Why the 360‑Degree Customer View is Key to Purchase Conversion

This post is Part 3 of a blog series based on insights from Sailthru ebook “The Modern Marketer’s Guide to Increasing Mobile Purchase Conversion” available for free download now. Check out also: Part 1 & Part 2.

When shopping online, how often do you purchase on your mobile device? Would you rather browse a site on your desktop or tablet? What times of day are you generally more active?  These questions are just a few of many that ecommerce companies want answered.

In this day and age consumer behavior contains more variables than ever. Ecommerce brands not only need to engage with customers, but they also need to figure out how consumers engage with them.

In order to be effective in this, brands need to form 1:1 relationships by capturing a 360-degree view of every consumer who interacts with their brand–that means connecting data from all touchpoints and housing the data together in one place that can be actioned on. This 360-degree view is called the Single Customer View (SCV).

Every consumer is unique and so is the way in which they behave, across every channel. The SCV can not only answer questions of consumer behavior across channels, but also their interests and unique personality indicators:

In order to further understand customers, brands accounts should also be taking into account offline history and behaviors:

By understanding and storing this type of information, you can create a precise, wide-angled picture of each consumer’s shopping behavior, as well as explicit and implicit interests. Well designed SCVs can be an extremely lucrative and eye-opening undertaking. For example, if you know that a particular customer tends to be on her desktop from 7 to 9 PM on weekdays, you could send her email or a push notification at 7:30 PM encouraging her to complete a purchase she began on her smartphone earlier in the day and then abandoned. In that same communication you could leverage the SCV to offer a series of other products that are relevant to this specific user based on her previously demonstrated behaviors and interests, not just on this single abandoned product.

Although still well below the desktop level, tablets appear to be an increasingly popular platform for ecommerce purchases compared to smartphones. They are more tactile and have larger, easier to read screens. There is some evidence that people are engaging more and more in so-called “couch commerce” – that is, watching TV while browsing and making purchases on tablets. If the data in an SCV appears to show that some of your customers are participating in this multitasking activity, what better time could there be to target them with personalized offers based on the rich data you already have about them?

Armed with a detailed and accurate SCV, ecommerce brands can personalize communications with potential consumers and greatly increase purchase conversion. The SCV becomes the backbone for a wide range of tailored communications, whether via email, social, mobile app, SMS, onsite and more. These include automated and targeted campaigns based on when the individual likes to shop, on what device, and specifically what she is interested in.

–Cassie Lancellotti-Young, EVP of Customer Success