The ways in which retailers incentivize consumers to buy products or engage with a company are forever expanding. Traditional in-store coupons matter, but they’re one piece in a strategy that should include personalized web offers, location-based mobile app rewards, loyalty points, gamification, unique promotions for curbside pickup, and whatever else a retailer believes will incentivize their customer.
The options are endless, but how effective omnichannel incentives are for a retailer depends on whether the programs are properly unified. Companies that have in-store coupons, mobile rewards, social media campaigns, etc., running in separate departments can erode profit margins and create poor customer experiences.
Truthfully, many retailer organizations can be set in their ways when it comes to omnichannel execution, including rewards and incentives. Those companies don’t value the financial and operational losses that come from running disparate promotion engines.
Perhaps the reasons are cultural, like having online and in-store teams working in silos. Or, maybe, they’re technical, like operating from a legacy architecture that can make it harder to adapt. No matter the reason, there’s always a path toward unified incentives, and we can help retailers get there.
To start, here are four tips for building a unified, omnichannel incentives engine.
E-commerce, in-store, marketing, supply chain, IT — whoever your key decision makers are — get them aligned on their strategic plan for incentives. Companies often say they want to be unified, but each department has its own empire to run, so operations are not always cohesive.
Of course, this may require some difficult conversations, but when everyone’s together, and they recognize that there’s a problem with bleeding margin and fragmented incentives, it’s much easier to get aligned.
Ultimately, the first step is for a retailer to develop a coordinated view of how its incentives excel across channels. Invite team members to learn from one another on how consumers behave differently across channels. After that, it’s settling on a strategy that optimizes incentives within each channel.
There are no limits to the types of incentives retailers can build out within a unified engine but ensuring that a localized in-store promotion doesn’t interfere or overlap with a broader e-commerce offer, for example, requires an understanding of the rules that need to be defined within the platform.
To do this, you must establish what you want from incentives right now as well as in the future, reeling in aspirational customers. Then, promotions teams can create an incentives plan, and offers get built into the incentives engine, guarded by rules and definitions so that incentives don’t interfere with one another and bleed margin.
A major benefit of a unified incentives engine is how it gives a retailer complete control over what incentives they’d like to apply, in what channels, regions, and stores, and to what customers. Once implemented, you can add, replace, and update rules and incentives easily within the platform.
Designed for omnichannel execution, the XCCommerce unified incentives engine is a service-oriented application, meaning it’s agnostic to where it connects. However, there are different migration plans for companies using legacy POS systems and those with bleeding-edge AI sales and promotions programs.
Technology is always a piece of the puzzle, but it’s not a hurdle. It just impacts planning. For instance, a retailer may want to start with integrating unified incentives into the e-commerce operation, because that’s where it’s bleeding profit margin. Or, maybe it’s starting with an in-store tool, because it’s experiencing more infrastructure pain points. Updates and integrations can happen in parallel, over time, and at a pace that best suits you and your team.
Unified promotions aren’t all promotions running the same across all channels, rather rewards and offers that are all visible and coordinated across channels. Making this happen requires “unified execution” of the incentives. Inside the platform, this is where your rules get set, and incentives are managed thoughtfully and efficiently.
Working in silos makes unified execution impossible. Knitwell Group, one of the largest apparel groups, manages several different chains and must manage multiple promotions across every
channel, like e-commerce, in-store, and social media, but also every banner: Ann Taylor, Loft, Lane Braynt, etc. The company could fall into a trap of silos, but after defining a promotions strategy, and leveraging an incentives plan that enables them to control incentives, the company manages unified execution of incentives across banners and channels.
Unified incentives can’t be looked at as a “nice-to-have” within a retail organization. As consumers shop and browse across channels, incentives are becoming more complex, making a unified incentives platform essential toward delivering a consistent customer experience and protecting profit margins.
Breaking down company-wide silos, defining clear rules for incentives, knowing how your consumers behave across channels, and implementing a flexible migration plan are foundational pieces of implementing a unified promotions program. With the company aligned around unified incentives, retailers can stop chasing fragmented incentives and build a seamless, profitable incentives ecosystem that evolves with their business and their customers.
We’d love to walk you through the process and get you on a path toward unified promotions. Set up a meeting with us today.
Common red flags:
While promotion optimization and management play crucial roles in planning and organization, promotion execution is the only stage that directly impacts the customer experience. A flawless execution ensures that promotions work as intended at checkout: delivering accurate pricing, consistent offers, and a seamless transaction every time.
Key capabilities include:
Yes – but execution should always come first. Once a consistent and reliable promotion execution layer is in place, retailers can more effectively invest in promotion optimization and management tools. Without accurate execution, even the best strategies and systems can fail to reach customers as designed.
When retailers use separate engines for stores, eCommerce, and mobile, inconsistencies in pricing, eligibility, and offer calculations can occur. These inconsistencies hurt both operational efficiency and customer trust. Consolidating systems through a unified omnichannel promotion execution platform eliminates these discrepancies and delivers a consistent brand experience.
XCCommerce provides a centralized, omnichannel promotion execution engine that ensures every incentive (discounts, coupons, loyalty offers, etc.) is applied accurately and consistently across all sales channels. Its real-time calculation and seamless integration with existing retail systems allow retailers to deliver fast, accurate, and personalized experiences at every customer touchpoint.
Yes. XCCommerce’s flexible platform works in tandem with existing promotion optimization and management systems, allowing retailers to plan more strategically, deploy campaigns faster, and measure performance more effectively. It strengthens the entire promotional lifecycle by ensuring every planned promotion is executed flawlessly.
Retailers that prioritize promotion execution achieve greater consistency across channels, faster time-to-market for new offers, fewer pricing errors, and higher customer satisfaction. By ensuring accuracy and reliability in every transaction, they protect both revenue and brand loyalty.
Accurate execution prevents margin leakage, over-discounting, and offer misfires. It also enables smarter segmentation, better optimization inputs, and faster deployment.
When retailers use different engines for POS, eCommerce, mobile, or OMS, discrepancies arise. Even small calculation differences create inconsistent prices, erode trust, and cause lost sales.
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