Retailers may have taken a hit from the COVID-19 pandemic, with non-essential businesses closed around the world. Online shopping on the other hand has been a lifeline for consumers and non-essential retailers alike, resulting in an extraordinary increase in online sales for businesses. Brands can enjoy similar success by making themselves and their products more widely available to customers online, taking inspiration from the direct-to-consumer (DTC) model.

“One of the biggest challenges CPG brands face right now is reaching their customers without relying on big box retailers to do the heavy lifting of increasing visibility,” says Kate Richling, CMO at MediaMonks. “But the advantage for brands is that you know your customers best. You may not know their specific demographics, but you know their interests, needs, motivations. You know why they ultimately buy your product.”

This highlights another benefit that the DTC model offers to CPG brands: a true understanding of the customer. Not knowing what your customers are feeling at every stage of the customer decision journey can feel like a liability these days, when everyone has been affected by COVID-19 differently. By investing in robust digital ecosystems and personalization, brands can better balance product availability and mental availability, making themselves ready to anticipate and meet consumers’ needs throughout and beyond the pandemic.

Supercharge Transformation in Just Weeks

In a disruptive moment, consumers seek many things from brands: assurance, accessibility, value and more. Now, brands have a responsibility and an opportunity to transform and meet those needs. “There’s going to be a rolling wave of COVID-19’s effects and the different ways we live,” says MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar. “I think it’s a perfect time to think about how to authentically talk about your business post-pandemic. How do we reposition the brand?”

Going DTC may feel like a long, hefty initiative, but brands can make real moves in only a matter of weeks. In fact, speed over perfection should be the focus for brands as they rapidly shift to accommodate their audience’s new needs—in this case, product availability and a brand who really understands their concerns. And getting started with an ecommerce platform is actually easier than you might think: over at Forbes, MediaMonks Director of Business Growth & Platform Solutions Pablo Stefanini notes that you need only plug into one of the many ecommerce solutions available to get up to speed, followed by iterative testing and rigorous, yet turnkey reporting tools to improve from there.

Connect Ecommerce and Social Experiences

Embracing the DTC mindset isn’t just a matter of having an ecommerce platform set in place and calling it a day. In particular, consider how your brand engages through social media and how you can drive conversation toward conversion. The Forrester report “Lessons In Customer Acquisition: Learn From DTC Disruptors’ Consideration Strategies” notes that “Progressive Pioneers, who make up a disproportionate share of DTC shoppers, are more likely to rely on word of mouth or recommendations to find products online, more likely to say they frequently research products online before buying them online, and more likely to read what other people post about products or services at least daily.”

The finding suggests that building a holistic content strategy that accommodates users throughout the research phase by building social proof is a great way to support this behavior. Think, for example, about testimonials and tips for success written in the comments of a promoted post or the use of UGC shared via social media collected on an ecommerce page. UGC not only demonstrates the value that the brand is already providing to customers but serves as a great way to keep social content fresh and focused on the brand’s community, too.

Market research firm WARC writes that “[DTC brands] have a great product and service offering but beyond that use social media and great end-to-end customer experience to gain and maintain a connection with an increasingly devoted audience who evangelize and socialize the brand.” Likewise, consider the role that social plays in the overall brand experience, and how you can use this ecosystem in addition to your product to lend value to consumers during this time.

Anticipate Consumer Needs with First-Party Data

Many brands are finding now that they require first-party data to better understand the consumer throughout the customer decision journey. In the webinar “Next Wave: Respond & Thive,” hosted by The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s Group and Betaworks Studios, S4Capital Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell anticipated that brands will have to rethink their approach to build up data maturity. “Google and Apple nixing cookies will have huge implications in how clients use first-party data and use those signals to enrich the first-party data they have.”

DTC wield first-party data in a way that helps consumers feel heard—for example, when Quip asks new signups what type of product they would like to see the brand offer in addition to its toothbrushes. While brands might invest in the DTC model as a means to accommodate customers now, the benefits to building a strong personalization infrastructure will extend well into the future, transforming the brand’s understanding and engagement with its audience.

“If you have a DTC platform and are augmented with first-party data, that’s more robust,” says MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar. “If you have the capability to reach out to people who love your service in a meaningful way with personalization, that’s more robust. Those with success will be those able to communicate with people and be more mindful where they are in the current situation.”

With that in mind, it’s important to note that robust personalization doesn’t necessarily equate to the need for more content and assets. Instead, effective personalization strategies aim to truly understand the customer by recognizing and responding to their unique circumstances. “DTCs are frequently cited as masters of personalization, but—while this may be a major component of subscription boxes such as Stitch Fix or BarkBox—it’s mostly absent from prospect emails,” according to the Forrester report mentioned above. “Out of 22 DTC brands’ initial emails we were able to review via email signup, not a single one featured any personalization beyond use of a first name, and only one DTC even used a first name. Later emails rarely reflected the brand’s awareness of activity on its digital experiences (a male shopper on a fashion DTC would still get emails about men’s and women’s fashions).” As brands transition to a DTC model, they must not diminish impact by limiting opportunities to personalize communication in smart ways.

We’ve long championed for brands to take a DTC-inspired approach to better know their customers. But now, when many retailers struggle to meet supply with demand, the model has become an imperative for businesses to remain connected to the consumer. Through a DTC offering that wields data to provide audiences with the information and solutions they need, brands may not only weather the storm through the COVID-19 pandemic but build loyalty and brand love into the future.

The DTC model is just one way to achieve customer obsession.

Consumer buying habits have significantly shifted to digital over recent months. Ecommerce giant Amazon, achieved record growth in Q1 2020, seeing its largest increase ever in revenue for its online stores, with 24.3% growth in online store revenue alone. Now is the time for brands to change their consumer approach by building digital marketplace strategies that recognize and meet consumer needs across the entire customer decision journey, not just when they visit a marketplace to make a purchase.

One need only look at the rise in online grocery shopping to understand the increasing importance of ecommerce today: online grocery penetration is expected to meet (or exceed) 10% in the US, beating previous industry forecasts. While buying a mattress online may have felt strange and novel five years ago, today’s consumers don’t bat an eye by turning to digital marketplaces to discover, research and ultimately purchase products of all types.

Digital Marketplaces Double as Important Media Channels

This shift in user behavior has elevated the role online marketplaces as media channels that are important to telling the brand story to shoppers. “By serving ads to their customers at relevant moments, digital business professionals and commerce companies deliver a superior customer experience while also cultivating a rapidly growing new revenue stream with healthy margins,” writes Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Sucharita Kodali in the Forrester report, “Retailers: You’re The Next Media Moguls.”

One reason why advertising is so effective on these channels is because consumers are already in the shopping mindset when visiting a digital marketplace. “Mercado Libre has millions of users and visits each day, among different advertising formats,” says Pablo Tajer, Creative Director at MediaMonks Buenos Aires, discussing the most popular ecommerce giants in LatAm. “People that see these ads are already in shopping mode, which makes it much more powerful than seeing it on another channel where you’re not thinking about buying anything.” By connecting technology and creative, brands can lend greater value to an audience that is more receptive to learning about products and their features.

Identify Brand Opportunities Across the Full Digital Retail Ecosystem

Tajer leads our newly announced BrandLab partnership with Mercado Libre Publicidad. BrandLab serves as a team that highlights advertising opportunities for the biggest brands on the platform. Previously, Tajer fulfilled a similar role within Facebook’s Creative Shop. After receiving a brief from a brand, the BrandLab team helps build bespoke creative ideas that fit Mercado Libre’s formats and ecosystem, fulfilling a real need for brands that strive to differentiate and stand out in the user experience.

“The cool part is that we have an opportunity to create an idea that goes throughout the whole customer journey across Mercado Libre’s ecosystem,” says Tajer. “It can start with the branding on a product description page, then move to the payment step with the platform’s digital wallet (MercadoPago), and finally when you get the product itself through Mercado Libre’s shipping service.”

In this respect, to succeed in digital marketplaces brands must look beyond simply converting at a point of sale. Global ecommerce giants like Amazon in the US, Mercado Libre in LatAm or Alibaba in China are more than just marketplaces; they provide total ecosystems that include digital payment systems and delivery logistics networks. By managing each step of the customer journey—from awareness to purchase or even receiving the package itself—these ecommerce platforms offer several opportunities for brands to engage with their customers.

Inject the Brand Story into Your Ecommerce Efforts

The opportunity to embrace the total brand experience on ecommerce highlights a common misstep for brands selling and advertising on online marketplaces: the brand story is often missing from the equation. “It’s a platform that people view as purely performance based,” says Tajer. “It’s not just about performance, but also branding. Between searching for products and comparing which is better than another, there’s a lot more happening on an ecommerce platform than just clicking ‘buy.’”

For many consumers, a digital marketplaces is often the first place they visit for product searches. As important spaces for product discovery, it’s important that marketers don’t assume consumers are visiting with a specific product already in mid—or are even aware of the brand before seeing its product listed. This highlights a need for brands to view ecommerce as an important space to build brand love and awareness through impactful creative storytelling. “We want to be a lighthouse that shows brands and their partners the way.” says Tajer, “Together, we can grow stronger, platform-specific campaigns that drive consumer value.”

Support your audiences across the creative experience journey.

The rate of hyperadoption in digital retail has accelerated in recent months: consumers are buying online more than ever before, and retailers selling non-essentials online saw a 65% uptick in online revenue from March 14 to April 17, according to Forbes. As consumers adapt to the necessity and convenience of discovering, researching and purchasing online, retailers must also harness this moment to bridge the online and offline shopping experiences.

Econsultancy reports that “47% percent of respondents from large enterprises say that in the past several weeks, they have observed product or service innovations at their organizations as a result of the outbreak, while 49% have observed innovation in marketing messaging or branding that they might use post-outbreak.” One such innovation that marketers are exploring is augmented reality (AR), specifically for industries in which meeting in-person was previously thought to be critical in making a purchasing decision—take luxury retailers, commercial and residential real estate, car buying and more.

AR Offers an Intuitive Digital Shopping Experience

Many consumers are already familiar with AR technology thanks to the ubiquity of AR filters in camera apps like Instagram or Facebook Camera. In fact, Facebook also offers AR-based advertisements within the newsfeed, allowing customers to “try out” products virtually—for example, testing lipstick shades using the front-facing camera.

AR technology links the convenience of shopping from home with the ability to inspect, explore and assess products on a store shelf. This offers a comfortable middle ground for consumers who want to bring the retail experience closer to home, either out of personal preference or due to a need for contactless shopping solutions.

A new normal requires new ways to engage.

Retailers are also primed to become the next big media platforms for brands to tell their stories, according to insights from the Forrester report, “Retailers: You’re The Next Media Moguls.” “Shopping is fragmented and the shopping journey isn’t linear, but consumers are nonetheless likely to discover and research high- and low-consideration products in retail stores and on retail websites,” writes Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Sucharita Kodali. “As sources of information, retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart know they are well positioned to tell brand stories to these shoppers on their and other websites.”

Big-box retailers and leading ecommerce platforms can transform the shopping experience and support the businesses they represent by offering such highly personalized digital experiences. By baking AR into its app, for example, Amazon enables brands to engage with customers while they’re already in the mindset to shop. But perhaps more important to the role that retail must play for consumers moving forward, these experiences build a personalized connection and emotional resonance.

In his talk “Extending Beyond the Horizon,” delivered to the In-House Agency Forum, MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar discussed the impact that engaging with an object—physically or digitally—has on consumers. “Interacting with product in physical space makes you feel like you own it. Building that into the digital experience delivers on that user expectation for personalization that’s often missing.”

Streamline the In-Store or Showroom Experience

While the immediate benefits of AR are clear to at-home shoppers, the technology can enhance and streamline the brick-and-mortar retail experience as well. Examples include wayfinding toward specific products via a mobile camera or offering AR directories that may make it easier to find specific stores and departments. AR product demonstrations like those mentioned above serve a purpose in-store, too, offering a high-tech alternative to display products or expert-led demos, enabling an overall contactless shopping experience.

In this respect, retailers should approach AR with a sense of purpose, ensuring the space embraces a “camera-ready” approach. “Is your packaging ready for cameras, is your retail space ready for cameras?” asks ter Haar. “In building an overall AR infrastructure, consider: What do I want people to unlock when they scan something?”

Supporting these technologies also establishes a long-term strategy for real estate businesses to activate spaces and build a sense of placemaking for their retail tenants. Similarly, 3D content offers an engaging way for these businesses to entice new tenants: for example, offering an AR overlay that virtually furnishes the space, adds data visualizations or lets users see the effect that time of day has on lighting. In response to social distancing, for example, venues are building digital twins that let online users truly inhabit spaces digitally. Such features would also prove useful to both retail and residential real estate.

Focus on Simplicity and Efficiency in Building AR Experiences

For brands that are experimenting with AR for the first time—either as one-off campaigns or as a sustained feature in an ecommerce platform—it’s important to keep things simple. The most complex and feature-rich AR experiences require users to download and install a brand app, which many users may be unwilling to do. “One aspect that’s very critical is how seamlessly you can enter an AR experience,” says Marie-Céline Merret Wirström, Executive Producer at MediaMonks. “Downloading an app is a huge barrier of entry.” Instead, retailers may consider web-based AR experiences that plug in directly with an existing ecommerce platform with just a simple tap.

Social AR experiences, like those you can find on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, offer a simple way for brands and retailers to experiment with AR. “AR is really powerful in the funnel,” says ter Haar. “Lenses are often thought of just as something that is entertaining but a throwaway experience, buy you can build really impactful functionalities by connecting AR with platforms like Facebook Messenger.”

Build snackable AR experiences that inspire.

Web-based AR is another simple platform to get started on, with an added benefit: users can jump seamlessly into the experience through their web browser. It’s also a very easy platform for brands to develop for. “If you are, say, a luxury brand and have a product that people will want to examine for size and detail, you should be using WebAR,” says ter Haar. “It’s very easy to implement because you just need the 3D format, the model of the product.”

Merret Wirström notes that even the most simplistic AR experiences can be effective for driving digital engagement. “Being able to see a product in 3D in high resolution is all you need, and from there you can expand to include specific features or variations in product,” she says. “That’s just a bare minimum approach, but it’s already so much more effective than looking at a flat image or reading product specifications.”

The Purina One: 28 Day Challenge serves as a good example of how a simple web-based AR experience can inform users while also building an emotional connection. Once activated, users simulate feeding a pet dog or cat that appears within the space they’re in. As the pet eats the Purina blend, the web app highlights signs to look for (and when) to determine improvements in health.

As a means to become more equipped to offer AR experiences, ter Haar suggests that brands elevate the role of 3D content in the marketing mix. “Try to make the AR or 3D element part of your production workflow,” he says. “One of the biggest challenges we run into with AR is that brands don’t have the assets available.”

Volvo’s Polestar 1 Experience, developed for the Geneva Motor Show in 2018, offers a high-end product demonstration by overlaying the Volvo Polestar with AR assets that showcase internal features. While this showroom experience is much more complex than what a retailer might offer at home, it provides an example of how AR can uniquely demystify product attributes through intuitive, customer-led exploration using CAD assets.

Augmented reality remains an efficient and effective way for retailers and real estate businesses to, well, augment the digital experience by building personalized impact. By integrating AR features natively into an ecommerce platform or even in a store, businesses can bridge the gap between online and offline shopping, providing a middle ground that accommodates the shifting needs of consumers.

Sectors of the retail industry have been hit especially hard with many businesses unable to open their physical doors. These brands are left to rely on big name retailers or pivot their approach to increase reach visibility to convert consumers digitally. To do so, many are seeking inspiration from the direct to consumer model to engage directly with their audiences and make their products more widely available. While retailers and brands have both incrementally invested in digital platforms more and more, year after year, these challenges show how the need to digitally transform has accelerated to keep up with shifting user behaviors.

At a time when consumers are craving entertainment and connection while at home, livestream commerce—evoking the idea of home shopping TV programs, but made more interactive—is an intriguing solution for brands to directly and authentically engage with audiences. As a response to increased video viewership of at-home audiences, the strategy builds on recent trends in shoppable social content and the rise of influencer partnerships.

China is No Stranger to Livestream Commerce

While it may be having a moment right now, livestream commerce isn’t new; Taobao Live, the largest ecommerce streaming platform in China and owned by Alibaba, made $2.85 billion in sales on Singles Day (the country’s biggest shopping event) last year. The COVID-19-induced lockdown in China has increased the popularity of the platform even further; in February, merchants on the platform raised by 719%, according to Glossy.

Much of the appeal of livestreaming commerce is its ability to mix engaging, interactive content with brand stories. JD.com, another ecommerce platform in China, hosted online “e-clubbing” events featuring musical performances and DJ sets—and the ability to buy liquor in a few taps, replicating the social experience of being at an actual club.

How Western Brands Are Experimenting with Shoppable Content

In the west, Amazon has similarly mixed commerce and content with its “Twitch Sells Out” event for Prime Day, enlisting influencers and content creators in the gaming space to showcase items on sale that are relevant to the content they typically put out—for example, listing their streaming setup, gaming equipment or merchandise for a favorite game franchise. More than just a one-off event, Amazon employees livestream commerce on its Amazon Live platform, where brands and influencers broadcast content with shoppable listings underneath.

Elsewhere, other platforms have begun experimenting with shoppable advertisements. Instagram Checkout, lets users discover and purchase products right within the feed, and Levi’s has had success with a similar feature on TikTok. In the linear TV space, NBCUniversal has introduced NBCUniversal Checkout, making content across the brand shoppable. Emarketer’s Q1 2020 Digital Video Trends report notes that NBC’s Peacock streaming service will include shoppable content among the ads that it serves.

While these examples aren’t live, their development suggests there is a general growing demand for content that converts. MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar notes that for many brands, conversion-based content remains top of mind as they consider ways to pivot existing strategies or continue to engage with audiences digitally.

“Brands are asking themselves if they need to keep the ‘content machine’ running,” he says. “If ecommerce and conversion-based content is an essential bucket, we can help fill it faster and more effectively by shifting from traditional production to tapping into influencers and livestreaming.”

While Social Distancing, Video is King

Over the course of the pandemic, at-home users have flocked to video content. According to data from WARC, 38% of consumers are watching more online video content now than they had before the pandemic. Out of that group, 73% say they expect to maintain that higher amount of viewing time. Among the most popular video content that people want to watch are how-to and tutorial videos, according to data from Hootsuite, a category that lends itself well to influencer content and B2B stories.

In fact, influencers are ideally situated to engage with new and existing customers with creative and livestreamed content. They are adept at using their voice and authority to recommend products to audiences and have built loyal followings through tutorial content—for example, the lucrative beauty space on YouTube that has catapulted popular vloggers into full-fledged business owners.

In response to the challenges that brands and retailers have felt due to the ongoing pandemic, our influencer activation team IMA recently offered a few solutions, including multichannel influencer campaigns that amplify voice and awareness across communities, as well as partnering with existing product advocates to carry business momentum on social media. Such strategies enable brands to reach consumers authentically, backed by a consolidated effort to ensure working teams can easily continue production safely at home and produce the stream remotely.

Build Value Through Assistive Content

While brands and retailers are focused on solving the “now,” they must also look ahead into how they will serve consumers throughout what may be a difficult year ahead. As consumers seek out content and connection that helps them understand and make the most of a new normal—whether that means staying sane while social distancing or stretching the value of a dollar—livestream commerce offers a great opportunity to build a brand relationship.

Despite being a vehicle for commerce, it doesn’t have to be too salesy—think about a retailer offering a live cooking show focused on recipes using ingredients that are already in the pantry, for example, or a makeup artist giving tutorials featuring “dupes,” or greater-value versions of popular cosmetics.

“This is the new family dinner, this is how we watch movies together,” says ter Haar on the innovative ways that people are connecting. “We’re building traditions now that we don’t yet know are traditions. User behavior is being built that will change how we use these tools and how we create and connect together.”

Now more than ever, brands and retailers must be there for their audiences. Through livestream commerce, brands can accommodate new user behaviors that have emerged and engage in authentic, informative ways with video content. Accommodating a need for connection and entertainment, the format is well tailored to building strategic relationships into the year ahead.

Consumers around the world crave personalization. In fact, 40.6% of Chinese millennial consumers don’t mind paying a premium for a personalized product. In discussing consumers’ attraction toward luxury goods with Jing Daily, Longchamp Creative Director Sophie Delafontaine hints at why personalization resonates so well today. “Nowadays, people are not looking for a bag, they’re looking for something special, something which really reflects who they are,” she said. “And this is particularly true when speaking of customers buying luxury bags.”

But if people look for products or experiences that reflect themselves, developing those impactful experiences can seem particularly challenging in a country so wide and vast as China: just 15% of its population is equal to the UK, Germany and France combined. By investing in personalization, your brand becomes better fit to further segment those audiences into actionable demographics that inspire and co-collaborate in new, emotionally resonant experiences.

To start, consider how to make a more meaningful impact throughout the customer decision journey (CDJ) and strategize around how that builds into a first-party relationship with individual users. This mindset is key for the approach we take in the work that we do, utilizing the full suite of Adobe’s Experience Cloud to deliver memorable experiences that emotionally resonate.

The Need for Data-Driven Creative Experiences

Some might see “data-driven creative” as an oxymoron, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Brands exist to serve their customers with the utmost care through the following simple reminder: behind every data point sits a real human being with a voice. That said, the aggregated data from your Adobe Analytics backend can help you better understand what resonates with consumers across the WeChat ecosystem, preparing your team to better understand the growing needs of Chinese consumers and confidently optimize their journeys.

It’s obvious that analytics can help determine which product design performs best or whether KPIs have been met. But more interesting—and this is where brands must direct more attention—is how you can use consumer interaction data to pre-test and iterate upon an idea, essentially turning users into contributors to your product design.

This process enables you to focus your efforts on key strategic areas that build both innovation and momentum in incremental steps. In developing an app or web platform, you can use these analytics to identify and remove steps that don’t add value to the user experience and adopt a more customer-obsessed approach as you go.

Here’s a breakdown of the process that has worked for us in A/B testing audiences and specific experiences built for them, using Adobe Target in a four-week sprint cycle. First, spend the first week building a hypothesis around your user—this is where personas and research come into play. Next, test and learn your prototype by launching it for the audience segments matching these personas. Once you have a minimum of about 15,000 data points, you should have enough insights to build and launch the app. Post-launch, make sure to continue to test and iterate for effectiveness. Be mindful, as this bond creates a conversation between the user and the product designers and helps inform upcoming consumer needs.

Identify Triggers and Intent for Impact

Effective personalization requires you to rethink what you thought you knew about demographics. What’s important isn’t just what Tencent UserID provides—what matters is the content that clicks with a user, and any personalized platform should recognize these preferences across a creatively differentiated experience. Adobe does this seamlessly via its Experience Cloud’s Visitor ID: a fixed, persistent identifier per WeChat user that visits your mini-program, WeChat Ecom Store or other digital properties of the brand. This allows you to build comprehensive profiles of your visitors based on their actions and interests, augmenting the data from WeChat.

Consumers are more comfortable providing data when they understand there’s a fair tradeoff. From a user experience perspective, aim for transparency in how your platform translates user interactions into recommendations and new content. The PUMA “run my way” campaign began by acquiring the user’s OpenID via a QR code scan, allowing for personalization by giving each user a choice in the color and finish of their puma avatar as well as options for the soundtrack. After running through the scene via a treadmill, users conclude the experience with a personalized video takeaway.

So, how can you execute with a platform that achieves something similar? First, move away from a one-size-fits-all mentality. Adobe Analytics and Target let you identify and segment audiences for testing, leveraging touchpoints throughout the customer decision journey to inform creative design and tailoring the user experience toward business outcomes. By turning successful tests into perpetual personalization activities, you can continue to serve your audiences their preferred experience through Adobe Target.

This part of the process trips up those who haven’t properly set up an attribution model or strategy for success, leading some to consider abandoning personalization altogether. It begs the question: if businesses continue to inundate users with the same, irrelevant ads again and again through careless retargeting in external channels, were they ever really personalizing in the first place?

Personalization is your chance to build the experience your users have always wanted on your own properties. With the right toolset, this is a tangible and practical thing to do. The mighty size of the Chinese consumer market truly enables even the most sophisticated personalization powered by machine learning in Adobe Target. It requires a lot of data, but in return offers automated targeting of your experiences to just the audiences most likely to respond. And it has the power to change the messaging and creative of any experience to the options that work best for a particular segment of the audience — all without a data analyst’s involvement.

Personalization done properly actually empowers the user to craft their own product and design their own journey to their own liking. Through a data-driven creative process that focuses its strategy on assisting your WeChat users, you can drive more meaningful, impactful, memorable user experiences.

Oleg Sidorenko, Solutions Director EMEA at MediaMonks, contributed to this piece.

Video content is compelling to users that have flocked to visual social platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and (more recently) TikTok. And after Instagram began to offer features that link content directly to the point of sale, video has captured renewed interest for brands and marketers as well.

Shoppable video has caught on with brands and consumers as social networks like Instagram have aimed to support consumers in not only discovering products within the platform but in making purchases as well. In “The Forrester Tech Tide™: Video Technologies For Customer And Employee Experience, Q1 2019,” Senior Analyst Nick Barber notes, “One aim of the technology is to bridge the gap between virtual and in-store shopping experiences. When US online adults choose to shop in stores rather than buy online, 38% do so to touch, see, feel, or smell products before purchasing them.” With these consumer needs in mind, shoppable video becomes an important way for consumers to engage with a brand and get to know their products better.

So, video is useful within an ecommerce setting. But how can it elevate the social experience? As it turns out, consumers enjoy turning to “Story” content—the quick, one-to-many snippets of video content distributed on platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook—to learn more about brands and products. An eMarketer analysis notes that 69% of Facebook Story users feel that “brands using stories is a great way for people to get to know new products or services,” and 62% say they “become more interested in a brand or product after seeing it in stories.”

Realizing this, brands have been using shoppable video to drive consumers throughout the purchasing funnel, letting users discover, save and purchase content directly through the platform. Instagram Checkout, a feature that went live last year, is one such feature that makes shopping on the platform easier than before: previously, brands had to link out to an external website to complete a purchase—a barrier that risked losing a sale by prompting users to save the purchase for later (and possible forget to go through with it).

Approach Shoppable Video as a Storytelling Opportunity

Shoppable video offers a potential revenue stream for brands, but it can also be a compelling storytelling medium in its own right, helping to build the story behind a brand or explain product benefits in a captivating way. This means that before you invest in shoppable content, you’ll want to consider what your goals are and what types of creative experiences you want to offer with the medium.

“Whenever investing in a new channel, brands must ask themselves if their target audience is there and if it makes sense for them to be in that space,” says Heather Hosey, VP Client Engagement at MediaMonks. “For example, some luxury brands may be concerned with whether channels that increase accessibility, like shoppable video, video cheapens the brand. They might turn to social to approach an audience that skews a little younger but will wonder how they can elevate that experience.”

Approaching the creative experience with a sense of purpose is critical to ensuring the channel is both effective but also compelling for the brand. Too often, we’ve seen marketers treat mobile video as a smaller TV screen, often featuring cutdowns of TVC’s and linear film. This approach flies in the face of what makes mobile—let alone social content found there—so special in the first place: its potential to spark interaction and collaboration, two characteristics that have contributed to the meteoric rise in platforms like TikTok.

In exploring the creative potential of stories to build authentic connection between brands and their audiences, MediaMonks partnered with Facebook and 72andSunny to build an installation of 12 mechanically moving monitors at Facebook Beach at Cannes last year. Each monitor features best-in-class use of the medium; visitors to the installation could control the display by bringing the monitors together into a cohesive whole, showcasing Stories’ power to change perspective and disrupt—two uses of mobile video that we’d love to see brands lean into more.

Consider Shoppable Video’s Role Within the Overall Customer Experience

Like anything else, it’s important to note that social doesn’t exist in a vacuum: it’s just one ingredient that sits within the wider context of the brand’s overall marketing strategy. For example, Misty Gant, SVP USA at our influencer activation team IMA, notes that brands that don’t have a strategy in place might find themselves looking at abandoned carts—but that doesn’t mean the content, which consumers might come across at the top of the funnel, wasn’t valuable.

“It’s very important from an analytical standpoint, because you have the data,” Gant says. “Back in the day, through flipping through a magazine or watching a commercial, you couldn’t quantify who purchased from that ad.” But through shoppable content, you get a better sense of who’s tapping through, what they tapped next, what was the bounce rate and more—data that can be essential to understanding the path to purchase. “A good marketeer is always looking at that kind of data,” says Gant. “You want to see what’s working but also what the problems are, to figure out where in your ecosystem you can better support and work with that.”

Hosey agrees that taking a holistic view of the overall customer experience is critical to success with shoppable content. “For CPG brands in particular, it can be a challenge to determine where that link will actually send the user,” says Hosey. “If you don’t typically support buying direct, how do you choose which retailer to connect users with?” Hosey notes that establishing an exclusive deal with a retail partner opens up all sorts of new questions about a campaign that brands must consider—for example, how long the promotion will run for.

Brands should also consider how a shoppable campaign remains cohesive with their existing creative. For the launch of L’Oreal’s Unbelieva-brow, we began with the brand’s existing global campaign and assets as inspiration for a social-first video campaign—this time, targeting millennial consumers in Italy. The strategy was built around a handful of influencers that knew their audiences best, catering to a diverse group of interests and segments—beauty-oriented, sporty, travel-focused and an on-the-go actress—allowing the brand to tell relatable stories about the product’s durability throughout the many situations someone might run into throughout the day.

Shoppable content is an excellent way for brands to play to video’s strengths in helping consumers discover brands and learn about their products. Connecting directly with consumers and prompting them to pause and consider content, shoppable video offers a more authentic way to engage with consumers at any point of the funnel—prompting a sale or simply driving initial awareness—provided that brands are strategic in their approach.

Shoppers are increasingly turning to their devices both before and while they shop: in “Building the Integrated Retail Commerce Business Case,” Forrester reports that 36.5% of physical retail sales are influenced by digital, indicating that the boundary between digital and brick-and-mortar has blurred. Retailers can use this to their advantage by embedding digital solutions directly within the in-store experience, providing convenience to shoppers while influencing key purchasing decisions.

How, and why, are shoppers using digital in stores already? For many, it’s bringing together the convenience of technology with the ways that consumers shop. According to a survey from eMarketer on the leading business challenges facing retailers today, 50% of US respondents noted that customers have become accustomed to serving themselves, and want more technology to facilitate that by making it easier to shop online and off simultaneously.

MediaMonks Founder and COO Wesley ter Haar calls this “having the brand at hand,” making it easy for consumers to engage with brands and retailers at a moment’s notice. This can be as simple as researching what’s in stock at a store before a visit, to checking product reviews right in front of store shelves. But retailers can go further in how they embed digital tools and content in the brick and mortar shopping experience.

How Bricks and Clicks Augment the In-Store Experience

The retailers that will last are those who embrace unifying the digital and physical retail experiences. According to the same report from Forrester quoted above, “Digital business pros in retail must include both physical stores and digital capabilities in their business case and ensure that they support and build on one another to create a holistic customer experience.”

While we know now according to eMarketer, 67% will browse digitally before making a purchase, MediaMonks Lead Strategist Michael Litman reminds retailers of the value of a consumer “showrooming” and embracing this growing trend. He reminds us that “Many shoppers are using mobile devices to shop online while in the store,” he says. “Either retailers lean in to this and make sure they are providing the best experience for the best price, or showrooming will continue to hinder them and prompt consumers to shop elsewhere.”

Retailers are starting to mix personalization and contextual shopping—mainstays of the online experience—at brick and mortar locations. Take, for example, Canadian supermarket Sobeys, who recently announced a recent pilot of a smart shopping cart that offers recommendations, promotions and the ability to pay at the cart. In the quick-service food space, McDonald’s aims to provide a more personalized drive-thru experience via digital displays that react to triggers like weather, trending menu items and more.

Both of these developments aim to boost profits, increase customer satisfaction and service more guests. The Sobeys shopping carts, for instance, don’t aim to replace the retailer’s staff but rather give them the opportunity to make more meaningful connections with consumers on the floor, like answering questions about products or even recommending recipes. This direct connection is a strength of brick and mortar retail, which is why you see so many digital-native, direct-to-consumer brands opening up stores in cosmopolitan cities—and embracing digital tools can help retailers expand their focus and care for the consumer.

Digital Offers New Opportunities for Storytelling

One of the clearest ways that digital can augment the in-store experience is by providing additional context to consumers about the products they discover on the shelf. For example, Amazon’s famous Amazon 4-Star shops integrate digital shopping data (its namesake stems from the fact that all products on display have average review scores of four stars and above) with the in-store experience.

But digital also offers retailers new storytelling opportunities as a means to educate shoppers about a product. For Tommy Hilfiger, we developed a series of behind-the-scenes mobile content that gives its Spring 2018 collection a bit more color by enabling shoppers to not only admire the clothing on display, but establish a stronger connection with the brand and its creative process.

Here’s how it works: users encounter clothing items on the shelf, which feature scannable QR codes on their tags. After scanning a code, shoppers become immersed in the world of Tommy Hilfiger via a media-rich mobile site offering catwalk footage, designer interviews, outfit breakdowns and even design mood boards. Users can explore by simply moving their phone, providing an added layer of immersion and whimsey to the experience.

Of course, the content is shoppable; the microsite lets users seamlessly purchase looks (and related items) via their phone. This makes it easy for users to purchase items that might be out of stock in the store, offering more convenience and making a best-of-both-worlds approach to retail shopping online and off.

Add to that the digital experience’s ease to implement—retail locations need only scannable posters and the tags themselves—and you’ve got content that’s easy to scale across stores and your consumer base. Such an embrace of digital and its inherent value in the retail experience has earned Tommy Hilfiger the #3 spot in Fast Company’s most innovative companies in style.

Use Location to Your Advantage

Another strategy to mix the brick and mortar experience with digital is to ensure the shopping experience extends outside the typical constraints of brick-and-mortar shopping, like shelf space or hours of operation. Digital shoppers are used to having any item with just a few clicks—and sometimes delivered within the day or even hour. Thus, digital tools can accommodate toward shoppers’ expectation for easy access and instant gratification.

When apparel brand MadeWorn released their clothing collection at a pop-up within the Fred Segal flagship store, we worked with Mastercard to create a digital experience that gives “window shopping” a new meaning by installing interactive window displays that invited passersby to browse and purchase without entering the store—extending the shopping experience outside the walls of the store, but also outside standard operating hours.

In addition to the function of making a purchase, we also developed exclusive, location-based Snapchat lenses that celebrate the local music scene, just like the collection itself. The lenses take the experience even further by giving shoppers something to share while they’re physically present at the pop-up.

What this all boils down to is that digital and brick and mortar are not mutually exclusive. By closely integrating the two and adopting a holistic “bricks and clicks” mindset, brands can achieve a more cohesive shopping ecosystem that builds on consumer expectations while moving the needle on business outcomes.

The back-to-school season is incredibly important for retailers: an Adobe roundup of back-to-school stats notes that the shopping season netted 17% of total retail sales in 2017, second only to holiday shopping. That’s a lot of pencils to sharpen! Adobe also notes a trend in families beginning their shopping earlier as years pass, and while most shopping is done in-store, a quarter of parents seek inspiration on social sites like Facebook.

With these insights in mind, it’s clear that relevance is tantamount to brands and retailers hoping to make the grade in the intensely competitive fall season. By bringing together data, media strategy and creative, brands stand to achieve much more relevant messaging whenever and wherever inspiration strikes the consumer—and save in cost and time to market in the process, too. As retailers pull into their most important time of the year, embracing a fit for format approach is key to optimizing exposure in a way that brings the greatest ROI.

Achieve Versatility and Consistency with Fit for Format

With the customer journey spread across channels, relevance is key—not just in terms of content, but also how you frame it up. Every asset should be designed to provide value in the environment where consumers will find it, but developing this volume of content can be a great challenge for brands at first glance. If this sounds familiar, a production partner can help augment your team to scale up production for more assets, relevance and exposure.

This challenge is especially felt by retailers in back-to-school season because there are so many products to highlight and feature, from apparel to tech to school supplies or even dorm furniture. When Mexican department store Coppel wanted to celebrate the variety of savings in their 2019 back-to-school campaign, for example, they needed a partner that could provide an efficient creative process to produce format-ready assets at scale—a service that few production companies in the region are equipped to provide. Recognizing work that we had done with other major retailers like Ikea, Coppel’s agency Saatchi & Saatchi turned to the MediaMonks office in Mexico City for a unique mix of global perspective and amazing local talent to open their TVC script up to new variation and formats.

“Back to school is a very important moment for Coppel,” says Adrian Pastrana, Interactive Producer at MediaMonks. “Having a variety of assets enables Coppel to show their diversity of products, so supporting other digital formats in this way helps them feature more of their stock to the people most interested in it.” Over the course of a three-day shoot, the team produced 73 assets, ready for publishing in print, OOH and across a handful of social platforms.

The big idea approach that some brands favor doesn’t always lend well to this type of process. Instead, we recommend pursuing several smaller, interrelated ideas that share a sense of continuity and coherence. The concept that unites both the TVC and social aspect is the use of lighting on the set and the same main characters,” says Pastrana. “In this respect, we used the same resources to focus on different messages or categories per channel: the tech and home categories were highlighted in digital assets, for example, while we focused on apparel and Coppel’s promotion with the TVC.”

Context is About More than Place and Time

Relevance isn’t just about framing content in the right place and time. In the report “The Power of Customer Context,” Forrester Research notes the importance of taking a wider view of what context really encompasses, urging brands to consider the full scope of user journeys: “Work with your customer experience team to build a marketing strategy to address the end-to-end customer journeys—before, during, and after purchase.”

You must also build around behaviors native to the channels in which your audience engages. Recognizing the features through which teens express themselves on social media, Amazon sought a value-added way to promote its Amazon Teen program for 2018’s back-to-school season. Working with MediaMonks, the retailer didn’t just settle for a series of ads fit for Snapchat and Instagram to build buzz; in addition, we provided a platform that supported the way teens interact with one another digitally.

The resulting #GetTheYes campaign invited students to pitch parents to approve their back-to-school wish lists. The site used a familiar, sticker-like aesthetic that let users customize a message much like they would a Snapchat or Instagram story, letting them express themselves in a way that made sense—especially if they were led to the site via one of the Snap or Instagram ads, offering a seamless transition. It’s worth noting that the campaign also included Facebook ads that spoke to parents on their level, highlighting the importance of remembering that back-to-school is about speaking to both children and their parents, and the need to speak to what matters for both of them.

Study Hard and Make the Grade

What’s notable about back to school is that the season doesn’t have a specific opening or hard deadline; early-bird shoppers might begin their hauls in July, while others will wait into September. Use the long-lasting shopping season to your advantage by collecting insights from your campaign’s early days to optimize it over time. Easily transformable, format-ready content makes this process easier by allowing you to mix and match different layers of content—including products featured, composition and copy—and A/B test which performs best with which segments.

Doing so gives your brand a competitive edge in an incredibly important yet competitive shopping season. Equipped to produce a variety of versatile, fit-for-format content, you can give some love to the full extent of your products or offerings in a way that’s relevant to a wide variety of consumers, earning high marks into the following holiday season.

Retail just isn’t what it used to be. The Apple Store is no longer just a store, but is branded a “town center” where shoppers can pick up skills, and Amazon Go stores are revolutionizing retail by offering close integration with its website’s digital features. And it’s not just the future-focused tech brands that are reinventing retail; even the most stalwart retailers like Macy’s are poised to put their fun spin on the old formula, as seen in its new store-within-a-store, “Story.”

The thread that connects each of these developments is the effort to provide consumers with an experience as they shop. But while this discussion is still largely an abstract one in the west, the transformation from storefront to product showroom is already complete in eastern markets like China. “Going in-store gives customers the opportunity to see and interact with the brand’s products, but the purchasing is still usually done online here,” says Thomas Dohm, a Sr. Producer at MediaMonks based in Singapore.

The retailers Dohm is talking about have adapted to customer’s online shopping behaviors rather than try to fight against them. And this is a smart approach, because digital touchpoints and brick-and-mortar retail have a symbiotic effect on one another: in its “The Art And Science Of Retail eCommerce” report, Forrester Research estimates that “digital touchpoints impacted 51% of the $3.7 trillion total US retail market in 2018,” though only 14% of the US retail purchases occurred online, according to the same report.

These findings suggest that digital touchpoints play a significant role in offline purchasing decisions as well as online ones, which provides brick-and-mortar retailers an opportunity to better utilize digital (through which consumers often initiate product research) to support their business. In-store installations provide a unique way for brands to marry their digital strategies with in-store visits. Using two examples of in-store installations hailing from the east, we’re diving into what makes an effective, compelling experience that gets feet through the door.

Plan Around the Store Environment

Retailers must plan the in-store experience around the environments that will host them. A flagship location, for example, can offer plenty of space for high-profile experiential—and it may already attract throngs of shoppers who can participate and build buzz. Digital experiential can help put general store locations on the map, but retailers must understand the variables present—such as local market differences, square footage available, flow of foot traffic and more—when seeking to translate an experience across different stores.

“Local markets have all sorts of budgets, available space in store and of course maturity in experiential activation,” says Dohm. Dohm worked on a retail experience for Calvin Klein’s 37.5 line of thermoregulating jeans, which rolled out to APAC markets and walks users through a poetic VR experience that prompts them to reflect on temperature. This experience came in several tiers depending on the space and resources available in the stores where it was installed: “We approached the Calvin Klein 37.5 activation in a way that would be modular and flexible to cater to these factors,” says Dohm.

Retailers must begin by zeroing in on the core of the experience that would fit within any store—for the Calvin Klein installation, this included the VR headset and accompanying touchscreen device—then developing tiers of experience that enhance it where possible. With the Calvin Klein activation, for example, stores with the space to spare included a tiny house installation that drew attention and provided shoppers with a partitioned space to strap on the headset. In its largest iteration, dressing room-inspired places could be used to fully immerse the shopper.

The difference between experiences doesn’t have to be drastic. For example, Nike got shoppers running to six of their Chinese stores by prompting them to launch a rocket through the power of their sprint on a treadmill. At their flagship location in Shanghai, Nike offered a multiplayer variation in which users could compete with their friends. The difference here is minimal, yet adds a remarkable competitive layer on top of the experience by making the most of the space available.

Understand Local Market Differences

If you plan on rolling your experience out to several markets, don’t treat localization as an afterthought. Good localization isn’t just a matter of translating aspects of the experience; you’ll also need a clear understanding of behaviors that are unique to the different markets that you target. As retail provides a direct touchpoint for consumers to meet and engage with your brand on an individualized level, it’s crucial that your retail experience is relevant and comprehensible to local audiences.

This can be as innocuous as a registration form. The Calvin Klein 37.5 activation, which rolled out to four APAC markets, prompted users to provide contact details. For stores in China, it made sense to enable signups through WeChat—the reigning messaging app in China that many shoppers use as an e-wallet. For markets where WeChat is less common for retail and commerce, registration via email was the default channel. Brands should likewise identify the channels that are most popular or engaging for shoppers to understand the best way to tie the in-store experience back to an overall digital strategy.

Planning around the nuances of a local market at early stages of the creative process also highlights opportunities for transcreation to save time. An important feature of the Calvin Klein experience is a meditative narration that focuses the user’s attention on the temperature around them, prompting them to reflect on the elements, but the poetic narration posed a challenge for offering relevance among local audiences. “The nature of the experience was intentionally very abstract,” said Dohm. “But this was not something that translated easily into Mandarin, so we transcreated the copy to make it more pragmatic.” Effective transcreation enabled the team to roll out to all markets within eight weeks.

Give Shoppers Something to Take Away

Shoppers love to share their experiences, and in-store installations should support this need for maximum effectiveness. This not only reminds users of the product your experience promotes, but can also expand its reach by driving user-generated content (UGC) through social. While the main goal in providing a digital takeaway should be to commemorate the experience, providing a suggested hashtag or offering a digital portal that collects UGC can also prompt shares.

“It’s great to give people something to remember their experience by,” says Dohm. “If it was a positive experience, they’ll hopefully share that on social media channels.” Content that best fits this purpose is that which documents the experience: a photo, video or even a gif that captures the magic of the experience in a personalized way. The Calvin Klein activation lets users walk away with a heatmap selfie—a clever way to distill the experience’s concept behind the promoted thermoregulating jeans. The Nike experience, meanwhile, provides shoppers with a video of their sprint that includes their personal record to encourage sharing via WeChat.

In essence, digital retail experiences should not only inform shoppers, but provide a sense of fun. In-store experiential that pulls this off successfully delights consumers while helping them understand the unique features or value of your products. As retailers are still adapting to an industry disrupted by digital and ecommerce in the west, brick-and-mortar retailers should act now to carve out a space and land on top.

We all have a favorite barista: it’s the person who greets you every morning when you pick up your daily cup of coffee—and who already knows that you want just one spoonful of sugar and a splash of oat milk without having to ask.

The barista who’s attuned to their customers’ preferences is a classic example of the power of personalization. Able to minimize friction at the point of sale or aid in product discovery, personalization has a significant impact on customers’ experience when done well: according to Forrester, “Retailers that use omnichannel customer data to deliver unique value to customers and resolve pain points set themselves up to build brand loyalty and create great commerce experiences.”

This is a best-case scenario for ecommerce platforms. “What’s really exciting is capturing your marketing audience through personalized media,” says Remco Vroom, Business Lead for Platforms & ecommerce at MediaMonks HQ. “Then, we can capture them in a similarly personalized way on your website and storefront,” creating a holistic customer experience.

The Genesis car configurator released last year, for example, lets users personalize the car’s specifications and see the results in a 3D model in an experience that rivaled the configurations you’d see in a videogame—all within a web browser. “But what really made the tool special was that it tied to the back-end,” says Vroom. “Users could save their configuration, which is sent to the closest dealership for them to actually buy.” That ability to port preferences and information from one channel or source to another can be powerful when extended across numerous touch points, delivering relevancy every step of the way.

Catch Attention with Detailed Messaging Tailored to Preference

Delivering personalized assets across the consumer journey can certainly seem overwhelming and intimidating. That’s why we’ve developed a new creative framework for delivering vast amounts of content with minimal rework and designed for transcreation, ensuring that organizations don’t need a heavy share of resources to provide relevant, customized messaging to their audiences. It all boils down to starting with an overall structure or narrative, then identifying the variables you can customize per audience—a bit like filling in the blanks of a Mad Libs story using a pre-defined word bank.

You can see this in action with the dynamic video campaign we made for Amazon Prime’s The Grand Tour series. The process was simple: we made 12 edits highlighting different aspects of the show, each of which would appeal differently to audience segments. We then cut up those edits and stitched them back together using Google’s Vogon tool, resulting in 88 different videos tailored to specific user profiles.

Enhance the Customer Experience Through Recommendations

Attracting customers’ attention is one thing, but once they visit your store, personalized recommendation engines can help them quickly discover the products most relevant to them.

One brand that has done a great job in optimizing product discovery is beauty brand OPI. Its Nail Clinic Healthy Nails Quiz, made in collaboration with MediaMonks, helps consumers learn how to take care of their specific nail issues or woes by answering a few questions. This process is fast and easy, with each question limiting responses to only two options. For example, do their nails bend easily? Are they prone to breaking, or peeling? After completing the questionnaire, the tool provides them with a nail treatment product suited to their needs.

“The purpose of the tool is to diagnose nail problems, then educate customers on how they can fix them,” says Cynthia Lin, Program Director at MediaMonks LA.  “For example, if you have a weak nail, the application can recommend a treatment product to strengthen it before putting a color on.” The process is evocative of talking to a shopping assistant at a brick-and-mortar store, offering personalized, one-on-one attention that’s often missed within a digital environment.

Keep a Balance Between Search and Discovery

One thing to keep in mind when embracing personalization in ecommerce is to allow plenty of room for organic discovery. While recommendation engines can be great for helping users immediately find relevant results, you don’t want your customers to feel like they’ve given up their autonomy or control.

So how does one strike the balance? OPI has a tool similar to the Healthy Nails Quiz that allows users to “try on” any of the colors in the nail catalogue. The quiz-based approach—which asks about things like skin tone, nail length, preferred color family and more—fits well within the brand’s content strategy to help customers discover products in a fun, accessible way.

After completing the quiz, users receive color recommendations and alongside an image that helps them visualize it on their own hand.  But customers aren’t forced to accept those results; they’re invited to go back and change responses or freely explore the colors available, opening up the opportunity to freely browse and discover after being matched with a recommendation.

“This tool lets users explore color based on their skin tone, which is important in the world of nail polish and beauty,” says Lin. “It addresses an issue that many people face, allowing us to cater toward a more diverse range of audiences.” As Lin says, representation is incredibly important to the beauty industry: consumers must set expectations for how a given product will make them look, and what types of bodies or skin tones are represented can have the effect of setting beauty standards. The image, which changes based on the user’s inputted skin tone and nail length, also demonstrates the usefulness of personalized assets like those mentioned above.

That really drives home the power of a personalized ecommerce platform: customers can better identify with a given product or envision it in their lives. Through personalized messaging and more relevant product selections, ecommerce brands can meet users’ needs before, during and after a sale—and forge deeper, more lasting connections in the process.