As eCommerce purchasing trends have matured over the last four years, it has become abundantly clear that consumers leverage multiple channels when making a purchase decision. To meet continuously rising consumer expectations, retailers of all shapes and sizes need to understand and embrace the power of delivering a consistent and integrated multi-channel experience. Any retailer that utilizes more than one channel to sell merchandise - be it a catalog, brick and mortar store, or eCommerce store, can gain tremendous business benefits by effectively executing multi-channel initiatives.

In a nutshell, the term multi-channel is primarily used within two concepts in retail:

Multi-Channel Marketing
Multi-Channel Integration

This article is meant to be an introduction to the overall topic, with a focus this month on multi-channel marketing. Next month, I will follow with content related to multi-channel integration and how it can also be leveraged.

Multi-Channel Marketing

Multi-channel marketing is the tactic of reinforcing your brand messaging by utilizing multiple sales channels to communicate with customers. Its been proven in numerous studies that when retailers facilitate the behavior of consumers to shop via multiple channels, they become more valuable from the standpoint of lifetime value. Look what JC Penney discovered when they starting testing and measuring multi-channel behavior a few years back.

The company found that internet only shoppers spent $121 per year, retail only spent $194 per year, catalog only spent $242 per year, and a customer who shopped all three spent over $1000 per year (source: ebusinessiq.com)

We want to go out and aggressively introduce J.C. Penney.com to our catalog and retail customers and get them to shop online because we know it is going to increase their purchases across all channels (JC Penney eCommerce Executive)

Why do these incremental gains happen? Its not always an easy question to answer, but in my opinion, it is primarily because the consumer now has the capability to purchase in the channel which best suits their needs (ie. most convenient), while still receiving messaging from the other complimentary channels. A real life look makes it more simplistic.

Lets take for example that you are a high-end electronics retailer. You operate 12 physical stores, send out a catalog four times a year, and operate an eCommerce store. The key to multi-channel success is to leverage the strengths of each sales channel by coordinating messages and driving customers to all three sales outlets. Each of the channels is different and your multi-channel strategy should capitalize on the strengths of each channel to best represent your brand.

The catalog serves as a great tool for browsing but is not the most effective when it comes to comparing products. Its tangible nature makes it readily available for shopping (judged by the number of catalogs my wife has on our dining room table), but its space constraints within the pages make it limited from a product information standpoint.

Retailers should leverage the catalog to create initial interest, but encourage shoppers to go to the web to learn more and ultimately purchase. One standard tactic to achieve this is by heavily promoting the URL within every page and by providing unique catalog quick shop numbers for each product. A retailer can also message the customer about web only specials, or closeout products that are not available in the catalog, but are only available from the website.

When a consumer then comes to the website and types the provided product number in the catalog quick search box, a retailer then has the option to either send the visitor directly to the product page, or send directly to the shopping cart with the product pre-populated in the cart. Both options have their pros and cons with the latter option being a more direct and aggressive approach to convert a visitor by reducing the number of clicks to purchase.

The potential negative consequence about sending traffic directly to the shopping cart from the catalog quick search is that consumers may still be in shopping mode and may be turned off to such a direct approach of merchandising. Monitor your analytics to see which path is more effective from a conversion perspective.

A plethora of other tactics can be leveraged by retail businesses in an effort to promote cross channel purchasing behavior. Retailers can have catalog sign up forms within their online store to allow site visitors to receive their catalog via standard mail. Email marketing campaigns can message in-store promotions that are in the vicinity of the users physical address and include coupons or discounts that can be printed and brought to the store for redemption. In-store associates that utilize a web-based POS should ask each and every person who purchases for their email address so that they can receive member benefits sent via email. Online versions of the catalogs and circulars should be live on the eCommerce store and can be tailored to a visitor location. All of these tactics increase the level of customer interaction with the brand and are extremely valuable in driving repeat purchase behavior.

Craig Smith is the founder of Trinity Insight LLC (http://www.trinityinsight.com) a consultancy that helps online retailers better execute eCommerce strategies