{"id":117441,"date":"2015-09-01T22:03:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-02T03:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/taking-a-page-from-indigos-digital-playbook\/"},"modified":"2024-12-20T13:07:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T18:07:05","slug":"taking-a-page-from-indigos-digital-playbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-ca\/insights\/blog\/strategy\/taking-a-page-from-indigos-digital-playbook\/","title":{"rendered":"Insider Q&A: Taking a Page from Indigo\u2019s Digital Playbook"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this exclusive interview with DAC, we spoke with Craig Hudson, VP of Online Operations at Indigo about the ways omnichannel is reshaping the retail industry, the success of Plum Rewards and how mobile continues to impact the customer journey.<\/p>\n

Can you please provide me with a brief overview of your position at Indigo?<\/h4>\n

I am the VP of Online Operations at Indigo, responsible for the end to end online customer experience. To support this goal, I have responsibilities that bridge to other parts of the organization. I work with our IT department to develop the site and create a better customer experience. I work with our Supply Chain department, to ensure the customer order is fulfilled in a timely manner, and I interact with our Analytics team who provide the data and insights that determine the development direction for the Site and inform us on the performance of our order fulfilment processes. I also coordinate everything in between.<\/p>\n

How has consumer technology, mobile in particular, changed the purchase cycle and how has that impacted Indigo?<\/h4>\n

It has changed dramatically if you look at it from an online only perspective. Upwards to half of our traffic is from \u201cmobile\u201d which includes the combined results from smartphones and tablets. It is an important distinction to split them as we see very different consumer behaviours from the two channels such as what customers are looking for; when they are looking for it; and how they make purchases across devices. Technology is forcing us to re-think our definition of success. A simple conversion metric, for example, is misleading for smartphones. The rate is much lower than other device however, this is not necessarily a bad thing, as the consumer might only want to look for product information on their way to our stores. A purchase from the device is not the metric we use to measure success \u2013 it is whether we were able to feed the customer the right information to lead them to the store. The desktop is becoming that main online purchase vehicle – typically used mid-afternoon during the work week. The tablet is great for browsing and buying. The consumer itself has been increasing how many different touch points they will go through to actually purchase something. You need to think of all of this as you start to piece it together. This whole concept of online really is being forced to disappear and the old buzzword of \u201comni\u201d is happening. The retailers that don\u2019t fully understand it and fail to grasp that the customer journey touches all parts of your company are at a disadvantage. You need to ensure that all parts of that journey are seamless. Companies will struggle if they don\u2019t understand and appreciate that.<\/p>\n

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\nA lot of retailers are hanging their hats on is this idea of personalization. It\u2019s become a really big buzz word in retail. What is Indigo\u2019s approach to this?<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s mixed. We are absolutely trying to head further down that personalization road, as the more personalized you can make an offer, the better the chance it will be successful. It\u2019s going to be more meaningful and relevant to the customer. Statistics show that the more targeted our e-mail is the higher the open rate compared to a mass e-mail. And intuitively that makes sense. So, we are absolutely trying to head down that road with our loyalty program as we gain more insight into the customers to try and give them a more meaningful set of offers. At the same time, we pride ourselves on our curation. We are aiming to provide the customer with some inspiration that they might not have otherwise thought of which is a little outside of that traditional personalization scope.<\/p>\n

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As you explore curation and the ability to adapt your strategies effectively, how is your team using content to tie online and offline experiences?<\/h4>\n

The data itself is coming from our Loyalty team and we are tying that content together to understand the purchasing behaviour in-store and online. Going back to the first question of understanding the whole customer path we are now able to look at what the customers are browsing online and ultimately what they are purchasing in stores. We are hearing of retailers that are able to tie the customer\u2019s in store sales to their preceding online visit and browsing behaviour.<\/p>\n

What other tools are you using to really personalize that experience and understand the consumer behaviour with Indigo?<\/h4>\n

As with the last question, our Loyalty team is working to tie our web analytics data<\/a> (and the customer\u2019s digital footprint) to their in-store purchases.<\/p>\n

How important would you say localization is to your online and offline strategy?<\/h4>\n

On the offline side it is absolutely something that we look into. For example, what is successful in Vancouver might not be as effective in Montreal. On the online side, we have not yet adopted the localization strategy<\/a> to the same extent.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I would love to know what are some examples of omnichannel \u2018done right\u2019 or some campaigns that you find inspiring today?<\/h4>\n
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