As consumers’ lives have moved increasingly online in the past year, causing them to seek web solutions for formerly in-person activities, grocery retailers have had the opportunity to acquire new customers by optimizing their web presence. However, with so many contenders racing to present the most attractive digital offerings, these retailers have had to go the extra mile. Contrary to many grocers’ beliefs, however, this has not meant plying consumers with content.
“If anything, the grocers have too much content on their sites,” Ben Flaccus, grocery retail lead of video experience platform SundaySky, told PYMNTS in a recent interview. “And thinking about this in terms of the fundamental challenge of push versus pull … we want to not only take that content and put it in front of consumers, but also apply advanced algorithmic learning to understand what are the right offers, what are the right recipes, what’s the right content to bring to consumers.”
Flaccus added that grocers are accustomed to printing circular formats in which hundreds of SKUs are advertised all at once, and are not used to curating the type of selections to compete in today’s attention economy. To do this, SundaySky uses “a whole host of first and third-party data indicators,” including, but not limited to, purchase history, demographic data and even information about the local weather, to optimize the consumer’s content.
“How do we start to curate that content? We pare it down and start creating more relevant ad experiences by taking those offers that are relevant to a consumer based on a whole host of first- and third-party data … to understand which products will move the needle for that individual consumer,” Flaccus explained.
Why Video?
SundaySky shorthands its video experiences as VX, setting these apart from the CX strategies consumers have grown accustomed to (and thus learned to ignore). As Flaccus noted: “Folks are increasingly banner-blind. They’re used to tuning out all of the digital noise, but they are tuned in when they watch video. They are watching pre-roll video to get to the content that they care about.”
As consumers watch a video from start to finish, engaging with it in ways they might not engage with more static forms of marketing, the opportunity emerges to form a strong impression. “We’re really thinking about how to take this medium and its inherent ability to tell a story … and marry that sort of inspirational content with the price and item content, the mid- to lower-funnel, action-driving content. … Offers, discounts and even things like localized maps seem to show a consumer exactly where they can go to convert,” Flaccus explained.
The goal of this strategy is to lay the foundation of a “reason to believe” and to apply “a reason to act,” turning the emotional potential of the medium into results.
‘Educate, Incentivize, Convert’
As an example of a successful implementation of this reason to believe + reason to act equation, Flaccus cites an Albertsons promotion that SundaySky called “Educate, Incentivize, Convert.” The program ran as Albertsons, amid the pandemic, was focusing on driving its eCommerce options. It coupled educational content, explaining the range of fulfillment options available at local Albertsons stores, with a “dynamic offer,” a specific discount or deal designed to incentivize consumers to try out these different options. Flaccus highlighted how this promotion leveraged hyper-specific information that varied store-to-store and day-to-day, calling it a “very creative and thoughtful way to take advantage of our hyper-local and price item capabilities.”
Just as the VX platform used its videos to drive consumers toward Albertsons’ expanded fulfillment channels, SundaySky also tailors its videos to other needs of grocery retailers. “It can be anything from pure awareness all the way down to lower funnel price item content,” noted Flaccus.
Grocery Shopping Behaviors In The Post-Pandemic World
Flaccus identified two key changes in consumers’ grocery shopping behavior throughout the pandemic: “a doubling, or in some cases a tripling, of eCommerce activity,” and “a consolidation.” He defined the latter, explaining that consumers are shopping at fewer stores. “We know that historically, over 80 percent of consumers shop at more than one grocery store, and over 60 percent shop at three or more, and that behavior has changed.” Additionally, he noted, consumers are buying more drugstore goods at grocery stores, looking to get everything they need in as few trips as possible.
He predicts that once contagion concerns subside, consumers will return to shopping at several stores as they did before the pandemic. However, some of these eCommerce behaviors may stick around. “I think there’s going to be a shift in consumer behavior around eCommerce, where perhaps low consideration items [like] staples are purchased online, but the consumer is still going in-store to buy fresh produce or meats, things like that.”
His predictions echo those of Debbie Guerra, executive vice president of merchant payments and payments intelligence solutions at ACI Worldwide, who said in an interview with PYMNTS, “I do believe that the hybrid models that have appeared during the pandemic are going to endure,” adding that the safety and convenience of eCommerce and the sense of immediacy and discovery of in-store shopping “have to work in concert.”
This hybrid shopping journey presents a valuable opportunity for companies like SundaySky that help grocery stores communicate to these omnichannel consumers. Flaccus noted that there “has been a lot of interest in exploring cross-channel delivery of that weekly ad content … and that opens up a ton of opportunities to help solve additional business challenges. Once we are hyperlocalized, delivering that relevant content in real time, we can start to solve for things like retailer media adoption. We can start to help with store openings, store transitions, competitive conquesting. There’s a whole host of things we can do.”
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