By Linda Ersbacken, Marketing Manager UK at Voyado
How do consumers behave in today’s world of all-time-high inflation, increased cost of living, and the remnants of a pandemic? Where do they shop, how do they spend their money, and what do they expect from brands? Read this blog post for a glimpse into shopping behaviours, and download the full report for all stats and insights!
Putting the stats in context
To succeed as a retailer or ecommerce brand today, understanding how consumers behave is crucial. This blog guides you through the patterns in consumer behaviour revealed by Voyado’s annual index report, of which uses 12 months of data collected from 164 million purchase occasions. This insight can help retailers benchmark their own performance against the current trends of the market, and raises customer-orientated brand development strategies to boost customer confidence and monetary success. Now, with more industries included and country differences considered, this is our most informed index yet. So, are you ready to know what the numbers say about consumers, and how to act on these findings? Let us give you a little sneak peak…
Key takeaways on consumer behaviour
There’s a lot to discover from the statistics and analyses in this year’s index report. Here are some of the conclusions—and the tips and tricks to help you grow your business.
Brands personalise emails less this year
Retailers and ecommerce brands use personalised fields in emails 18% less in 2022 compared to the previous year. There’s a remarkable decrease in personalised emails sent to women, while those addressed to men have increased. Despite this, personalised fields in email marketing are still more common when communicating with women.
Optimise SMS and email marketing
Email and SMS send-outs have increased significantly in volume, but there are a few things to consider to optimise the outcome. Don’t bore and bombard your customers with poor communication and irrelevant product recommendations. Instead, you can ensure you collect, store, and leverage customer data—and combine it with modern product discovery.
Advanced product discovery processes historical behaviour data to understand the customer’s intention in real-time, increasing personalisation and relevance in your communication. Simply tailored recommendations, exactly when the customer wants them. Besides this, retailers might make email and SMS marketing complement each other, using this wisely to not to cause a lack of trust.
The importance of abandoned cart emails
The average email click rate has dropped significantly, but when it comes to abandoned cart emails, it’s often the total opposite. These emails are being clicked on more frequently! Why? Because what they communicate tends to be nothing but super relevant to every customer. There are ways to gain even more from these emails, though:
- Divide your cart abandoners into segments like cart value or product type, and send different messages to each group to optimise the effect. For example, offer a modest discount for high-value abandoned carts or reach out to low-value shoppers more quickly than others.
- When reminding customers about something they forgot to purchase, seize the opportunity to suggest other things they’ll probably like too. How? By adding personalised product recommendations to the email. You can make the most of your data and increase your conversion rate—at the same time.
A big shift in shopping behavior
One of the biggest conclusions from this year’s index is that people shop more often but buy fewer products and spend less money per shopping occasion. A change in consumer behavior that probably has to do with inflation and the rising cost of living. Could it be that people don’t collect their purchases in one place anymore, but instead are on a constant hunt for the lowest prices? A behavior that leads to a lot of small purchases scattered at many different places. And can the fact that people receive more emails and text messages lead to more impulse purchases? Probably. Since the shopping frequency has gone up, there’s a great chance to increase the average receipt (every time someone shops!).
Get your copy of the shopping report
There is much more to explore in the Voyado shopping index! Download it right now for all the detailed statistics on consumer buying behavior, inspiration for your own marketing possibilities, and the top takeaways for a successful 2023. Just click here!
Published 07/11/2022
