The other half is deciding which landing page design and what user experience is optimal for converting those leads once they click through to your website. Check out one example of a landing page at Unbounce and look at the different elements that jump out you upon having the site load. There are fields where the user can enter their basic information and a call to action. Analyze what would be best for capturing leads for your dental practice and do some experimentation before deciding on your final design. The testing can include A/B testing in which you try two different designs and adopt the one that attracts more leads. A/B testing is a concept that can also be used in your ad campaigns to determine which ads are more effective. A knowledgeable ppc agency can run A/B testing for you so that you are working with the best possible version of your ads and landing page. GMB and Google Ads Connection Google My Business, or GMB, is a listing service Google offers businesses. You enter your dental practice's location and Google makes sure to promote it on its search engine. The better job you do in embellishing your listing with relevant information, the higher Google will place your dental practice in its results. With 60 percent of users electing to use one of the top three results in a search to solve their problem, you want to do your best to maintain the best GMB possible. Properly linking your GMB with your Google ads will provide your dental practice's presence synergies that will boost your status in the rankings. Google Ads works with GMB to provide relevant location-based search results for users. When your listing has relevant information and garners positive feedback in the form of good customer reviews, you signal to Google's algorithm that your dental practice should be displayed prominently because you provide the information and services that internet users are searching for. That's one of the reasons why choosing to work with an experienced ppc agency for your dental marketing services can push you past your competition. Ads Automation Adwords Express is a tool Google offers as a part of Google Ads so that advertisers can simplify dealing with the settings of their account. By using Adwords Express you can minimize the management necessary to maintain something as complex as a Google Ads campaign while being able to review the effectiveness of your ads right from your dashboard. Other than using Adwords Express to cut through a lot of the complexity of your Google Ads account, implementing various automation tactics can further reduce your workload while increasing effectiveness. Google offers a library of scripts that can be used to automate many key processes including bidding so that you can have more time to work on other aspects of your business. You can use scripts to create useful reports, automate your list of negative keywords and set up account alerts; all which are operations that can help you maximize your lead generation. Bids and Budget Optimization Budget optimization is a balancing act where you have to set how much you are bidding for keywords while maintaining a low enough cost per click so as to make your Google Ads presence viable. There are a couple of secrets that will allow you to place optimal bids while not breaking the bank on your Google Ads budget. Advertising on Google Ads requires a holistic approach so as to achieve the best results. Use your website's analytics to determine which keywords are converting the best. Focusing your Google Ads efforts on these keywords will not only ensure that you are in the right direction with regards to conversions, but also that you are signaling to the algorithm that your ads are targeting exactly the kind of content users are looking for on Google's search engine. Google likes this and will reward you with a lower cost per click on these keywords. Finally, you don't want to go overboard with automating the keyword bidding process. The more you're involved in pricing bids for your most effective keywords, the more insight you will gain on what is working for your marketing and the more you will be able to squeeze out of your budget. Geo Targeting With your dental practice, you are essentially serving customers within a specific local radius. You need to determine what that radius is, whether it's your city, county or state, and set the appropriate parameters and keywords to target users within that geographical area. Spending a portion of your budget advertising to people outside your reach is counterproductive and wasteful, so avail yourself of all the tools Google Ads offers to target local audiences. Retargeting Campaign A study conducted by Nielsen showed that in general, most consumers need six visits on average before they make a purchase. You can use retargeting to make sure you remain fresh in your visitors' minds so that they end up booking an appointment with your office. Retargeting has come a long way since the days of creepy ads following you around the internet, bashing you over the head to complete your purchase on the website you just left. By using audience segmentation and by diversifying your offers, you can make sure to discreetly approach your website visitors on other web properties they visit, giving them a reason to choose you for their dental needs. In order to generate the most ROI out of your ppc campaign, you need to make sure your campaign is strategically crafted and executed. Our experts can help set up and manage your campaigns so that you don’t need to worry about the technicalities. We enable you to focus on your patients while we generate the customers for you. Get in touch today. ...
read more
Subscribe to our newsletter
Get fresh stories, case studies, and
advice
from successful creators and industry experts.