CircleSquare has unveiled a new digital tool – the Connected Shopper Platform. It transforms a brand’s ability to reach the consumer at all points of the customer journey, sparked by an initial connection online.
The main premise of the platform – which is targeted specifically at the travel retail market – 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.
The Connected Shopper Platform has been developed in partnership with comtogether, the Swiss digital marketing agency in which CircleSquare recently acquired a stake, and Neoma, a leading expert in AI based location services.
The partners combine data-driven digital marketing experience and travel retail-specific experience to avoid the trap of conventional media planning methodologies that have been developed with a domestic focus and offer campaigns uniquely optimized for travelers.
The aim of the platform is for communication with the consumer to go way beyond a standard brand e-commerce page or a "virtual" version of a flagship store.
Traffic is driven, via the Connected Shopper Platform, to physical touch points by methods which include digital media advertisements targeted at shoppers who are set to travel through airports. These ad campaigns link to a personalized brand world where customers discover the products and are engaged through, for example, gamification and rewards.
This could take the form 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 the brand and brand ambassadors.
CircleSquare cites research from Salesforce which shows that 81% of shoppers still turn to brick and mortar locations to discover and evaluate new products, making a first-time purchase in a physical store 2.4 times more likely than online. The Connected Shopper Platform is therefore 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 an HPP, activation or store, to make those purchases happen.
Additionally, the Connected Shopper Platform leverages the existing "Click & Collect" infrastructures of retailers to offer a pre-travel shopping option to travelers, ideal for the purchase of best sellers and gifts, that can be picked up safely at the airport.
“The new normal in travel retail is bound to include social distancing, queues and limited in-store engagement,” explained CircleSquare Managing Partner Stephane Zermatten. “Airport shopping will likely not be as fun as it used to be, so we need to find new creative ways of converting shoppers.”
He continued, “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.”
CircleSquare Executive Creative Director Philip Handley added, “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.”
Crucially, the Connected Shopper Platform allows central campaign management, enabling the client brand or retailer to manage global campaigns in real time across all airports.
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.
