New Retail New Loyalty: The Winning Combination for Revitalizing Customer Relationships.

Millennials have turned buying habits upside down, but the fact is that today, we all are Millennials. Why? Because we all have adopted their lead. So which store experience do you plan for your customers today? Which relational experience? Which loyalty experience? Here are five innovative approaches to a new customer relationship as of 2020.

1. Your positioning, your DNA, and your engagement will never have had so much importance.

Today’s consumers want their purchases to have meaning and expect a great deal from brands in terms of social responsibility. They want to align themselves with brands whose values are closer to their own. 49% of Millennials will switch brands due to a lack of ethics! New Retail us into the“Don’t tell me, show me”era, and consumers want to be able to verify for themselves whether a brand’s claims are actually true. Le Slip Français, a French fashion startup, has understood this well and proudly flies the“100% made in France” banner. Through genuinely patriotic and humorous marketing campaigns, the brand highlights its teams, suppliers, and manufacturing processes. A winning combination!

2. Say hello to destandardization and retailtainment!

Boutiques without any concept no longer seek a place. Today's consumers want originality, proximity, more creativity and are looking to spend more time in stores that go beyond their primary function. We think about totally immersive stores, stores that are becoming temples to brands, offering a combination of product and brand experiences. We think about happening stores where the store layout is such that these event spaces also happen to be stores selling products (and not the other way around!). We also think about hub stores, offering multi-space sites hosting activities that are not necessarily connected to their core business (a coffee place at the heart of your favorite fashion shop? It is now possible!). We finally think about feel-good stores which are extensions of our homes and lifestyles, both welcoming and comfortable. You need to rethink your stores to offer a creative and unprecedented customer experience.

3. Every channel leads to mobile, even the stores!

Customers are also marketers and represent the virality of your brand. At the age of mobile and social networks, you have everything to win by investing in the digitalization of your boutiques or in the e-commercification of your stores.

The store aesthetics must be impeccable and spaces should be instagrammable, meaning that they have been designed to be photographed: it is now the customer that digitalizes the store and promotes it online. Beyond the aesthetics aspect, innovation must also be present to delete any tedious steps (waiting lines at checkouts, carrying its purchases, etc.) by increasing the product offer (interactive terminals to purchase articles unavailable in-store, for example).

4. Everyone is a member of your Loyalty program!

What would New Retail be Retail a reevaluation of loyalty as we once knew it? New Loyalty emphasizes that every consumer must be viewed as a loyal customer. Whether they’ve made one purchase or ten, you must look beyond the transaction. Today, loyalty is digitized through the mobile wallet and even rewards consumers who have never purchased your products in-store, but who like your social media posts, visit your e-commerce , and open your emails. Creating relationship-based loyalty programs—available in real time right on the mobile devices of your brand ambassadors and prospects, alongside your transaction-based programs—will allow you to engage everyone connected to your brand.

5. Do you really read any emails that are not directly addressed to you?

Personalization is the key to conversion. Today, you must offer a wide range of options and get to know each of your customers—every single one. By scoring your customers’ and brand ambassadors’ online and offline interactions, you’ll gain deeper insights into them and finally personalize your communications across every channel, right on their mobile devices. Using a pass or loyalty card stored in your customers’ mobile wallets, you’ll be able to send push wallet notifications—whether geofenced or not—to drive in-store traffic or let them take advantage of special promotions.

The goal of customer relationships in the New Retail is to show consumers that they are unique and that they are special to you.

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