Jack Aaronson, reporting for the ClickZ Network, shares some of the key points discussed at the recent Shop.org annual summit in New York City. It would appear that most retailers are still making small steps towards multichannel (online, offline, etc.) marketing.
Sessions dealing with multichannel marketing and multichannel user experience were among the most well-attended of the conference. Clearly, the topic is on everyone's mind, and the industry is still in its infancy.
Everyone talked about the future of multichannel shopping while acknowledging the technology still isn't completely there and the transition to a really holistic multichannel shopping experience is still years away. But we've moved passed the first hurdle.
Though previous conferences had to introduce the idea (and convince attendees) that multichannel users are more profitable and loyal, this conference took that idea as an assumption. The topic of our multichannel panel this year was understanding the difference between being a multichannel company and thinking like one.
Simply being multichannel isn't enough. Companies that operate each channel as a siloed parallel business don't benefit from the fact that they're multichannel companies.
Companies that think multichannel are figuring out ways to tie the channels together and create seamless user experiences so users identify their brand as one company, regardless of the channels they choose to use.