Virtual Reality (VR) opens a whole new world to brands, and retailers in particular, regarding personalisation and customer engagement. This article explores how retailers are using VR to personalise the in-store experience for shoppers.
50 years ago, a unique, real-time personalised customer experience was the norm. You loyally entered your local store, were served by a brand who knew your preferences, offered help, and could reserve, deliver or sell goods in a way that suited you. Today, consumer expectations haven’t changed, but their purchasing channels have.
Real-time personalisation goes further than the personalised email marketing you often find from brands online. It means being able to serve relevant, compelling information during a live interaction with a consumer that is only milliseconds long. Real-time personalisation has the power to encourage consumers to complete the purchasing process and develops a loyalty that pays dividends long term.
Recently key leaders in omnichannel personalisation attended our EMEA Customer Advisory Summit in the United Kingdom. We were delighted to welcome customers from France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom to the only European forum dedicated exclusively to omnichannel retail personalisation.
In its fifth year, the objective for this event, as always, was to help furnish retail and marketing leaders with the strategies and tools to build superior customer experiences. In addition to the RichRelevance leadership presenting, I’m so pleased to share that our EMEA Summit featured a stellar roster of thought leaders and world-class brands; and I wanted to share my insights related to this exciting event.
The EMEA summit featured keynote speaker Spencer Izard, Head of European Insights at IDC. Spencer spoke about differentiating through retail, which provided our retailers with further tools and information on how to use personalisation to innovate and transform their customer experiences.
Additionally, well-known and influential retailers gave presentations about their successes using RichRelevance as their omnichannel personalisation partner.
- Marks & Spencer discussed why they chose RichRelevance Recommend™ and how RichRelevance helped them with a platform refresh. In addition, M&S provided insights about how they leveraged Client Excellence to drive sales, conversion and overall value.
- French retailer, Petit Bateau, talked about how they have successfully leveraged RichRelevance across their multiple websites, through email, mobile and offline. They also spoke about how they have started to build their own strategies to segment audiences and make more predictive recommendations to their customers.
- Shop Direct discussed how the UK’s second largest pure play retailer found RichRelevance to be the best tool to help them personalise their customer’s shopping experience and fulfill their company purpose to “Make good things easily accessible for more people.”
- Saks Fifth Avenue presented the US retailer’s omnichannel strategy and showcased how Saks elevates the customer experience through leveraging Recommend.
The event was supported by our partners Accenture, Hooklogic, Eagle Eye and Content Square all of whom contributed to the lively exchange of ideas, insights and learnings around improving customer experiences.
Omnichannel personalisation is a top strategic priority for retailers because the customer experience has now become the new battleground for retailers. The resources at the event helped our clients learn how to best use the Relevance Cloud personalisation platform to elevate the customer experience in real time, at every touchpoint, and compete based on a unique view of what is possible from their brand.
Matthieu Chouard speaking to CAS participants
Alex McCracken, Marks & Spencer