As mobile devices continue their gains in popularity and usage worldwide, more consumers are interacting with brands at various stages of the buying life cycle—from browsing, researching and comparing products to reading reviews, sharing their experiences and making actual purchases. The digital affinity of consumers, who once were bound by a very tactile customer experience of seeing and touching products in-store, has put a lot of pressure on CMOs to become the boss of their online customer experience.

While being a CMO connotes leadership and authority, it doesn’t inherently mean brands need to be forceful or intimidating in how they speak with their online customers. What does work is a smarter and more nuanced approach to listening to their customers’ explicit actions and using those actions to become more relevant to each individual customer. Brands that get this approach see it pay off with greater respect, trust, loyalty and, of course, revenue.

So to help CMOs master their online customer experience, I have outlined five surefire rules they should follow to get customers to respect, trust and spend more dollars more often with them across multiple channels.

Rule #1: Don’t shout and bulldoze your customers into clicking and buying.

In the traditional model of sales, salespeople often acted and operated under the premise that being louder, pushier and more forceful was the way to win over, or bulldoze, consumers to get them to say “yes.” There was a notion that salespeople could wear down consumers into succumbing to their will and, as a result, get them to make a purchase.

While that approach may have resulted in a one-time sell, we would all agree that it isn’t the most effective way to generate repeat, long-term loyalty and purchases from customers. Today’s customers have almost limitless choices and options at their disposal. If they can’t find a product in-store, they can easily and quickly type, click, tap and purchase away on a number of competing online sites. If they’re strapped for time, they don’t have to wait (for hours) to get in front of their desktop/laptop computer at home. Instead, they can browse, compare and shop from thousands of product options on a brand’s mobile-optimized site directly from their iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Apple iPad or Google Nexus tablet.

Even more than convenience, consumers aren’t as easily swayed by hyperbole, outlandish claims or dubious offers. Brute force and fear are no longer profitable strategies. It’s the brands that are authentic, humble and real that get consumers to keep their eyes (and hands) on their online and mobile sites longer and ultimately clicking through multiple areas of the site to the checkout or to request a quote.

Perhaps more important, it is almost impossible to guess at what ideas and appeals will resonate most with your buyers and entice them to buy. Lower costs? Free shipping? Sustainable materials? Thirty-day guarantees? Bigger images? Different CTA? Guess if you want. But the only way to truly know for sure what attracts your customers is to test and learn what they really want. More important, it is to use the big data from your tests to tailor what you’re saying, doing and offering across all devices. The most successful online marketers aren’t browbeating; they’re influencing by showing value. They are experimenting and exploring all the time.

Rule #2: Listen to your customers and make their lives simpler and more productive.

The reality is that customers will be more accepting and responsive to messages and offers that have real value. If there is no perceived value, they’ll click away without batting an eye. At the end of the day, consumers want the same thing from the online customer experience as they do from the products they’re buying. Simply put, it needs to solve a problem. If your customer experience isn’t solving a problem for your customers, you’ve got a big problem on your hands, and all the fancy design work you can imagine (and spend money on) won’t make any difference.

The key to rule #2 is not to guess at what problem drove the customers to your site. Instead, it is to serve up only what your customers truly want based on what you know about them as well as what they have previously asked or searched for. Recommend products that make sense for them, not for you as a brand. By listening to your customers’ needs and digital footprints, you can tell a lot about them and what types of messaging and offers are likely to resonate with them and make them more willing to spend money repeatedly across all devices with your brand.

Rule #3: Be in more than one place at a time.

Consumers don’t just look for and buy products in one place. They’re using multiple devices simultaneously throughout their day and juggling dozens of activities at once. In this “Age of the Customer,” the adage of “I can’t be in two places at one time” no longer rings true. For brands that want to get customers to experience and interact with them and their products/services consistently and repeatedly, it’s important to be in more than one place at a time and deliver a consistently great experience in all of these channels.

Rule #4: Never pistol-whip new visitors.

For your website’s home page, the easy way out is to display three, four or even five offers, rotating in sequence. On the surface, it makes sense: The more “stuff” you show, the better your chances are of finding something that a given customer may like. Better yet, it also satisfies all those internal groups that are clamoring for exposure on the website.

However, this approach is problematic because the data shows that few visitors (other than your internal teams) ever get to the end of your rotating banners on your home page. This is because there is an average of a 50 percent drop-off after each banner. Experience also shows consumers do not have the time or the patience to wait for the right offer to appear. It’s much more effective to test home page offers (to quiet those internal groups) and use that data to personalize the offer based on who is visiting your website.

Rule #5: Cement boots do not create loyalty.

In all cases, you will make more money across multiple channels from customers who return again and again. The long-term revenue opportunity lies in building trust and loyalty with visitors who keep coming back and recommend your site to their network of friends and family.

What is the best way to get customers to sign up for newsletters or emails? What should you say in your follow-up communication to customers? Should you offer exclusive products or discounts? How should you greet repeat visitors and what should you offer them? Have you tested and experimented with this content? These are all great questions brands should be asking themselves when optimizing their online presence.

There’s a reason why Amazon garners such incredible repeat business. The online giant understands which groups of consumers they are actively selling their products to and integrates those consumers’ digital history, preferences, behaviors and actions into their customer experience across all devices. If brands want to learn anything from Amazon, it should be that engagement across multiple channels is less about muscle and more about smarter marketing.

According to Forrester Research, U.S. e-commerce sales are expected to hit $370 billion by 2017 – that’s 10 percent of retail sales. These are some pretty staggering figures that brands and their CMOs cannot afford to ignore. More than anything, it’s a harsh reminder of just how much revenue they stand to lose if they get the online experience wrong.

Consumers today are finicky and want what they want, now. Some place the highest premium on loyalty and trust in a brand or product. Others, bound by the unstable economy, prefer deep discounts and bargains. And then there’s the ever-growing population of consumers who are always connected and always on, thanks to their smartphones and tablets. As different as consumers are, they all want to feel like the brands and products they use are tailored specifically for them. By providing personalized, relevant and unique content in line with consumers’ likes and dislikes, purchase behaviors and demographic profiles, they’ll increase eyeballs to their online or mobile sites, boost traffic and, most important, drive short-term and long-term sales. Here are five reasons why CMOs cannot ignore the power of personalization any longer, or they may soon be shutting their doors.

Make data your best friend.

It’s unfortunate, but a lot of brands these days are still guessing their way through their website design and e-commerce strategy. As smart and creative as most brands think they are, the numbers don’t lie. Data can be one of the most inexpensive and smart listening tools a brand can have in its arsenal. I can’t stress enough the importance of brands analyzing what works and what’s missing the mark with all of their design changes through A/B and multivariate testing. That kind of data is more apt to deliver real insights into who their audience is, what types of content and information they want, and where they are making those purchases. All of those learnings, in turn, can result in increased clicks, higher conversion rates, more revenue and happier customers.

Reach the right audience.

What is the demographic profile of your primary customers? Are a significant portion of your online customers also smartphone and tablet owners? Does product pricing influence the purchase decisions of your customers? The identity of your customers, their demographic profiles, what types of information they value as well as when and where they are making purchases are all insights that can help you reach the right audience at the right time with the right content – whether it’s in the form of emails, product recommendations or social promotions. So doesn’t it make sense to test and optimize your website to reach the right audience at the right time with the right content?

Be relevant, unique and indispensable.

One of the best ways to attract and retain customers is to make your brand and products so relevant, unique and indispensable that they would suffer if they went elsewhere. According to Forrester’s 2012 North American Brand Performance Study, being indispensable commands greater preference, and that means a higher likelihood that customers are going to keep spending their hard-earned dollars with your brand across multiple channels. One way to satisfy consumers’ high standards is to make product recommendations as personal and strategic as possible. Showing the right products in the best way on the right pages can result in higher site traffic, longer engagement times on landing pages and more sales. That’s a win-win for both brands and consumers.

Smartphones and tablets drive e-commerce growth.

If you think investing the time, resources and dollars into testing and optimizing your site for smartphones and tablets isn’t that urgent, think again. According to eMarketer, 15 percent of online retail sales this year will take place via mobile devices, which is up from 11 percent in 2012. Overall, U.S. retail m-commerce sales are predicted to reach nearly $39 billion in 2013, up 56.5 percent from 2012 and almost triple the amount spent in 2011.

But not every smartphone and tablet is the same; each device type, model and platform comes with its own unique set of features and functions. Failing to optimize and personalize your website for the smaller screen could very well mean the difference between being profitable and going bankrupt.

Forge meaningful social relationships.

Social media has forever changed the way we use the Internet and consume information. Once considered to be a new “fad,” social media is now an integral part of consumers’ daily lives. A study by Forrester Research found that 45 percent of people on social networks have interacted with a brand through social media over the previous three months. It’s especially interesting to see that 71 percent of online adults are accessing social networking sites at least monthly.

Despite how popular and “cool” it’s become for brands to have a social presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, many have done so without any real strategy or testing behind them. How often do you hear brands bragging about reaching 1 million fans or “likes” on their Facebook page? But these metrics aren’t tied in any way to ROI and sales. Incorporating social data into your overall personalization program can convert those actions into leads and revenue. Isn’t that what really matters to your business?

When Wal-Mart announced plans to use its retail locations to fulfill online orders last week, the media and business community broke into a collective game of word association. The word? Amazon.

Prior to breaking the news, Wal-Mart was already one of the few companies that could compete with Amazon online. But after unveiling how it plans to do so—by fulfilling online orders in its own stores—Wal-Mart became Amazon’s first serious threat.

The irony is that Wal-Mart will fulfill these orders using Amazon’s own in-store locker strategy. Wal-Mart has the significant advantage of already having 10,000 retail locations—something Amazon can’t currently compete with. For Amazon, staying competitive will either require rolling out a slew of its own physical locations (which is a possibility considering its test store concept last year) or establishing partnerships with 3rd-party brick-and-mortar retailers (something it is very much in the process of doing). In the meantime, however, all Wal-Mart has to do is boost its online game. Well, and install the lockers.

Clearly Amazon and Wal-Mart have different product sets. They also don’t overlap 100% in target customer bases, and there are a bunch of other things that are fundamentally different about their models… But for the sake of oversimplification, let’s say that all Wal-Mart has to do to rise to ecommerce supremacy is up the online ante. What exactly would that take? A lot. But Wal-Mart’s two most crucial priorities will be helping online customers navigate its extensive product list easily and quickly, and streamlining online and offline operations to create a turnkey overall experience.

Priority #1: Wal-Mart must transform itself into an invisible (and psychic) personal shopper to help customers navigate its vast inventory.

Like Amazon, Wal-Mart has a massive product offering. This isn’t a new problem for either of them, but as the race to fulfill orders guarantees quicker turnaround times and more convenience after placing the order, Wal-Mart must control every thing it can before the order is placed to ensure it’s actually placed through them. In this case, that means making sure customers can find what they’re looking for, quickly and easily. Or, in the case that customers don’t know exactly what that is, helping them figure it out with a fairly high degree of accuracy.

The good news is that this isn’t Wal-Mart’s first rodeo; they’re not exactly starting from scratch. They know who their customers are and they’ve got tons of data from past purchases and online behavior to inform their efforts.

They’ve also got enough content to appeal to every person in the US if they want to – it’s just a question of surfacing the right content to the right people. Therefore there is no extra work involved in getting more products or content; the challenge is simply using it better.

To act as an invisible personal shopper, Wal-Mart must master what they do with this powerful combination of content and data—and when they do it. The goal is to use it in real-time, as customers are browsing their online store.  This is different from standard product recommendations—things like “people who liked this, also like that”–which online shoppers have become accustomed to. Retailers now have the technology to go far beyond these persona/segment-based tools.

They can make use of both historical data (what this particular individual has looked at and/or purchased in the past) and current data (what this particular individual is looking at right now) to make predictions that will shape a particular customer’s experience in context and real-time.

Priority #2: Create a streamlined and turnkey experience across all touch points between online and offline visits.

With this new model comes the potential for far more room for error than ever before. Online customers who will now be traveling to Wal-Mart’s physical locations to pick up their orders will no doubt expect a consistent experience from the moment they order all the way to fulfillment. Along the way, there are a number of touch points, including email, direct marketing, advertising, customer service, and so on.

Building on the idea of personalizing each individual’s online experience, Wal-Mart can easily improve each subsequent experience—something that may seem like it involves a significant level of complexity. But with the right infrastructure, it can be completely automated and dynamic.

The key to accomplishing this is putting visitor profiles at the heart of each cross channel experience. In other words, Wal-Mart can use the same model of targeting used online to inform which content each customer sees across all other channels. In the end, the digital channels match email marketing matches advertising matches direct mail matches messaging at the point of pick-up (a phrase I just coined, mind you), and so on.

At the end of the day, Wal-Mart’s rise to online dominance really just revolves around turning an otherwise complicated shopping experience into one that feels quaint and easy. It can accomplish this by setting up a strong behind-the-scenes infrastructure that puts the customer experience at the forefront. And isn’t that what their new strategy is all about—giving the customer what they want where they want it?

If the $42.3 billion spent online this past holiday season has taught retailers anything, it’s that capturing customers—and their dollars—online is crucial.

But online is a big place. And mobile, which can seem like an entirely different universe, looms ever larger. So where to even start if you haven’t yet…started? And who should lead the charge?

The modern day merchant must have an intimate understanding of the importance of online and mobile commerce, access to a vast array of customer data, and a strategy for transforming this analytical data into winning online experiences.

In all cases, the goal is to attract and retain both new and returning customers. Whether online novices or experts, business leaders crave insight on how to accomplish this. The question is: who inside the company can embody these traits and help the CEO rule the roost? That responsibility should belong to the chief marketing officer.

A CMO should be somebody who uniquely understands marketing, merchandising, data, analytics and web design, and who can also maintain a creative, innovative organizational structure. IT tends to lean too heavily toward data for data’s sake, while Sales too often relies on revenue and relationships.

Placing the CMO in charge allows for the best of both worlds. Armed with the science of data analysis and the art of consumer engagement, the CMO is well positioned to emulate merchant princes of old and join the ranks of retail royalty. A good CMO can nurture a culture of testing, measuring and learning instead of depending on guesswork and subjectivity, as well as reach out to those on the front lines of customer interactions to figure out what those customers want. The ambitious CMO knows that their company site must be more engaging than the competitions’, as well as a place that customers trust, valuing the available products, services and information on offer. It also needs to be a reliable gateway to actions that grow sales beyond the initial purchase, such as cross-selling and upselling.

What’s the best way to make all this happen? One word: data.

Data is crucial to online retail. It comes in many different forms, the main type being the individual behaviors of current site visitors: which search term or webpage brought them over, what time of day and day of the week they’re most likely to stop by, what recent purchases they’ve already made onsite, what pages they visit and what product categories most interest them. All this pertinent info helps define what the “best content” is for each specific viewer. Other types include customer relationship management (CRM) data and social media data.

The aspiring CMO must then use this accumulated data to gain perspective on what customers want; analytical optimization and personalization tools will aid in this quest. Segmentation sifts through the data to find discrete groups of people with similar traits and/or interests, who can then be targeted and tested with relevant content based on site activity. Product recommendations and other offers are then provided based on what the various groups are most likely to purchase.

Product information tools give customers a deeper understanding of the product at hand—a 360-degree view of an article of clothing, or a close-up of various types of textured materials. User-generated content, like ratings, reviews or social media feedback, also aids and influences purchasing decisions. The savvy CMO uses all these methods to strike the delicate balance between intuition and analysis.

As the shelf life of ecommerce sites gets shorter, it becomes harder for marketers to balance the latest trends while maintaining a seamless customer experience. When constant upgrades and revamps become daily tasks, or the functionality just isn’t meeting your growth demands, it might be a sign that it’s time to replatform—or migrate your site to a more stable, streamlined infrastructure.

The bad news is that if you’re considering a replatform, it’s likely because your ecommerce site is highly complex and dynamic, with rich content, targeted merchandising, interactive customer support and advanced search capabilities. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be tricky. Here’s a checklist of six things to help ensure a smoother process.

Think long-term

According to Forrester Research, 39% of surveyed companies see a drop in conversion rates after replatforming, while 44% note slower load times once a new platform goes live. It’s a given that ecommerce sites will need to be further tested and tweaked after replatforming. Therefore, selling the process as a singular project with a definite end date is counterproductive. Replatforming should be treated as a long-term program that caters to the site’s goals and capabilities. Be upfront about this so stakeholders realize that a post-launch dip is part of the plan. And ensure them that you can bring things back into balance through testing and optimization.

Be realistic

The average delay for a replatforming program is 4.2 months; so promising a three-month turnaround is setting your company up for failure. Functionality and usability issues are common once the transition takes place, so be aware of that when devising a timeline. Companies that rush their replatforming efforts often have to spend more time dealing with unexpected snafus, unlike those who allocate enough time to get things right at the first pass. Pro tip: don’t schedule a replatform in Q3 or Q4—unless you enjoy needless holiday chaos! Instead, plan to make the shift earlier in the year (right now is actually a good time!) so any delays that arise are dealt with during the summer, and the bigger issues can get resolved before shopping season begins.

Use teamwork

While it’s tempting to keep replatforming decisions strictly within the marketing department—perhaps under the assumption that less cooks in the kitchen will make things go faster—remember that other departments (IT, sales, executives) are bound to have their own goals for the project, each with their own key performance indicators. Having all that input and feedback is highly valuable, and crucial to a successful replatforming. Keeping everyone in the loop in a diplomatic and transparent way results in a consolidated master KPI list for the program with fair and effective prioritization.

Stay focused

A big replatforming no-no is trying to fix too many problems at once. New site features, design changes, cross-channel implementations, updated order management solutions…implementing all those changes at the same time will make the possibility of things going haywire even more likely. Adding excess scope at the start often leads to trimming things down later on—in other words, wasted time, money and effort. Figure out what the most important changes will be at the start, and implement those in a focused, rational manner.

Know what you need

Replatforming is not the end…only the beginning. Therefore, it’s important to have a clear idea of what tools and interdepartmental support are needed to keep things running smoothly once the transition takes place, and to make those needs clear during preliminary discussions so there’s no surprises. Any manual effort or IT hours should be estimated in advance, as well as any possible ongoing financial outlay beyond upfront costs.

Test everything

Forrester notes that an astounding 63% of companies decide to re-platform based on “perceived ROI” (otherwise known as hunches), while 54% are motivated by internal company demands (also called wishful thinking). That’s a whole lot of guesswork, when what’s needed is actual customer experience testing to see what really improves matters. Any variable you can think of—site traffic, bounce rates, navigation, checkout processes, layout/design, revenue per visitor—can be tested both before and after replatforming to ensure the changes taking place will actually make a difference to the bottom line.

On the face of it, the idea of a rigorously testing and optimizing your ecommerce web site seems like a no-brainer.

After all, who would object to gathering hard data on exactly how customers move through your site, what happens on specific visits, and what unseen speed bumps and sticking points are hurting sales? Who wouldn’t want definitive answers to such questions?

Fact is, though, in many online marketing organizations, there is often surprisingly sharp resistance to technologies such as multivariate testing.

Sometimes, it’s simply because there’s some confusion about how multivariate testing actually works and what the benefits are. (“You’re going through all this to test the color of the ‘Buy Now” button? Really?”)

But the real problem usually is buried a little deeper. With hard testing comes the threat of upsetting or overturning some cherished beliefs, or disproving what people ‘know’ to be true. Marketing and creative teams have traditionally crafted websites around ‘established principles’ and ‘gut feel’ for what works. (What if that isn’t so? What if we’ve been dead wrong all this time?)

The IT people build the site a certain way because it’s simple and robust makes perfect sense in terms of data flow. (But what if that actually turns customers off? What if that makes shoppers bail out before buying?)  The notion of actually testing ingrained practices is a bit scary.  Who wants to have their worldview changed?

In other cases, there’s some reluctance to admitting there’s even a problem.  “We’re getting X% conversions. That’s the industry norm.  Nobody is complaining. Why bother?”

The best approach to getting buy-in for a testing strategy is to position it as less of a of a threat, and more of a way to ‘refine’ and direct the efforts of your creative, marketing and IT teams.  It’s a way to out-smart, out-maneuver, out-think your competitors; it’s not a way to beat up on what we’ve been doing.

Detail the pain, document the bad

First step:  point out the pain points on your site. Are visitors fleeing as soon as they arrive? Are they actually buying or just poking around?  Do they buy once, and disappear forever?

To make your case, use strong graphics, charts, video clips, whatever it takes. But make sure the visuals are backed up by solid data that will speak to your audience: You bounce rate, cart abandonment rate, search engagement and average order value. Make the pain and problems clear, and the idea of a testing program will be much easier to sell.

Add up the losses

Find a way to dramatize and quantify how much money you’re losing in the current situation.  Then show how much more money the company could be making if you could get hard data on exactly what’s working and what’s not working.

Bring up smart competitors, industry darlings

Peer pressure is another go-to tactic for getting reluctant executives to embrace change. Explain how other respected, successful organizations are leaping ahead by definitively testing what they’re doing. For examples, check business publications, LinkedIn, public case studies, blogs and so forth.

Nobody likes to be left behind — if stakeholders see other businesses are implementing test programs to their benefit, it’s more likely they’ll want to do the same. And if competition’s already ahead of the game, even better for you. (Although the alternative is that they’re not and you can beat them to the chase.)

Speak to IT on their terms

Your development teams may feel that site testing is unnecessary, especially if they’ve already evaluated usability and other qualitative factors. They may consider testing their domain, and not appreciate any input from the marketing department.

Address these concerns by speaking their language and giving them concrete information they can actually use in making development decisions. Don’t just have a verbal discussion — provide all those statistical facts in writing, in terminology they know and use. Point out that shifting the responsibility of site testing to marketing frees up IT time and manpower to work on other projects.

Relate it all to the brand

In a critical way, the e-commerce site is the final touch point, the ultimate ‘proof’ of the brand concept. Does the experience on the website match the brand promise? Does it reinforce and capitalize on all the branding efforts so far?  Is there something we can do better? Something in our web experience that is somehow compromising our brand?  Multivariate testing can quantify this very accurately.

“Just try it”

Finally, propose a trial run — a limited test, shown to a small percentage of page traffic. Be sure to track key data points like visitor stats, cost per conversion, and abandonment rates. Once the results are gathered, share them with various departments throughout the company. As more co-workers find out what’s going on, your potential support base will become even larger.

Going green, online—is it worth it? The short answer is yes. Many marketers may not realize that catering specifically to this type of consumer can actually increase conversion rates, while maintaining your image as a green-friendly organization. And when applying some personalization to the mix, can also help keep your green friends very, very loyal.

Whether retail or hospitality, certain brands are continuously striving to maintain relevancy for a certain subset of eco-conscious customers—both offline and off. So, if you want your brand to be top-of-mind with the green-friendly, your website needs to follow a certain aesthetic—just like your products and physical locations.

1. Use your navigation to your advantage.

When green visitors hit your homepage, they should be able to immediate route themselves to a section that meets their eco-friendly requirements. This doesn’t mean that you have to dedicate an entire green banner on the homepage for every visitor to see. Simply highlighting and building in a green section into the navigation will get visitors up and clicking on the products they are interested in.

2. Highlight products and categories with green options.

A recent study published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management found that the level of willingness to pay a premium for green initiatives is significantly different depending on hotel type. Test out highlighting hotels that invest in green initiatives in the search results and hotel details page. By watching the results on conversions and bookings, you’ll be able to nail down who your green travelers are, and what they are looking for most.

On the flip side, retailers can easily highlight products on category pages to effectively call-out environmentally sound products. Using tricks such as a “green dot” or a “green leaf” icon identifies an eco-friendly product in an otherwise crowded page.

3. Be detailed and explanatory.

For those extra-inquisitive customers, explaining why a product or room is green is a necessary step to getting the conversion. Using “rollovers” is a great way to quickly explain what makes the product eco-friendly before the visitor clicks on it. This helps not only keep the visitor engaged on the path to purchase, but instills a level of trust with the site, since you took that extra step to keep consumers on the up and up.

4. Get (environmentally) personal.

It’s been shown when degree of environmental concern and other demographic factors remain constant, luxury and mid-priced hotel customers show, on average, a higher willingness to pay a premium for the green initiatives than economy hotel customers. On the same token, repeat visitors to your retail site who have shown interest in green products in the past, should not have to search around to find their desired products.

So how can you play that up? Personalization.

With personalization, conscious green visitors are immediately acknowledged and other visitors become aware of additional product offering—but aren’t necessary pushed for it. A technique such as behavioral targeting can help automatically syphon off non-green or unknown visitors, and promote green items, options or offers to those who are. By using a predictive, mathematical model, this allows your site to offer the right product, to the right visitor, at the right time. No matter how much merchandise you have, your customers will be targeted appropriately.

It’s important to remember that green consumers are just like everyone else out there—fickle, picky and demanding. As e-commerce marketers, it’s up to us to ensure we’re always catering to all our customers wants and needs—otherwise losing our green-friendly image is the least of our worries. It’s the customer loyalty that will be at stake.

Most e-commerce sites still struggle to leverage the growing wealth of customer data to which they have access. This failure to integrate customer relationship management (CRM) activities with online visitor behavior is wasting a significant opportunity to transform CRM into Customer Relationship Marketing.

During the last economic downturn, the Web was the only sales channel that grew, while brick-and-mortar businesses contracted significantly. The Web is now such a powerful, commanding route to market that in some pre-Internet sectors, more than 90% of business is now done online. Moreover, this year Cyber Monday sales alone hit $1.98 billion.

One of the best examples of this growth in e-commerce is the airline industry, which was once dominated by call center activity. Today, JetBlue now handles more than 80 percent of its reservation transactions online. Yet, while Internet businesses have made great progress in catching up with more traditional sales outlets in terms of the breadth and sophistication of their product offerings and how they are presented online, they have failed to integrate their CRM activities, which limits their impact as they try to personalize promotional offers.

Following the Leaders

Amazon.com certainly set the gold standard for best practices in personalization—with its unparalleled ability to recognize and deftly exploit consumers’ online browsing and buying habits. But, it also has the advantage that its route to market was 100% Web-based. Certainly, many ecommerce shops attempt to mimic Amazon’s highly successful interactions with returning customers (“You were interested in XYZ, so you may enjoy ABC,” etc.) — but most companies are not going far enough, allowing customers to slip through the cracks. For instance, an insurance business may not realize that the person making a call center inquiry about auto insurance was just browsing life insurance offers on the Web the day before calling.

Going for Cross Channel Optimization

However, the website is just one of several channels—and consumers don’t think in channels, they think in brands. So, as hard as some have worked to blend their operations and business data across their brick-and-mortar, call center and Web operations, many gaps still exist.

Disjointed marketing and sales practices are leading to frustrated and disgruntled customers when they are forced to rehash the same details whenever they switch between channels. This scenario is one that causes many customers to abandon their inquiries and take their business elsewhere.

Consider financial services as an example. A bank, which might use its CRM system and propensity modeling to address gaps in a customer’s portfolio of products, may suggest a new account upgrade, an improved insurance policy, or a more favorable home equity line through the customer’s local branch or a direct mail offer. But what if that same bank knew that a customer had visited its mortgage calculator facility when last visiting its website? This would present an ideal opportunity to make a timely, customized offer. Even more compelling would be to have the offer serve as the primary landing page content presented the next time the customer goes online to transfer money or pay a bill.

The ability to adapt online content for customers and prospects based on their known preferences is a powerful way to build and strengthen relationships, particularly if dovetailed with offline activities.

The Path to CRM Nirvana

he potential impact of personalized marketing over the Web is undisputedly enormous. E-business owners have about seven seconds to capture the attention of an online visitor and engage their interest. If this opportunity is lost, the customer will move to a competitor. And if that competitive experience provides more relevant, personalized content and a pertinent offer, the customer may never come back — despite previous loyalty to the brand.

Imagine if it were possible provide real-time targeting your visitors while they were still browsing your site, therefore able to influence their final purchase— no hoping for the next visit, no lost opportunities. Instead, you seize the moment, right when it matters. Imagine the possibilities and the revenue potential it could bring.

It is imperative that companies integrate customer data across all channels. Understanding what customers have been doing across channels can make every interaction an extension of what they may have begun elsewhere — creating a more personal, relevant and rewarding experience for both the customer and the business.

While the majority of organizations appreciate the value of personalization (Forrester Research notes that organizations have wanted to personalize their Web marketing for the past 15 years), only a small minority have actually followed through.

The building blocks exist to get e-businesses started — organizations can model what customers do as they navigate a site’s Web pages, and they can segment this data so it can be used for tailored promotions both on the Web, during a current or future session, or across other channels. Nirvana is a fully integrated CRM solution that feeds into specific online offers.

By waiting to see what the competition does first, companies risk losing the advantage — and customers. Use the personalization capabilities available today to move swiftly, offer a killer deal, and potentially gain a lifelong customer.