Experiential Retail Data Reveals Opportunities and Challenges
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Experiential retail through in-store events and classes is an growing trend for retailers. A survey of retailers found that most have held events and classes in the past in order to build their brand, drive revenue, and increase customer engagement. However, planning and executing these experiential activities can be challenging for retailers. Common challenges include budgeting, developing strategies, promotion, and requiring pre-registration. Looking ahead, retailers plan to continue or increase their investments in a variety of event and class types over the next two years as experiential marketing is seen as a way to increase sales, traffic, and customer loyalty.
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Experiential Retail Data Reveals Opportunities and Challenges
- 1. #CCS19 Experiential Retail: New Data Reveals the Opportunities (and Challenges) of This Growing Trend SPONSORED BY:
- 2. #CCS19 Follow this event on LinkedIn & Twitter #CCS19 Retail Touchpoints: @RTouchPoints Alicia Esposito: @Alicia_FioEspo TimeTrade: @TimeTrade Lauren Mead: @LaurLeMe
- 3. #CCS19 About Retail TouchPoints Launched in 2007 Over 45,000 retail subscribers To provide executives with relevant, insightful content across a variety of digital medium Sign up for our weekly newsletter: www.retailtouchpoints.com/subscribe
- 4. #CCS19 Prize Pack: Register & Attend to Win Earn 1 automatic entry when you register and a second entry when you attend live. Register For & Attend #CCS19 Webinars For the Best Chance to Win! • Free Pass to #RIC19 in NYC May 6-8 – 1 Winner Per Day • Apple AirPods – 1 Winner • $10 Starbucks Gift Cards – 1 Winner Per Session
- 5. #CCS19 Questions, Tweets & Resources Submit your questions here Download today’s resources Join the conversation #CCS19
- 6. #CCS19 Panelists Moderator: Alicia Esposito Senior Content Strategist Retail TouchPoints @Alicia_FioEspo Lauren Mead Chief Marketing Officer TimeTrade @LaurLeMe
- 7. #ExperientialRetail Growth is on the horizon Retail sales will rise between 3.8% and 4.4% this year. - The National Retail Federation
- 8. #ExperientialRetail The growth gap is closing E-Commerce: 10%-12%(NRF) Brick-and-mortar: 3.04% (IBM)
- 9. #ExperientialRetail …as stores face a relevance crisis 59% of store operators say store traffic was flat or down in 2018. (CSP 2018 Outlook) Six weeks into 2019: 2,187 store closures announced (Coresight Research)
- 10. #ExperientialRetail A new Retail Renaissance is emerging
- 11. #ExperientialRetail Events & classes cultivate community
- 12. #ExperientialRetail We had some questions 1. What role do events and classes play in the experiential retail movement? 2. What challenges are retailers facing in planning and executing upon their goals? 3. How do brands measure success? 4. Who oversees event/class budgets and strategies? 5. What tactics will lead in 2019?
- 13. Experiential Retail: New Data Reveals the Opportunities (and Challenges) of This Growing Trend
- 14. Intelligent Customer Engagement for Retail Convert interest to purchase Confidential and Proprietary. Copyright ©2018 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved . Connect Acquire Retain
- 15. Confidential and Proprietary. Copyright ©2018 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Technology & Services Financial Services Retail 550+Enterprise Brands 30,000+Businesses 550M+Appointments Scheduled 10of the top 20North American Banks Proven Experience with Top Brands 15
- 16. 16Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Our Survey Respondents Retail Category Number of Locations Retail Type
- 17. 17Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Q. Has your retail brand held in-store events and classes in the past? The majority of retailers are already embracing in-store events and classes
- 18. 18Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Why not events & classes? Q. If no, what has prevented your business from investing in events and classes?
- 19. 19Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved It takes time Events Classes Q. How frequently are you holding events and classes? Q. How far in advance are you planning events and classes?
- 20. 20Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved So why do it? Q. What are your primary business objectives for hosting in-store events and classes? (Select up to 3.)
- 21. 21Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Q. What results have you seen to date from hosting events and classes? (Select up to 3.) Brand Revenue Engagement And does it work?
- 22. 22Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Q. Who owns the budget for experiential programs? Q. Who develops the larger strategy for events & experiential marketing? Who owns it?
- 23. 23Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved What are you doing now? Q. What types of events and classes has your brand invested in to date? (Select all that apply.)
- 24. 24Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Q. What types of events and classes do you plan to test over the next 24 months? (Select all that apply.) What do you plan on doing?
- 25. 25Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Q. What is your biggest challenge when planning and running in-store events/classes? It’s not as easy as it looks
- 26. 26Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved It’s scheduled, now what? Q. What channels/tactics do you use to promote in-store events? (Select all that apply.)
- 27. 27Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Q. Do you require shoppers to pre-register for events or classes? Q. If yes, how? To register, or not to register: that is the question
- 28. 28Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved If you charge them, will they come? Q. Do you charge for in-store events and classes?
- 29. 29Confidential and Proprietary. ©2019 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved A look ahead Q. How will your investments in events and classes change over the next 24 months (thru 2020)?
- 30. 30 Key takeaways • If you haven’t yet considered adding events and classes to your retail strategy- it’s time to consider it! • Events and classes can take many forms- get creative • Plan ahead- this is a cross functional initiative which the majority of respondents spend 6 months or more planning • What works for one, might not work for all. Try, test and measure to find what works best for your customers, brand, staff and goals.
- 31. Confidential and Proprietary. Copyright ©2018 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Experiential Marketing Drives Business & Loyalty Reduce product returns & exchanges TimeTrade customers see the results Lift in sales of featured products by 24-32% Increase store/branch traffic by 3-5% Raise customer loyalty – attendees average 91 Net Promoter Score
- 32. Centralized Corporate Management Store level execution TimeTrade Events & Classes solves the administrative headaches related to event management
- 33. Confidential and Proprietary. Copyright ©2018 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights ReservedConfidential and Proprietary. Copyright ©2018 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Omni-channel customer acquisition Your appointments, events and classes must be visible everywhere your customers are. Intelligent personalization To monetize Experiential Marketing, you must intelligently personalize follow-up actions. Success at scale Businesses require consistent branding and messaging, but local control for store operations. 33 Delivering Experiential Marketing at Scale TimeTrade’s new Events and Classes capabilities allow Experiential Marketing to be part of a comprehensive intelligent customer engagement strategy. 33 Confidential and Proprietary. Copyright ©2018 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved
- 34. Confidential and Proprietary. Copyright ©2018 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved CONTACT INFORMATION Confidential and Proprietary. Copyright ©2018 TimeTrade, Inc. All Rights Reserved Web www.timetrade.com sales@timetrade.com Phone +1.978.654.6800 Social @TimeTrade Facebook.com/TimeTrade
- 35. #CCS19 Q&A // Panelists Moderator: Alicia Esposito Senior Content Strategist Retail TouchPoints @Alicia_FioEspo Lauren Mead Chief Marketing Officer TimeTrade @LaurLeMe
- 36. #CCS19
- 37. #CCS19 Thanks for attending Catch up on all of the #CCS19 here: http://webinars.retailtouchpoints.com/connected-consumer-series/2019/
Editor's Notes
- #CCS19 Giveaway Slide We’re also hosting a special sweepstakes throughout the week-long series, where attendees can win prizes like Apple Airpods, Starbucks Gift Cards, as well as free tickets to our annual Retail Innovation Conference in New York City, which will take place in May 2019. Each of you watching already earned one entry into the drawing by registering for this session, and if you’re attending this webinar live right now, you will receive a second entry as well. Throughout the series, you will earn one entry for each CCS19 webinar you sign up for and an additional entry for each session you attend live. We’ll be giving away a total of 5 free tickets and will be announcing a winner each day of the series so be sure to stay tuned in all week long for your best chance to win!
- In addition to joining the conversation online and submitting your questions here, we also welcome and encourage you to participate by letting us know how we’re doing. In an effort to constantly improve the level of value we provide to our audience members, we’ve put together a very brief survey that will automatically launch once this webinar session ends. However, you can pull up, complete and submit the survey at any time during this webinar by clicking on the survey icon in the task bar on the bottom of your screen. You can see the survey icon circled here in black on this slide. Before signing off today, please take a moment to complete this quick questionnaire. We appreciate and value your feedback and look forward to hearing from you.
- Lagging foot traffic: 59% of operators reported store foot traffic was flat or down from 2017. (CSP 2018 Outlook); Holiday store traffic down 3% from 2017 (ShopperTrak) More store closures: Coresight Research outlook; six weeks into 2019, U.S. retailers have announced 2,187 closings, up 23 percent compared to last year. Those closings include 749 Gymboree stores, 251 Shopko stores and 94 Charlotte Russe locations; already outpacing last year.
- The new retail renaissance; shift from commerce to community. Connecting people with immersive brand experience Less “as many options as possible” more curation and “what’s hot” Less “utilitarian” and more “experiential” (Instagrammable, braggable – think Museum of Ice Cream, 29 Rooms and other social media phenomena)
- The new retail renaissance; shift from commerce to community. Connecting people with immersive brand experience Less “as many options as possible” more curation and “what’s hot” Less “utilitarian” and more “experiential” (Instagrammable, braggable – think Museum of Ice Cream, 29 Rooms and other social media phenomena)
- Examples: Sephora, Athleta, William Sonoma, etc. These brands are doing it in a way that aligns with strategic business goals and makes sense for their brand and target customers Nearly 150 respondents surveyed Shared current tactics, struggles and results Lauren will be sharing an exclusive look at the data and what it means for the future of retail
- Before we dive into the data, to provide you some context about TimeTrade. We provide intelligent appointment scheduling as well as event registration management software helping retailers and other busineses create better customer engagement through we’ve been expecting you service.
- We do this for …. With some notable retail brands you can see here.
- Alright, so let’s jump into the date. The survey was conducted in February of this year. Respondents we’re from a mix of retail types and categories (mainly specialty) and from a variety of sizes based on number of locations.
- Once we had the basic demographic questions down, the first thing we really tried to understand is what percentage of retails are currently offering events & classes as part of their customer engagement strategy and of those that are not currently, how many want to or plan on adding them to their mix? What we found is that the majority of retails are already leveraging these type of experiential marketing in their stores to some degree.
- And then we ask those that had not yet held events and classes why they hadn’t. As you can see the number one reason why they hadn’t done this was around alignment with consumer needs. I first found this surprising because in a separate survey we asked consumers about their interest in attending events and classes and learned that 79% of buyers say it is important to be able to attend events or classes to learn more about a product or service prior to purchase. But then we dug into the data and found the the people who responded in this way mostly came from mostly pure play ecommerce retailers. Which makes sense, because they don’t have physical locations to host and the same type of customer engagement strategy. The next few areas really focused around execution related areas: budget/ cost, and staff bandwidth and bandwidth. And this is one of the most common challenges we hear from our customers. Because many brands face a major challenge planning at a corporate level and then being able to execute at a store level. There is a delicate balance between where the responsibility lies between those two groups and you really need to 1. know your team and culture and 2. make sure you have good processes and tools for operationalizing this across teams.
- For those who are holding events and classes, they definitely have found that the planning process to scale across multiple locations can be time consuming. The majority (72%) are planning for 6 months or more. This also influences how often the classes and events are held, with just over 50% of attendees in both categories holding 4 or fewer events per year.
- So if these events are so much work, why go through the hassle? When you look at the top few answers, they really all come down to getting word out there about your brand and driving those new customers into your store. That is followed by creating better engagement and satisfaction from existing customers.
- So if you look at how those objectives align to actual results received, it correlates well. To make it a little easier to digest, we broke the responses into three categories: Brand, revenue, engagement. And what you see is that experiential programs are having a broad impact across the business in all of these areas.
- In terms of both budget and strategy, in both categories experiential programs was largely owned by marketing. This makes sense when you think back to the goals of what brands are trying to achieve with these programs: awareness and new customer acquisition. But also looking back to some of the operational challenges we talked about earlier, you certainly can't minimize the role of operations in these programs so while they may not usually own the programs, their buy in is critical for success. Especially when it comes to budget since 50% of store operations owns the budget.
- Here we are looking at the types of experiential events and classes that respondents are currently offering. 64% of respondents are using these for product launches, but as you look down the list these may not be mutually exclusive. An interesting area on this list is the high number of respondents using these programs for community focused events or charitable programs. These types of initiatives align well with what millennial customers have expressed they look for from brands.. 87% of Americans will purchase a product because a company advocated for an issue they cared about, and millennials are more likely than other generations to research the issues a company supports and the extent to which the company contributes.
- For areas where additional investment is likely to come in the next few years, more training based programs as well as working this into loyalty programs came out at the top of the list. So share best buy example on training and express example on loyalty.
- So for those of you who are doing these programs- these challenges probably look familiar. For those of you who are not but are thinking about, here are some areas you should play close attention to. Propper staffing and staff training in retail, is not a challenge unique to events and classes. However because these types of programs require a more advanced level of product understanding and often a different skillset or profile then the normal retail worker. I read a Refinery29 article recently that talked about the changing face of retail workers and the growing number college educated retail workers and the importance of soft skills in these roles. Employees are now provided more training than ever, which is costly to employers especially considering the average turnover of retail workers is slightly above 60%, which is extremely high compared to the average across all jobs in which the national average is closer to 15%. For a lot of the other areas on this list (name them) technology can play a huge role in helping to alleviate these challenges.
- * cut if short* If the goal is to get new customers into your store, how do create awareness of your programs. The answer is a little of everything, leveraging all your marketing channels will drive them most success.
- Here is an area where technology really comes into play to support effective execution of experiential programs, event and class registration. Getting customers to register for events is a critical way brands can really get insight into the effectiveness of these programs. And aside from being able to measure what happened, when handled by a scheduling or event management platform it actually not only helps you report on it but influence the outcomes. This is because event management software allows you to know in advance who is coming, remind them of the event (both via email and text) so they actually show up and then tailor your next best action with that customer based on whether they attended, didn’t attend and what their level of engagement was at the event. You need to make it as easy as possible for customers to engage. For me, if it’s not on my calendar it doesn’t happen. And my expectation is when I sign up for something it is automatically put there for me. These system also need to be easy to access and update for in-store associates who are responsible for signing people up, checking in customers when they arrive, ect.
- 59% of retailers charge for their classes. There is no right answer here. When you consider whether to charge attendees a fee to attend your events or classes the best recommendation I have for you is to go back to the goals of your program. If you number one goal is to generate brand awareness, increase product sales or drive traffic in store, is charging for these classes the right way to go? Probably not. Some retailers I have spoken to are concerned about the quality of attendees it draws in, however we see some of our customers managing this by saying attendance is free with a minimum $50 purchase for example. The policy is not often enforced, but it sets expectations with the customer. And they find that customers tend to spend much more on products then they would have spent to attend the class on its own.
- With 87% of retailers investing the same amount or more into these programs over the next 24 months, events and classes as part of an experiential strategy does not appear to be a trend that will be going away soon.
- Do it Get creative- pop ups, trainings, celebrity or influencer appearances. Don’t under estimate the time it takes to plan and execute these. Make sure you are working cross functionally. Start with the goal, plan from there. And Try new things!
- Incase you are still on the fence. I thought I would share some Ireal life results, TimeTrade customers see: 24-32% lift in sales of demoed products 3-5% Increase in incremental store traffic A reduction in product returns & exchanges because the customer a) selects a product that is best fit for them and b) understand how to use it. Boost customer satisfaction & loyalty with TimeTrade-facilitated events and classes averaging a 91 NPS score. Amplify the presence of your brand as a part of the local community. Boost share of wallet
- So how exactly does TimeTrade help with event and class execution? We offer event and class registration management software that is built to address the headache that comes along with having a centralized corporate level plan and strategy for experiential programs but also the requirement for store level execution. So what means is that you can create event templates and programs and allow each store to login and schedule the events for their location. At corporate you get visibility into what each store is doing, and they get access to the content and marketing systems and channels required to promote these events and drive registration.
- So what means is that you can create event templates and programs and allow each store to login and schedule the events for their location. At corporate you get visibility into what each store is doing, and they get access to the content and marketing systems and channels required to promote these events and drive registration.
- If your interested in learning more about TimeTrade, you can visit our website and one of our sales representatives will be in touch. For each of you who joined today you will also receive a copy of the full survey report once it becomes available. Thanks for joining!