TopShelf Webinar: How AisleOne’s Contextualized Commerce Helps Grocers Regain Market Share

Why Grocers Need to Adopt and Adapt

There’s no way to dance around the issue. Grocers are losing their market share to Mass Merchants.

Not only are big retailers like Walmart attracting inflation-wary, financially pinched customers through lower prices, they’re introducing more and more strategies to retain these customers.

And grocers need to respond.

In our new TopShelf Webinar, we introduce contextualized commerce as the most effective strategy for grocers to compete with larger retailers and show how AisleOne allows grocers to implement this strategy effectively, minimizing operational hurdles and expenses to provide shoppers with a customer experience that Mass Merchants can’t match.

Why is contextualized commerce through AisleOne the answer?

Traditionally, grocers have relied on high-touch, high-level in-store customer service to retain customers. However, consumers are increasingly prioritizing value and convenience in their shopping experience, leading to the rise in cross-shopping and the dominance of Mass Merchants.

These important consumer drivers have to be added to the grocery service offering, but in a way that ensures profitability and enhances the grocer’s current in-store service offering — which remains an effective method for differentiating grocers from larger retailers.

In the above webinar, you’ll learn how the contextualized commerce provided by AisleOne allows grocers to adopt modern consumer drivers and adapt their high-level service offering to better retain customers and win back market share.

How Did We Get Here?

What is Contextualized Commerce?

When we talk about contextualized commerce in this webinar and as a strategy for retaining customers, we’re talking about the seamless integration of digital and physical retail experiences. This is a deeply personalized, high-touch, high-service customer experience that’s provided by utilizing first-party data, operational insights, and advanced personalization techniques. It engages shoppers from initial impression to transaction, both online and in-store, ensuring a connected and relevant experience across all channels.

A Solution Must Be Easily Implemented and Cost-Effective For Grocers

Of course, it’s all well and good to identify a strategy that works in theory, but it’s not actually an effective strategy unless it can be used by grocers without adding additional headaches to their operations.

That’s why this TopShelf Webinar connects the contextualized commerce strategy to our AisleOne solution, showing how AisleOne has been developed to not only answer the big challenge (competing with Mass Merchants) but also address the sub-challenges that typically hinder the implementation and integration of new technology:

• No additional coding or development work required.
• Marketing teams can automate campaigns to send out millions of product recommendations each week, while easily customizing the look and feel of a digital brand experience with flexible content containers for mobile and web.
• Technology teams can ensure secure and scalable access to customer insights, and bring together disparate data sources to create a single view of your customer base without additional coding or development.
• Profitable growth is driven by boosted sales and retention, yes, but also enhanced operational efficiency and cost-effective marketing.

What makes AisleOne so great is that it allows grocers to provide the value and convenience that modern consumers demand — leveling the playing field with Mass Merchants — and also emphasizes the traditional drivers of customer loyalty that local grocers have relied upon in the past — creating something that Mass Merchants can’t match.

AisleOne Provides Value

AisleOne allows grocers to provide greater value to their customers through targeted savings and customizable loyalty programs.

Targeted Savings

Machine learning enables grocers to unify customer data and deliver personalized savings based on individual shopping behaviors. Algorithms analyze past purchases and browsing history to identify frequently bought products and time promotions accordingly.

For example, a customer who buys a specific brand of cereal each month would receive a promotional offer for that brand just before their typical next purchase.

Customizable Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs can be tailored to individual preferences and behaviors, providing enhanced value compared to static, one-size-fits-all programs. The type of dynamic programs provided by AisleOne use data insights to offer personalized rewards and incentives based on shopping patterns, ensuring more relevant and easy-to-redeem offers for customers, while also benefiting retailers by consolidating shopping carts.

AisleOne Provides Convenience

AisleOne allows grocers to provide greater convenience to their customers through the predictive personalization described above.

Predictive Personalization

Predictive personalization leverages advanced algorithms and machine learning to anticipate and meet the future needs of customers. By analyzing customer purchase cycles, whether they shop every 7, 21, or 28 days, AisleOne allows grocers to automatically deliver timely and relevant offers just before the customer is due for their next visit. It’s as though a customer’s basket is already created for them.

The strategic timing of that basket not only makes things easier for the consumer, but it also creates a habit-forming shopping experience, ultimately driving customer loyalty and repeat business.

AisleOne also allows grocers to further enhance the convenience they offer customers through event-based triggers for campaigns that target specific segments such as new, loyal, and lapsed customers among several other customer segments—all identified through first-party data.

It also provides grocers with the ability to place dynamically targeted content blocks on web and mobile that present customers with personalized coupons, ads, recipes, and loyalty rewards.

AisleOne Brings Traditional Grocer Advantages into the Digital Experience

While the value and convenience provided by AisleOne allow grocers to level the playing field with the initiatives offered by bigger retailers, what sets it apart is that it further leverages the core strengths that grocers have traditionally used to build customer loyalty and brings these into the digital realm. This is what gives grocers an advantage over Mass Merchants, a means of offering something that bigger retailers can’t match.

By extending concierge-level service, personalized offers, and high-touch interactions into the online experience, AisleOne ensures customers receive the same attentive care digitally as they do in-store.

The platform ensures that digital experiences reflect the in-store persona, with personal shopper roles integrated into online services. That means personal shopping experiences and streamlined receiving are maintained through consistent and clear communication channels. Consistency is further maintained by providing high service levels in digital interactions, and efficiency is achieved through staff training to ensure customer interactions are personal and engaging.

By incorporating these elements, AisleOne enhances the traditional customer service experience and ensures that the digital shopping journey is as personalized and efficient as the in-store experience, fostering even deeper customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Measuring the Effect of AisleOne

Implementing AisleOne allows grocers to track detailed metrics from impression to transaction—including visits, views, clicks, clips, adds, and purchases—providing a deep understanding of the value of each individual shopper.

Based on this information, grocers can identify and enhance customer lifetime value (CLV) by increasing customer retention and measuring CLV metrics. The platform drives incremental activity and spending, boosting basket size, average order value (AOV), and overall trips and spend per shopper. It also facilitates customer migration and purchase consolidation, helping grocers grow their most valuable shopper segments.

Ultimately, AisleOne helps grow market share by mitigating sales erosion, ensuring sustained and profitable growth in the wildly competitive retail environment that is grocery sales.

Embracing the Future of Grocery Retail

In the TopShelf Webinar above, the Mercatus team uses the standard print circular as an example of how AisleOne uses contextualized commerce to blend technology and tradition to provide grocers with a distinct advantage that larger retailers can’t match.

Where the traditional print circular is:

• Timed once per week.
• Costly due to print and distribution costs.
• Widely distributed.
• One-size-fits-all content.

AisleOne allows grocers to communicate with customers:

• When they’re posed to make a purchase.
• Cost-effectively without the operational burden.
• Delivering the right message, with the right offer, at the right time.
• Through personalized content.

AisleOne blends technology and tradition through contextualized commerce, enabling grocers to meet customers where they are; combining traditional strengths with modern technology to offer unmatched value and convenience.

Reach out to us today to see how AisleOne can help you regain your market share by increasing your active users, average order values and customer lifetime values—all while making your grocery business more data-driven, more customer-centric, and more profitable.