INTERNATIONAL. CircleSquare has unveiled the Connected Shopper Platform, a new travel retail-focused digital tool. The retail marketing, brand experiences and consumer engagement specialist claims it will transform a brand’s ability to reach the consumer at all points of the customer journey, sparked initially by an online connection.
The main premise of the platform is to create an immersive digital brand world which engages shoppers through social media, exclusive content and rewards, driving them to physical retail touch points or making pre-travel purchases which can be collected at the airport.
CircleSquare has partnered with comtogether – the Swiss digital marketing agency in which it recently acquired a stake – and Neoma, a leading expert in AI (Artificial Intelligence)-based location services to create the Connected Shopper Platform.
The partners combine data-driven digital marketing and travel retail-specific experience, which CircleSquare said will avoid the trap of conventional media planning methodologies that have been developed with a domestic focus and offer campaigns uniquely optimised for travellers. It added that the aim of the platform is for communication with the consumer to go “way beyond” a standard brand e-commerce page.
CircleSquare Managing Partner Stéphane Zermatten said: “The new normal in travel retail is bound to include social distancing, queues and limited in-store engagement. Airport shopping will likely not be as fun as it used to be, so we need to find new creative ways of converting shoppers.
“The footfall in travel retail is going to be limited for a long time so brands and retailers can’t just be waiting for customers to come to them. The Connected Shopper Platform is a smart way of engaging with passengers before they travel and convert them into shoppers. Higher conversion rates are the key to prosperity in the current travel retail environment and this platform is a major step towards achieving that.”
Explaining the methodology, CircleSquare said traffic is driven via the Connected Shopper Platform to physical touch points by means which include digital media advertisements targeted at shoppers who are set to travel through airports. These ad campaigns link to a personalised brand world where customers discover the products and are engaged through, for example, gamification and rewards.
This could take the form, CircleSquare added, of a simple QR code or a geo-targeting enabled wallet pass that drives footfall to the physical activation at the airport where shoppers can claim their reward. The product experience is completed in the airport retail environment, where customers can interact with brands and brand ambassadors.
“The footfall in travel retail is going to be limited for a long time so brands and retailers can’t just be waiting for customers to come to them. The Connected Shopper Platform is a smart way of engaging with passengers before they travel and convert them into shoppers.” – CircleSquare Managing Partner Stephane Zermatten
CircleSquare cites research from Salesforce which shows that 81% of shoppers still turn to bricks-and-mortar locations to discover and evaluate new products, making a first-time purchase in a physical store 2.4x more likely than online. It said this makes the Connected Shopper Platform “ideal for new product discovery”, allowing brands to target customers before they arrive at the airport, control the brand experience online and drive footfall to a high profile activation (HPP) or store, to “make those purchases happen”.
The Connected Shopper Platform leverages the existing ‘Click & Collect’ infrastructures of retailers to offer a pre-travel shopping option to travellers, which CircleSquare said “makes it ideal for the purchase of best sellers and gifts”, that can be picked up at the airport.
Central campaign management is facilitated through the Connected Shopper Platform, enabling the client brand or retailer to manage global campaigns in real time across all airports.
CircleSquare Executive Creative Director Philip Handley said: “The Connected Shopper Platform is all about ‘one brand, one voice’, allowing you to engage with your customers before they travel in a personalised way. A successful campaign is defined by a consistent storytelling delivered across all touch points of the shopper journey, digital and physical, and the Connected Shopper Platform is the ideal way to achieve that.”
Zermatten concluded: “Through our integrated platform, brands can use the same budgets but drive more sales by redistributing the activation spend across digital and physical touch points.
“Additionally, the success of campaigns is measurable as the digital methods used leave a trace. So, for example, you can see how many times your ad has been displayed, how many clicks have been made on the ad, how many people have been on the platform to browse, how many people have inputted a QR code or visited an airport activation etc.
“These are just a few ways in which the Connected Shopper Platform can bring measurable results for our brand and retailer clients.”
To find out more about how Connected Shopper Platform works and to try a dummy campaign, click here.
Read CircleSquare’s latest column in The Moodie Davitt eZine here.
