Is Pre-Emptive Shopping The Next Big Thing In eCommerce?

We all know that personalisation is a huge trend in digital marketing techniques, with brands now realising they have to step it up if they want consumers to choose them over their competitors. 

Data-led personalisation is often the way brands take this on, using automated tools to make recommendations or simply address a customer directly. While this is still a valuable tool, there’s now a new kid on the block that could change the way ecommerce businesses create personalised experiences.

What Is Pre-Emptive Shopping?

Powered by automation and allowing the customer to take some control, pre-emptive shopping is backed by the IFTT (If This Then That) platform which provides the customer with the ability to create shopping rules, individual to them.

IFTT recently partnered with Tesco so that customers could create ‘recipes’ (essentially a trigger point and a resulting action) around their shopping basket. For example, they may want to automatically add milk to their basket every Thursday which will cut out the time it takes to manually search for milk every single time they place the order. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you set up multiple rules and conditions, it can drastically improve the online shopping experience of the customer.

It’s also worth noting that pre-emptive shopping isn’t a business randomly adding products to a customer’s basket. The control is given to the customer who will decide exactly what it is they want and when. 

What Kind Of Recipes Can Be Created?

This is the fun part. The recipes or rules a customer creates are entirely personal to them. They may have an allergy and therefore want to make sure any items in their basket are removed containing that allergen, and replaced with an alternative product they have picked themselves.

Customers can also select to be notified if a product drops in price or to add seasonal products to their basket from a certain date or if the weather outside changes. The great thing about pre-emptive shopping is how unique it is to the individual.

How Does This Benefit Your Business?

It’s simple really. It benefits your business because it benefits the consumer. Anything that makes shopping easier and more enjoyable for your customers is going to keep them coming back for more. It also puts them in control, proving that your business values its customers. It’s all about making your business smarter and developing trust between the brand and the consumer. 

As an ecommerce business, you should be thinking heavily around what you can do to improve customer experience and to ensure they keep coming back for more, and pre-emptive shopping can play a huge part in customer retention. 

If you want to learn more about the different personalised shopping techniques and are looking for some marketing support, get in touch with our team of experts today by clicking here.