We all know there’s no “secret sauce” to customer engagement. The answer has been clear to many of us for some time: Right message + right place + right time. But if it’s so simple, why is it that so many of us are getting it wrong when it comes to engaging, successful mobile shopping journeys?

One of the main reasons: Customer habits, interests, and expectations have massively evolved. Social media has completely transformed the way customers engage with brands. Data privacy and security have never been more in flux. So, let’s talk about some of the conversations that my friends and I at Storyly believe we should all be having.

Personalization and Zero-Party Data

Customers continue to show us time and time again through their behaviors (and through their self report) that they expect brands to know them on a personal level. Simultaneously, we hear calls for data privacy, consumer ownership of their digital persona, decentralization, and more. So marketers are left with the challenge of creating experiences that are personalized, but that don’t feel like someone is following them down the street. There’s been a lot of talk about earning customers’ data—moving away from third-party and toward first-party data-gathering.

I’d like to challenge my fellow marketers to take it one step further: Zero-party data. The difference between first- and zero–party data is that, while first-party data is collected through web and app activity, zero-party data is collected directly from customers. It’s the difference between noticing that your partner spends a lot of time in the mystery section of the bookstore versus asking them outright who their favorite author is. In the first situation, you might buy them a Sherlock Holmes set that they will like; in the second, you can buy them an Agatha Christie set you know they’ll love.

Embracing and Creating Moments

Forrester calls them mobile moments; Google calls them micro moments. Whatever you call them, these are the points in time when our customers are most engaged, most interested in spending, most ready to be shown that our brands are here for them.

Outside of micro moments are moments in which our customers are not necessarily seeking anything at all. This is where we have a real opportunity to play a new role in our customers’ lives. Just like they scroll through Instagram or TikTok to see what’s new with their friends and favorite creators, they may feel compelled to see what’s new with their favorite coffee chain or retailer. This is how we not only embrace moments, but create them with our customers.

Storyly’s Vision for the Ideal Mobile Retail Journey

Storyly’s technology borrows from the rampant success of the “Story” format that has proliferated across the most successful social media channels like SnapChat, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, and brings it into brands’ owned mobile retail experiences. When customers log on to your app or mobile site, they are greeted with dynamic, full-screen videos and images they intrinsically know how to interact with because of their social media habits.

When you partner with technology like Braze, you’re able to make these experiences even more thoughtful and personalized. With the Braze platform’s robust customer data collection capabilities and Storyly’s engaging data-collection capacity through interactive stickers, brands create a feedback loop of first-and (increasingly) zero-party data that better your experience throughout your customer journey—from discovery, to purchase, to support, and back again.

What might this look like in practice? Let’s say you’re a clothing retailer. One day, while your customer is scrolling through their phone, they hop on to your app, tap on a Story and watch a video Story highlighting an upcoming collaboration with their favorite music artist. There’s a poll asking “Want to be alerted for the drop?” They tap yes and continue to explore the inventory. A week later, they get a proactive push notification powered by Braze saying, “It’s time! The collaboration is here! Tap to check it out.” Braze deep links them to the right page in the app. They immediately purchase a pair of sneakers and earn a promo code for their next order. The next time they log on to your app, they’re greeted with a story saying “Welcome back! Ready to use your 10% discount?” they hit “Let’s do it!” and it’s immediately added to the cart for their next shopping session.

This is what a seamless, personalized shopping experience looks like to us at Storyly. All systems are connected, from the initial session to the proactive engagement and back to shopping again. Long-term engagement, engaging, visual content in a format customers love, powered by zero-party data.

Learn more about the power of Story-driven retail through Storyly’s eBook on delivering the best mobile retail experiences during the holiday season.