Shoppers are breaking up with brands who fail to provide a seamless, personalized experience. Here’s what retailer marketers can do about it.

1. It’s not you. It’s me.
It’s not you. It’s me.
Shoppers are breaking up with brands who fail
to provide a seamless, personalized experience.
Here’s what retailer marketers can do about it.
epsilon.com

2. It’s not you. It’s me.
Contents
The paradigm shift: from brand to customer 4
The materials for change: personas, shopper history and real-time decisioning 6
The Internet of Everything (IoE) defined 10
From personalization to hyper-relevance: how the IoE is writing the future of shopping 11
Avoiding the breakup: how to build trust with your customers 12
Conclusion 12
About Epsilon 13

3. It’s not you. It’s me.
It’s true that you never get a second chance to make a
first impression.
The proof? Customers are breaking up with retail brands
that can’t deliver on their evolving expectations. The
tech-savvy generation and their time-pressured parents
are rapidly adapting (and perhaps outpacing) retail brands.
Customers are demanding a shopping experience that is
intuitively seamless, fast, authentic and personalized.
So how do you answer the increasing demands of
your customers?
The blended customer experience

4. It’s not you. It’s me.
The customer experience has become the “final
frontier” for retailers. It used to be all about the
brand. But a lot has changed. Because of increasing
customer expectations and falling store sales,
retailers are learning that they have to make a big
shift. It’s not about the retailer’s brand any longer.
It’s all about the customer—and how the brand can
create a shopping experience built on this new-found
focus.
Let’s face it. Most shoppers can find similar or
better alternatives online. A large part of why they
are coming to the store is for the experience itself.
“Customers not only want, but expect a personalized
experience. They expect retailers to know their
preferences and interests. A recent Infosys study
reported that 78 percent of consumers are more likely
to be a repeat customer if a retailer provides them
with targeted, personalized offers.” But the pendulum
swings both ways. The CMO Council reported that
more than half of North American consumers
would consider breaking ties with retailers
that do not provide offers that are relevant
and personalized.1
So we’ve come to a place in time where retailers are
forced to change their ways. The shift of focus must
come away from the brand and, instead, highlight the
customers’ expectations and needs at an individual
level. Brands that succeed in this change will see
increased loyalty and profit margins. But those that do
not will be faced with a serious decline in sales and
brand loyalty.
1
Trend report: Why Personalized Retail Is the Future of Brick-and-Mortar Stores, trafsys.com
2
Survey says shoppers want ‘more personal, less personalization’, retailcustomerexperience.com, May 29, 2014
The paradigm shift: from brand to customer
Shoppers want a balance of technology and the physical
52%said shopping is
“too impersonal”
these days
and they are
concerned about
the reliance on
algorithms to
dictate their
purchases
57%worry that they’ll
discover fewer
new things if
companies
always show
them exactly
what they’re
looking for
66%are looking to be
inspired while
shopping
71%would welcome
interactive walls
that enable
shoppers to
try on clothes
without changing
65%said they were
willing to share
data if they could
see the benefit
71%worry about the
amount of
information that
online stores
know about
them
59%would be open
to a store that is
able to recognize
them when they
walk through the
door

5. It’s not you. It’s me.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably already know all of this. But the real question is: What do you do about it? How
do you create an experience for each and every one of your shoppers that will make them feel that when they enter your brand’s store,
they are entering their store?
Today most retailers realize the power of personalization and the in-store experience. The problem is that they don’t know how to craft
an experience that is unique, and they don’t have the information they need to get started.
The relevancy criteria
Forrester notes, more than ever, brands need to deliver relevant experiences. But what makes an experi-
ence “relevant”? To comply, retailers need to ensure that their brand’s shopping experiences:
• Meet customer needs. A highly relevant experience meets the content and functionality
needs of a customer while satisfying the underlying emotional needs that trigger an interaction.
• Feel personal. Consumers expect—and appreciate—personalized experiences. Truly personal expe-
riences deliver relevant content and function based on explicit and implicit feedback about customer
needs and preferences.
• Deliver in the moment. Relevant experiences take into account a person’s current state—such
as time of day and location—and deliver on situational needs, such as finding additional product
information using a barcode scanner at the point of consideration.3
3
Forrester: 2012. Rogowski, R., Powers, S., Yakkundi, A. Contextualization.

6. It’s not you. It’s me.
To get started along the journey of creating a
shopping experience that is built around your
customer, you will find that personas, your compiled
shopper history and an organized real-time message
engine are your keys to success. However, before you
can cross these items off your to-do list, you need
one very important thing—data.
Data is the building block for creating shopper
personas built in reality. Data that you store of your
shoppers’ past transactions with your brand will
provide critical information that will deliver a truly
personal experience for them. And data will help you
to make decisions about what message or offer your
shopper should receive in any given moment. To be
successful, you need to be sure that data is your
foundation for all things moving forward and that your
decisions are grounded in actionable insights.
Personas: Going beyond segmentation
Retailers have long used customer profiles as a
representation of their marketing segments. Personas
take these profiles beyond the basic demographic
makeup of the customers. A well-developed persona
incorporates the basic demographics with financial
information (e.g., ability to pay, credit worthiness, net
worth), interests and—perhaps most importantly—
transactional behavior and categorical spend.
True, it does take work (and often money) to create
accurate shopper personas. But once this task
is done, these can be powerful tools for getting
marketers and store employees to understand and
obsess about customer needs.
With personas, your brand has a holistic view of
who is shopping at your stores. To be successful,
marketers have to use personas consistently.
They should serve as a reference at every step of
the design process so that it’s clear who they are
designing the experience for.
It’s also important to note, that building personas
is not just a one-time job. Once you have created
your personas, they should serve as living, breathing
documents that need to be evaluated on a regular
basis. If your customer base changes, then so should
your personas. Measurement is crucial to ensure that
the personas remain an effective guide.
The materials for change: personas, shopper
history and real-time decisioning

7. It’s not you. It’s me.
Sample persona: chic society
The households in this niche are very business and culturally
oriented. These households are typically in their mid-50s, and they
usually do not have children. There is extensive domestic business
and foreign travel in this niche. These homeowners own residences
that have an average value of about $317,000, and they have lived
there for 15 to 20 years or more. They are more likely than the
general population to have grandchildren.
Chic Society households own many credit cards and have a known
history of being mail responsive and purchasing items through the
mail. Their discretionary spending includes purchases of general
merchandise, magazines, kitchen accessories, specialty foods, and
women’s apparel. The households in this niche are also more likely
to donate to charitable causes, such as wildlife and environmental
issues. They have a great interest in monetary investing.
Household activities and interests include travel, including
international trips, cruise ship vacations, cycling, and boating
and sailing. Other interests include gardening and grandchildren.
They are very health conscious regarding weight control, and
they enjoy regular physical fitness, walking for health, and
self-improvement. They are loyal online subscribers that are likely
to use a Web portal such as AOL, Yahoo, or MSN.
Chic Society households are affluent, and the vehicle ownership
reflects their wealth. They are more likely than average to own
luxury exotic makes, such as Lotus and Jaguar, as well as luxury
full-size vehicles, such as the Cadillac XTS. They also have
an above average likelihood to own new vehicles in very recent
model years from 2010 forward.
$168,592
Avg. HH income
54
Avg. age of head
16
Avg. length residence
12%
have kids

8. It’s not you. It’s me.
Shopper history: the more you know
Personas are only one element of the personalized shopping experience. Shopper
history is another. Capturing a customer’s history with your brand empowers you
with hugely valuable information. What have they purchased in the past? What are
their preferences? What are they buying with your competitors?
Having the answer to these questions can make you a master of the retail universe.
But, knowing them is not enough. You have to ensure that they are easy to access.
How many databases are the answers to these questions stored in currently? Do
your store associates have access to them? Are they fueling the messages that are
being served on your ecommerce site? If your answer is no, then you have some
work to do.
It is one thing to capture this information—but the most important thing you can
do is to be sure that it is readily available so you can use it at every step of your
customers’ shopping journey.
Real time: Making it happen in the moment that matters
Now that you have created your personas and you can access your shopper history
at any stage of your customers’ journey, you have one more very important thing to
do. You need a real-time decisioning engine.
Sound complicated? Well, in a way, it is. But you already have most of your legwork
done with your personas and your shopper history database. Now it’s time to map all
of the possible journeys your shoppers may take and think about their experiences.
At every step, what offer would be relevant to them in that moment?
This exploration takes time and a lot of thought. But in this mapping process, you’re
actually creating a database of offers and messages for your customers that will
make their shopping experience feel personal and relevant. After all, that’s the
goal, right?
4
Forrester: Contextualization by Ron Rogowski, Stephen powers, and Anjali Yakkundi, November 19, 2012

9. It’s not you. It’s me.
5
Forrester: Advance to Next-Generation Personalization. By Anjali Yakkundi and Ron Rogowski, January 31, 2014
Bringing it together: Joining the elements of your new shopping experience
Forrester notes, “Combining the user-archetype information that personas contain with an individual’s history, preferences and current
environment can help companies engineer experiences that feel like they were designed for a specific user, even if they were not.”4
In essence, this is the secret formula. It’s not possible to make every experience individually and uniquely personal to a single customer.
But if you can combine the persona + shopper history + real-time decisioning engine, you will be delivering on an experience that feels
custom fit for your shoppers.
Your customers don’t have patience for you to figure it out. They just want an intuitive experience that feels as if it was authentically
created with them in mind. Shoppers’ expectations of instant gratification aren’t changing. If you can deliver on their expectations,
you’ll reap the marketshare of the brands that are not.
It’s a lot to tackle if you haven’t already started. Remember, you don’t have to climb the mountain in one attempt. Focus on one aspect
of your customer experience and use it as a beta project. Then build upon your customer experience from there.
According to Forrester, “Organizations that have failed in personalization initiatives often tried to do too much at once. Instead,
successful organizations we spoke to avoided these pitfalls in new contextualization initiatives by starting small and adding a personal
touch for certain experiences before ramping up to large personalization initiatives.”
Persona Shopper
history
Real-time
decisioning
Custom
shopping
experience
+ + =

10. It’s not you. It’s me.
The Internet of Everything (IoE) defined
Most people are now familiar with the Internet of Things
(IoT). The Oxford Dictionary defines the IoT as “a proposed
development of the Internet in which everyday objects have
network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data.”6
So how does the IoT differ from the IoE?
According to Dave Evans, Chief Futurist at Cisco, “The Internet
of Things is just one of four dimensions…The IoE is built on
the connections among people, processes, data and things.
However it is not about these four dimensions in isolation.
Each amplifies the capabilities of the other three. It is in the
intersection of all of these elements that the true power of
IoE is realized.”7
The blended customer experience
6
Internet of Things, wikipedia.com
7
Beyond Things: The Internet of Everything, Explained In Four Dimensions, Dave Evans, Huffington Post, September 2013

11. It’s not you. It’s me.
Your shoppers are seeking innovations to make shopping easier; citing convenience
and efficiency as key factors of importance. The experience is continuing to evolve
with the IoE. “Hyper-relevance delivers value—such as greater savings, efficiency
or engagement—in real time throughout the shopping lifecycle, using analytics to
determine the experience that best suits the customer’s context (where he is, what
she is looking to accomplish in the moment).”8
According to Cisco Consulting Services’ retail study, there are three key value drivers
that hold consumers’ interest in IoE-enabled solutions.9
To be effective in meeting increasing customer expectations for hyper-relevance, retail
marketers have to be innovative. Ask yourself, how can I make the shopping experience
easier for my consumers? Can I make the checkout faster or easier? How can I ensure
I have what they’re looking for in stock when and where they need it? How can I
expedite delivery if I don’t? Can I help them to find what they’re looking for through
peer reviews or product recommendations?
These questions should already come up as you’re building out your ideal customer
shopping experience. With the IoE comes new possibilities—the technology with which
you can fulfil these wish-list expectations. You can use this new toolkit to create a
shopping experience for your customers that is truly special and hyper-relevant to
their needs.
Retailers cannot change the fact that the power has shifted to the consumers—new
tools and technology will certainly continue to fuel this transformation. But by creating
a digital experience for your customers that is built around them, your brand can
become differentiated, innovative and integrated to their lifestyle.10
From personalization to hyper-relevance:
how the IoE is writing the future of shopping
The Internet of Everything (IoE)
is changing shopping behavior
Consumer interest in IoE-enabled solutions
3 key value drivers
Savings
General in-store offers (digital signage)
Special offers (augmented reality)
Targeted offers (digital signage)
1
Efficiency
Checkout optimization
In-store guidance (digital signage)
In-store guidance (augmented reality)
Scan-and-play (smartphone)
Drive-thru pickup
Same-day delivery
2
Engagement
Reviews (augmented reality)
In-store advertising
Product recommender (augmented reality)
3
8
Survey: Consumers want Internet of Everything-enabled retail experiences, by Katherine Boccaccio, January 12, 2015
9
Ibid.
10
Retailing 2015: New Frontiers 2007PricewaterhouseCoopers/TNS Retail Forward 21

12. It’s not you. It’s me.
Just as in real-life relationships, your consumers are looking for authentic relationships with the brands and products that
they buy. The evolving digital landscape has created competition and endless shopping opportunities. With all of these
endless options, consumers want to be inspired.
However, through all this evolution, the premise of buying and selling goods hasn’t fundamentally changed. The old adage
“Nothing happens until someone decides to purchase something” still applies. The difference is that now shoppers are
more equipped to demand an intelligent, transparent, unique and meaningful experience with the brand of their choice.
They have more choices than they ever did before when selecting a brand to have a relationship with.
Where the brand used to hold the power, now it is the consumer with all the power of choice. To be successful, you need
to be strategically prepared to set your brand apart from the competition. To do this, you need to know your customer in
a way that feels unconsciously unique and authentic. In the end, this is what will inspire trust for your shoppers. It’s that
trust that will kindle a loyal relationship with your brand.
Conclusion
Today the customer is in control. They decide if, when and how to interact with their favorite retail brands. With all the
channels of interaction available to the consumer, retailers need the ability to develop well-grounded engagement
strategies to maximize the customer experience every minute of every day.
As a new breed of marketing partner for this customer-empowered world, our approach harnesses the power of rich
data, world-leading technologies, engaging creativity and transformative ideas to connect customers to brands and
deliver dramatic results.
Customers today have many options. We can help you create meaningful customer connections, resulting in increased
revenue, more frequent engagement and more efficient marketing spend.
Avoiding the breakup: how to build trust
with your customers

13. It’s not you. It’s me.
Want to understand how to take the first next step in your digital
landscape? Let us help.
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