Retailers have gone through tough times in recent years. Before COVID-19, a lot of retailers started transforming their business model from pure online or offline retail to O2O(Online-to-Offline), which means driving customers from online channels to offline purchase.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has put the world on pause and pushed many shoppers to make their purchases online because of the social distancing restrictions, developing a new economic dynamo: stay-at-home economy.
That is why OMO(Online merge Offline) comes in.
What is OMO?
OMO is an evolution of the O2O business model. O2O commerce is either Online to Offline or Offline to Online, bringing customers from one to another channel. But OMO refers to the omnichannel consumption and comprehensive data integration of online and offline channels. Businesses can track and analyse customers’ behaviour and thus formulate better marketing strategies and drive sales. Besides, customers can experience a seamless and personalised shopping journey.
Why OMO?
It is expected that customers engage with brands across multiple touch points in the digital era. For example, consumers may get in touch with businesses through online marketing, purchase the items in brick-and-mortar stores and then repurchase online. The boundaries between online and offline are becoming blurred.
‘The best businesses meet their customers where they are.’ Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Meta, stated. OMO aims at reaching customers on every touchpoint and delivering convenience and personalised customer experience through data integration, which is extremely important when most people are used to staying at home now. It has become an important business model for the retail industry in a post-pandemic future.
How to implement OMO Chat Commerce?
Conversational Commerce can be one of the most effective retail tools achieving OMO and digital transformation for brands.
Customer Browsing Behaviour Tracking for Website Remarketing
Brands can send in-site push messages with accurate targeting based on customers’ browsing behaviour. Famous Chinese medicine health care brand Eu Yan Sang set the triggers based on ‘page view’ or ‘time on page’. Promotional messages and tagging (which requires customers to connect with WhatsApp) will be automatically triggered if visitors meet the requirements. Website visitors will then receive special offers on health products, providing incentives to get more customers and increase sales.
According to Omnichat’s Chat Commerce Analysis Report(2022 Q1), Website Remarketing ranks as the third most important tool for driving website revenues, and the average conversion rate has been over 5%.
Abandoned Cart Remarketing
Most businesses send unchecked reminders to customers through email, but the open rate of email is less than 10% in general. On the other hand, the open rate of Whatsapp is over 98%, which is a more effective way to reach and convert customers.
Professional food supplier Max Choice sends automated messages to remind customers of unchecked items via WhatsApp. This feature helps brands increase the conversion rate by more than 12% in Q1 2022. Businesses can review the performance of each reminder through the overall channel performance report, and decide whether to modify the reminder time and broadcast content.
Virtual Shopping
Many shoppers may still prefer online shopping during the post-pandemic period, therefore retailers have started developing a new online-merge-offline retail model ‘Remote Selling’ through Chat Commerce.
Famous gold and platinum jewellery retailer Lukfook Jewellery has practised the following strategies to overcome the challenges brought by the pandemic:
- 1-on-1 Virtual Shopping: Watch real jewellery on live video, providing an immersive shopping experience
- Make WhatsApp a VIP Room for each customer, boosting their confidence in purchasing online
Product recommendation across online and offline channels
Online to Offline
With the OMO feature, the conversational commerce system automatically assigns online customers to the store salespeople for live chat. During conversations, salespeople can send product referral links to customers. When a customer clicks to buy, the performance of the salesperson will be automatically recorded.
Kidsland(LEGO®️Certified Store) integrates online and offline member information so as to provide personalised sales services for different consumers, achieving accurate marketing. This resulted in an additional HK$600,000 in revenue in the first 2 weeks, ‘Some customers originally planned to spend HK$10,000, but eventually they spent more than HK$100,000 and the order amount was increased by 10 times because of the product recommendation by sales.’ Li Ching Yiu, Chairman and CEO of Kidsland, said.
Offline to Online
It is very common that consumers need some time to consider before making a purchase. The store salespeople can bind to customers by asking them to scan the personal QR Code. Thus, salespeople are able to sell the products through 1 on 1 conversations, even after customers leave the store. If customers complete the purchase online, it will be automatically counted in the salespeople’s performance. Performance reports such as the sales amount of branch / salesperson, the conversion rate, ROAS and the number of product referral links sent are also available, so the retailers can review the performance and make improvements anytime.
During the Lunar New Year promotion period, Timberland launched the ‘Get $88 rewards for WhatsApp Binding’ campaign in stores to encourage customers connecting with Timberland WhatsApp for future marketing campaigns.
Omnichannel Retail has become the ‘New Normal’. Conversational Commerce helps businesses to deliver a smooth and unique shopping experience to customers across online and offline touch points. Kick off your OMO Chat Commerce journey with a trusted and experienced partner Omnichat today!
