• Digital silos are killing independent retailers
  • Choked by exclusivity agreements
  • Scattered digital initiatives don’t work - FOCUS!
Everyone in the industry, no matter company size, has gotten the notice that shoppers are online, using multiple digital channels, and the traditional printed weekly ad flyer continues to decline. And yet not a week goes by that I don’t speak with a retailer - including regional chains - that has not checkmated themselves by a haphazard approach to digital marketing. What’s even more frightening is that a number of retailers don’t even realize what they are doing to themselves.
A few examples…
A successful regional chain that has an email database for emailing their weekly ad to shoppers, another email database of shoppers signing up for coupons, and yet another email database of shoppers who have signed up for a loyalty initiative. Each of these databases is held within different systems, preventing the retailer from understanding how many shoppers are on each or multiple lists.
Another significant regional retailer is barred by their website provider from using shopper emails gathered from shoppers signing up for the weekly ad flyer and blocked from presenting a personalized ad flyer to shoppers via their website.
And yet another retailer who has tried to implement a number of personalized marketing initiatives across different channels, none of which have any critical mass in terms of a meaningful number of shoppers engaging. 
There are many more stories like these across the industry. Its easy to fall into the trap of data silos as different services are made available to shoppers over time but retailers must take the time to step back and think through what their goals are. It is concerning how many retailers lament the decline of the printed weekly ad flyer and yet fail to focus on building digital shopper engagement in its place.
I would suggest a retailer’s digital goal is pretty straightforward: Grow shopper digital engagement so that it represents a (large) majority of your weekly sales. A rapidly growing number of retailers are able to identify the shopper at checkout through loyalty, digital coupon program, or some personalized savings program. Tying that ID to that shopper’s email, mobile app, or their profile on your website, enables a retailer to easily measure the number of shoppers they digitally engage with each week AND the percentage of total sales done by those shoppers.
Suggested goal: 50% of weekly sales from digitally engaged shoppers. (The best I’ve seen: 70%!)
Focus on one to two digital initiatives that you feel provide the strongest value proposition to the largest number of your shoppers. Don’t divide your efforts over multiple initiatives. Focus on one to two until they get critical mass and then explore others, but only when the first initiatives have achieved good levels of shopper engagement.
Focus on content and value proposition, not channel. A digital strategy is no longer built around a channel (web vs. email vs. mobile), it is built around the information (targeted promotions or other content) that is communicated to the shopper. Make your content available to shoppers across all channels, let the shopper decide when, where, and how, they want to engage. Don’t think you’re going to force a majority of your shoppers to engage via email (or another single channel) - it won’t work.
Suggestion: Convene your management team for a couple hour session devoted solely to discussing what digital initiatives you want to pursue, creating a scorecard to measure the effectiveness of digital shopper engagement, and then develop focused marketing initiatives to drive shopper participation. Review your progress each week as part of your management meetings.