Summary
The headline of the submission: Uniquely Designed Omnichannel Retail Journeys on WhatsApp The success Fossil continues to see from the channel and campaign is a testament to its acceptance by the customers. Using a conversational AI-enabled WhatsApp channel connected to a physical store was an innovative and bold move. Since Fossil’s success, Vizury has implemented similar services across WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and other chat channels for omnichannel retail brands like Karl Lagerfeld, Chalhoub Group, PUMA,
Challenge
“We need to give our shoppers the option to buy from our physical stores using digital channels and want to improve customer engagement across the buyer’s journey” - that’s the challenge Fossil (India) came to Vizury (powered by Affle) with. Fossil is a global fashion and lifestyle retailer, much loved for its creative rooting in authentic vintage and classic design. Vizury is Affle’s (India) omnichannel marketing cloud that helps brands bring together all their engagement and commerce channels to deliver an integrated experience to their customers. We engaged with Fossil (India) in 2020 when the brand was facing a slump in in-store footfall and sales due to lockdowns imposed across the country. When the lockdown was partially lifted, shoppers were still skeptical about venturing out. They were more reliant on digital shopping and Fossil (India) wanted to capitalize on this shopping behavior.
Objective
We had two objectives in place to drive customer engagement: How can we optimize the buyer’s journey to get shoppers to buy from a nearby Fossil store? Can we make it easier for customers to shop from whichever channel they prefer? Fossil sought Vizury out as a partner to help connect its physical stores to these growing digital shoppers. They wanted to deliver an exceptional customer experience where shoppers could discover, explore and buy hyperlocal in-store Fossil products from the comfort of their homes. To make this a novel and convenient experience for shoppers we enabled a Conversational AI on India’s most used social messaging app, WhatsApp, as a channel to facilitate this O2O shopping experience.
Strategy
Our targeting strategy was based on how the audience was placed and the stage of purchase they were in. Shoppers first had to be introduced to this channel, and once they landed in the channel our goal was to drive a purchase. One of the challenges was finding ways to introduce this service to the shoppers. We worked with the marketing team at Fossil to segment our target audience based on the following attributes: 1. Relationship with Fossil a) Consumers who’d bought from Fossil before b) New shoppers 2. Demographic: a) Location: Urban locations within a 40Km radius of a Fossil store. b) Age: 18-40 years, both men and women. c) WhatsApp usage: urban locations and age selection made sure we were targeting people who used WhatsApp actively. Why did we choose WhatsApp? Choosing WhatsApp as a channel to facilitate the O2O shopping experience had multiple benefits: a) Scale b) Zero-friction c) High user affinity d) Personalized 2-way conversations We worked with the Fossil marketing team to enable the following campaigns and points of entry to introduce the shoppers to this channel. 1. E-commerce website widgets 2. CRM Remarketing 3. Paid Advertising (Facebook)
Data
As India had undergone a complete lockdown the store sales across all the retail brands went to zero. Even as the lockdown lifted in some parts of the country the people were skeptical of venturing and there seemed to be no way to sell the in-store inventory. Fossil (India) was no different, they'd earlier thought of creating an O2O experience for their shoppers but this situation accelerated the need. Before they started the Online-to-Offline experience with Vizury their store sales were extremely thin. And they were still spending a lot of money on their real estate and staff. A new digital strategy and innovation was needed to turn around the situation. Our goal was to take Fossil’s retail stores online and make it easy for shoppers to explore and buy products from the closest Fossil store. All the while making the customer experience more personalized and conversational than a static e-commerce store. We’ve completed the second year of this campaign being active and are still growing strong. While we’re not permitted to share exact sales numbers. Fossil (India) now drives a mighty 20% of its overall sales through this channel which is a 6% growth compared to last year. That’s nearly equal to their sales through e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, etc. They consistently convert over 50% of leads generated through WhatsApp into in-store sales and have achieved an exceptional 25X (Sales vs cost) return on investments they made on this channel. Seeing strong customer affinity and returns Fossil continues and is scaling to utilize WhatsApp commerce as a channel to drive sales for its business across India and APAC.
Solution
By taking their physical store digital on WhatsApp, Fossil (India) sold through high volumes of its in-store inventory. To introduce service to the shoppers we used multiple methods based on the target group: 1. E-commerce website widgets: These were “Buy-from-store” web widgets placed on the E-Commerce website of Fossil. 2. CRM Remarketing: The existing and old customers were retargeted on SMS and Email to then be redirected to WhatsApp and explore the service. 3. Paid Advertising: To capture new shoppers on this channel we used click-to-WhatsApp ads that allowed shoppers to land directly into the WhatsApp chat. Their store staff was enabled with the Vizury Storeboard app which helped them receive orders, reserve products for visiting shoppers, book visiting slots, talk to shoppers over text and video and provide them a personalized shopping experience. As mentioned earlier this entire service was based on WhatsApp’s mobile app as an enabling channel. This was a majorly mobile-led brand experience. The level of sophistication of the experience was very high due to the personalized shopping assistance Vizury Conversational AI could provide. The AI answered all commonly asked questions, made recommendations, and connected the shopper to the store staff if there were some very specific questions or requests. It also allowed new customers to discover products both in-store and online. The benefit of a conversational channel over every other channel was how experiential it made the entire act of shopping. It is very personalized, simple, and customer friendly. It also enabled shoppers to use an app that is already on their phones. Ordering products from the closest store also helped shoppers instantly get what they wanted vs waiting for multiple days to receive a standard e-commerce delivery.
Results
We’ve completed the second year of this campaign being active and are still growing strong. While we’re not permitted to share exact sales numbers. Fossil (India) now drives a mighty 20% of its overall sales through this channel which is a 6% growth compared to last year. That’s nearly equal to their sales through e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, etc. They consistently convert over 50% of leads generated through WhatsApp into in-store sales and have achieved an exceptional 25X (Sales vs cost) return on investments they made on this channel.