Blis, WBR Insights and Future Stores Study Shows 91% of Retailers Are Embracing Digital Strategies to Build Loyalty to Physical Stores

Strategies like location-based targeting and retargeting help drive foot traffic

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Apr 29, 2019, 09:00 ET

NEW YORK, April 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Blis, the global martech leader, today announced the launch of a new report with WBR Insights and Future Stores. The study, Brick and Mortar Loyalty: How Brand and In-Store Engagement Strategies Go Hand in Hand, surveyed 100 retail professionals in a variety of roles. The results provide a unique guide to how the most successful brands are combining online and offline data, including location-based data, to create a unified, seamless experience between digital and physical channels for a competitive advantage in today's digital economy.

With consumers increasingly taking an omnichannel approach to their shopping, retailers are seeking to replicate that approach in their strategic and marketing thinking. Location-based data plays a key role in this, especially as 70% of respondents said they take a mobile-first strategy to customer engagement.

Location-based data allows retailers to target consumers with tailored content, including ads and discount offers, at a time when they are most receptive to taking a trip to the store. As the range of data becomes larger and more in-depth, it is informing a greater proportion of marketing activities, from ad targeting to product design.

Additional findings of the study include:

61% of retailers have changed their brand strategy to create a more inclusive, personalized in-store environment.
64% of respondents say they provide a "phygital" experience that can't be replicated online in order to compete with digital channels.
55% of respondents say they leverage augmented reality that consumers can use on their phone to enhance the in-store experience.

Marketers are growing ever more creative in their uses of data such as location data to reimagine the in-store retail experience. Tactics include delivering an in-store multimedia experiences (cited by 61 percent of respondents) and emulating an "endless aisle" approach (cited by 54 percent).

"Retailers have woken up to the need to create true omnichannel strategies to reach modern consumers," said Gil Larsen, VP, Americas at Blis. "The work to translate that into a truly personalized in-store customer experience drawing on real-world intelligence about consumers, fueled by location data, is still in progress. As the competitive environment in retail gets ever more difficult, retailers will increasingly find these strategies to be vital to their overall success."

To gather this information around retailer strategy, WBR Insights and Future Stores surveyed respondents working in retail marketing (38% of respondents), store operations (26% of respondents), store merchandising (22% of respondents), and store planning (13% of respondents). In terms of size of operation, 43% of respondents said they had 100 – 500 stores, 20% said they had 501 – 1,000 stores, 27% said they had 1,001 – 5,000 stores, and the remaining 10% said they had more than 5,000 stores.

For more information and to download the report, please visit: http://events.blis.com/brickandmortarloyalty

Contact information
Abby Roulston
Senior Marketing Manager, Blis
[email protected]

George Morin
PR Director, WBR
[email protected]

About Blis
Blis is a global martech leader, pioneering the most accurate real-world intelligence for real engagement and results, enabling more effective planning, activation and measurement for marketers and business decision makers alike. Blis' offerings are powered by its proprietary Smart Platform, which turns location data into actionable consumer insights through it's three technologies, SmartPin, Smart Scale and Smart Places, which deliver unmatched data accuracy, scale, and access to over one billion unique devices – 1/7th of the world's population.

With 31 offices across five continents, Blis works with the world's largest companies across all verticals including Unilever, Samsung, McDonald's, HSBC, Mercedes Benz and Peugeot, as well as every major media agency. To learn more, visit blis.com.

SOURCE Blis