Retailers are approaching an uncertain holiday season with any number of questions on their mind: Will pent-up demand beat out shoppers’ inflation-driven caution? Which channels will be most important for driving sales and building loyalty? What are shoppers looking for when retailers reach out to engage them? The upcoming 2022 Retail Strategy & Planning Series (#RSP22), which runs Sept. 26-30, will provide the answers.
The webinar series will feature advice and insights from top industry experts and retail executives across 20 deep-dive webinars, supplemented with newly released research, use case examples and retailer case studies. Here is a sneak peek at how these sessions will illuminate many of the major “pain points” and opportunities retailers need to be aware of to have a profitable Q4.
Omnichannel Strategies
Omnichannel integration is one of retail’s biggest keys to success — the modern shopper expects to be met with a great experience in their channel of choice, regardless of what it might be. These three sessions are designed to help retailers hone their omnichannel edge:
- In Tactics for Tackling Omnichannel Challenges: Dynamic Pricing, Returns and Beyond, Brother Mobile Solutions will look at how retailers of all sizes can handle a number of cross-channel challenges. Attendees will learn how to effectively integrate dynamic pricing and how to determine the best tech to support their customer experience strategy.
- Strong visual assets will be a key tool in a digital-heavy holiday season, and Cloudinary will discuss how to tackle this approach in 3 Ways to Use Automation for Efficient, Economical and At-Scale Creation of Visual Assets. Speakers will reveal how to shorten time-to-market, streamline the asset lifecycle and generate truly immersive experiences with help from expert insights.
- Retailers need a strong, consistent content stream across social media, marketplaces and their own ecommerce offerings, and experts from Akeneo will discuss how product activations can achieve this goal with smart strategies and optimized content in Product Activation: What It Is, Why You Need It and How It Powers Omnichannel Success.
Business Agility and Innovation
Between recession jitters and the long-lasting disruption COVID caused retail, companies need to work harder than ever to chart where the industry is headed in order to prepare for an uncertain future. Retailers seeking to sharpen their innovation “edge” should attend these sessions:
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- A Dual Path to Growth: Boost Business Efficiencies, Develop Alternate Revenue Streams, where Stripe will discuss how both digitally native and omnichannel retailers can create sustainable long-term growth by removing friction from online checkout, finding the optimum spot on the customer journey to offer financing alternatives and tap alternate revenue streams such as subscriptions.
- Avoid the Holiday Blues with a Nimble Ad Solution: Connected TV, in which MNTN will provide tips for using Connected TV (CTV) as a flexible solution that can help retailers adjust their marketing strategy throughout the season. The session will look at strategies for navigating the economy’s turns — whether they turn out to be a boom or a bust — as well as how to maximize flexibility during this fast-paced season.
- Fine-Tune Your Holiday Strategies With the Latest Spending Insights, where Mastercard will dig into insights from its latest Mastercard SpendingPulse report to help retailers perfect their holiday performance. These experts will reveal what will be the key holiday sales days both for omnichannel and online retail and how retailers can make the most of them.
Personalization
Shoppers have been seeking ways to perfect the art of personalization for years, and a competitive holiday season will put their strategies to the test. These #RSP22 sessions offer relevant insights for retailers looking to boost their personalization prowess:
- One of the key lessons from the 2021 holiday season was that retailers’ online experience needs to match the in-store experience, in everything from customer care to service. In 10 Quick Wins to Boost Holiday Ecommerce Results, Kibo will look at tips for creating a smooth and speedy holiday shopping experience that ensures personalization is up to par.
- Gen Z is a shopping cohort driven by personal values, and in How Gen Z Shoppers are Redefining the Rules of Engagement This Holiday Shopping Season, Salesforce will discuss the youngest generation in depth. Insights will include how to best capture their hearts and minds, the habits Gen Z shoppers are most likely to pick up from their parents and how to handle their expectations around innovation.
Ecommerce and Payments
The importance of ecommerce in a post-COVID world is undeniable, but ecommerce itself now encompasses a number of areas, from retailer’s own sites to broader marketplaces. Understanding the best strategies for success across all online customer journeys is imperative, and #RSP22’s selection of webinars on this topic include:
- Both marketplaces and branded online experiences have their strengths and weaknesses, so how can a company decide which one best fits its needs? In Online Growth Strategies for 2023: Choosing the Right Path to Commerce Expansion, consulting firm CI&T and Retail TouchPoints’ own Alicia Esposito and Adam Blair will look at digital growth trends for 2023 and the benefits of each approach.
- Headless commerce is something of a buzzword, but it’s often improperly defined or insufficiently explained. Commercetools will lay the groundwork for how it can build ecommerce success and agility in 3 Ways Retailers are Getting Ahead with Headless Commerce. Experts will discuss what headless commerce really is (and isn’t) and how major retailers already are generating value using the technology.
Customer Experience
The customer experience is at the heart of every transaction, and enabling great experiences during the busy, often stressful holiday season is paramount. Sessions focused on helping retailers meet their shoppers where and how they want to interact with retailers include:
- As the line between sales, marketing and support blur, retailers have more chances than ever to build loyalty and boost sales. Attendees will learn how to make the most of these opportunities in Turn Every Customer Interaction into a Sales Opportunity, where Freshworks will discuss how retailers can deliver proactive customer engagement and conversations at scale while using AI to help ensure fast responses.
- Data provides deep insights into what your customers want, putting it at the heart of the customer experience. Experts from InMoment will discuss how retailers can put their data to good use during Leveraging Customer Data to Craft Seamless, Differentiated Experiences In-Store and Online, where speakers will discuss how democratizing data for an integrated view of experience creates consistency, along with tips for increasing organizational intelligence across different stakeholders.
- Customer support is a key part of the shopper journey, and Talkdesk will look at how to make the experience great for every shopper in How to Equip Your Contact Center to Do More with Less. The webinar will dig deep into the business case for contact center investments, including a thorough discussion of how call centers impact loyalty illustrated with retail case studies.
