Seasons change, fashion cycles repeat, new styles appear. Fashion is unpredictable, and yet utterly cyclical.
But while changing seasons and new styles are expected, technology and shifting markets is less predictable.
Although the COVID pandemic meant significant growth for many online fashion retailers, it also changes the loyalty dynamic between brand and customer.
A recent study found that almost half of global fashion retailers have not adjusted their e-commerce plans since the pandemic started. So, while customers have changed their shopping habits, not all ecommerces have managed to transform their business to meet these changes.
If you don’t want to fall behind, you need to provide a solid customer experience in all phases of their journey.
To help you with this, we have created a 4-step guide – from first interest to final purchase: Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, and Loyalty.
Understanding your fashion customer anno 2022
Given how fashion’s main focus is on self-expression, modern fashion consumers are prone to seeking personalized experiences to help them find their personal style.
By understanding where and when you should interact with potential customers and how to act and communicate with them in various channels, you set yourself up for success.
It’s all about turning strangers into customers and turning customers into loyal ambassadors.
This can be done by creating what Raptor calls Personalized Omnichannel.
This refers to collecting information and using it no matter where the customer interaction takes place – creating a consistent, relevant, and personalized experience throughout the whole customer journey. And most importantly connecting your online platform and physical store as a single entity.
The e-commerce fashion sector had a global market value of $759.5 billion in 2021, which proves the industry of apparel, accessories and footwear are the number one ecommerce sector in the world.
In other words, the potential of a personalized fashion experience is huge.
While the illustrations below are simplified versions of reality, it’s a useful tool for developing your fashion e-commerce strategy– and thereby create a consistent, personalized omnichannel experience.
Every customer journey starts with awareness.
The customer doesn’t know your brand or product yet, so this phase is all about making yourself and your product known.
To create awareness, you need to reach your potential customers in the channels where they are present.
And the competition is fierce.
Personalization on your digital channels is a great way to break through the noise. Here, Raptor helps you deliver highly relevant and personalized messages and optimize your conversion rates across all paid marketing channels – paid search, retargeting, display ads, social ads, etc.
Which Raptor personalization solutions and data ingestions that are most useful in the Awareness phase.
Personalization for Banners
Since the customer is a stranger in this phase, you have no previous data to use as a reference point in your recommendations.
To create awareness, you can use Raptor’s Personalization for Banners solution that enables you to display your best selling or trending products in your display ads. Once you have collected data on the customer, you can also use previous interactions such as viewed products, related products, or abandoned basket in your display ads.
Catalog Enhancement
By using Raptor’s Catalog Enhancement solution, you can also add new product attributes containing business critic logics such as margin, revenue per visit, or bestsellers to your existing product catalog, which will determine the products being shown in channels such as Facebook, Google Shopping, Amazon, etc.
Merchandising Center
You can also decide which products should be shown in ads through our Raptor Merchandising Center, where you can take control of your recommendations and boost specific products while maintaining the power of relevance.
Customer Data Platform
A Raptor Customer Data Platform also allows you to use all the customer data you have from already known customers to build audiences that can be activated in channels such as Facebook. Through this channel, you can convert your existing data into “lookalike” audiences and hereby reach new potential customers, that don’t know of your brand or products yet.
Point of Sale / POS
Offline transactional data from physical stores can also be used to support data from your online channels. Offline data gives you great insights into what is trending.
Did the weather just change? Potential customers will react quickly to a seasonal shift and buy e.g. rain jackets in physical stores.
A Raptor POS integration can spot this kind of trend, and make sure that the offline data is also taken into consideration in your paid media advertising, creating coherence between your online anf offline platforms.
Case Study: ILVA – Combining creatives and algorithms